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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]He needs to research environmental law jobs and understand what that actually entails. [/quote]

He has started that a bit. [/quote]
Getting a government spot doing environmental law means you need to go to a top school and do well.  Those jobs are filled with Harvard and Yale grads.  You'll have an okay salary, but will be counting on the government forgiving your loans.

The other option is going into BigLaw and to defend companies in their quest to destroy the environment.  You will be able to pay off your loans, but it isn't a job for a value-driven environmentalist.

If you can't get a prestigious federal job or get into Biglaw, if you are lucky, then you will make a subsistence wage filing petitions for local companies and individuals.  More likely you won't get a legal job at all.[/quote]

This was the observation I was going to make.  If you work in Big Law -- which would be helpful to pay off law school loans -- you will wind up representing corporations who have committed toxic torts and need help to prevent paying bigger fines to the government or perhaps showing that the cleanup they have already performed is sufficient.  The alterhative would be working for the government at EPA or for the state equivalent, where the salaries will be smaller.  One other alternative is working at plaintiffs law firms who sue on  behalf of citizens or state agencies who have experienced the environmental damage.  I'm not sure whether the pay is better there than at the agencies themselves.

Who knows whether the environmental law landscape will change in the next few decades?  But right now it's a little bit of a Catch 22 for folks without a lot of money who want to do good.  If you're going to have huge student loans,  you may be at the mercy of student loan forgiveness to get those loans paid off if you're going to have a job where you are in effect representing "the environment" rather than "the companies who are effing over the environment."  [/quote]

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