PUBLISHED:January 28, 2010

New in spring 2010: Expanded Duke in D.C.

The Federal Policy Process program — first offered in the spring 2009 semester — has placed five students in externships on Capitol Hill in the personal offices of members of Congress, on the staffs of Senate and House Committees, and with organizations that engage in government liaison and lobbying work for nonprofit and for-profit organizations. As they did in the program’s inaugural semester, Professor Christopher Schroeder, President Barack Obama’s nominee to serve as head of the Office of Legal Policy in the Department of Justice, and Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., are supervising the externship placements and teaching the companion course on the federal policy process.

Four more students are working within the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice and with civil rights organizations in the federal and nonprofit sectors through the Examining Federal Civil Rights Law & Policy program. Margaret Hu ’00, a special policy counsel in the Civil Rights Division, and H. Jefferson Powell, Duke’s Frederic Cleaveland Professor of Law and Divinity and former deputy U.S. solicitor general, are supervising the externship placements and teaching the companion course called Examining Federal Civil Rights Law & Policy.

Hu interned in the Civil Rights Division during her 2L summer through the DOJ’s Summer Law Intern Program, and returned through the Attorney General’s Honors Program following her clerkship with Judge Rosemary Barkett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. She is certain that externships within the Division’s 10 sections will offer students substantive work experience, generate useful career contacts, and introduce them to a wealth of career possibilities within the Department of Justice.

“It’s a great place to work and a great place for a long-term career,” said Hu, now special policy counsel in the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices.

Also new in the spring 2010 semester:
» The North Carolina Public Policy Integrated Externship program has placed students within state legislative offices and agencies. The externship placements are bolstered by a seminar, taught by state legislator and Senior Lecturing Fellow Deborah Ross and Clinical Professor Andrew Foster, that incorporates a series of case studies to help students explore the state level public policy process from a variety of perspectives. The students also are concurrently enrolled in the Legislation and Statutory Interpretation course taught by Professor Guy-Uriel Charles.

» Deal Skills for Transactional Lawyers, a simulation-based class designed by Sidley Austin’s Terry Hynes ’79 to give students grounding in the real world M&A process, prepare them to participate effectively in due diligence reviews, and hone their drafting and negotiating skills;

» The Entrepreneurial Law Clinic, led by Clinical Professor and Director of Clinical Programs Andrew Foster, in which students — already enrolled in Professor Bill Brown’s class on private equity and venture capital transactions — assist startup ventures launched by Duke University students with the formation of their companies and counsel them with respect to the protection of their intellectual property.