Employment Opportunities
Looking for a job, career, internship, clerkship or fellowship in animal law?
The Animal Legal Defense Fund offers a list of our current employment opportunities plus additional opportunities at various law firms and non-profit organizations across the country.
If you are a law firm or non-profit organizations, you can submit your opportunity and we will consider it for publication on aldf.org.
Opportunities at the Animal Legal Defense Fund
Legal Research Assistant
Yale Law School
Remote or New Haven, Connecticut
The Climate Change & Animal Agriculture Litigation Initiative (CCAALI)—a project of the Law, Environment, and Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School—invites applications for full-time summer 2025 research assistant positions. CCAALI is focused on exploring the potential for litigation to help address the climate harms of animal agriculture. See more detail on the initiative below.
The summer research assistants will work on a range of legal issues at the intersection of climate change and industrial animal agriculture. These are full-time positions with a salary of $7,000 for 10 weeks of full-time work ($17.50/hour). These positions are open to students at U.S. law schools who will have completed at least one year of law school. Students graduating from law school prior to the summer of 2025 are also eligible to apply, as are LLM students. This position could be remote or in New Haven.
Interested applicants should email a cover letter, resume, writing sample, unofficial transcript, and contact information for two references to daina.bray@yale.edu, with a cc to caroline.zhang.cz443@yale.edu. (Transcripts, if not immediately available, can be sent after the initial application.) The priority deadline is December 23, 2024. Applications received after the priority deadline will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
The research assistants can expect to have a range of challenging and rewarding experiences. Projects may include legal and factual research relating to:
- Novel uses of state environmental statutes and constitutional amendments in response to the climate harms of animal agriculture;
- Potential administrative law and consumer protection claims to address climate-washing relating to animal products;
- Potential claims grounded in the vulnerability of animal agriculture industry infrastructure and profit streams to climate-related natural disasters.
Research assistant work will be overseen by Daina Bray, LEAP Legal Director, and Laura Fox and Caroline Zhang, Litigation Fellows. Doug Kysar and Viveca Morris of LEAP also advise on the Initiative.