Reminder: DOJ And Other Honors Program Applications Are Due Soon
The size of the DOJ Honors Program is significantly smaller this time around, so the process should be especially competitive.
The U.S. Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C., aka “Main Justice” (photo by David Lat).
Who will be Attorney General in a Joe Biden administration? Now that Kamala Harris is his running mate, Sally Yates, who previously served as Acting Attorney General, would seem to be the frontrunner. Her being given a prominent speaking role at the Democratic National Convention is merely public confirmation of what insiders have been saying for quite some time.
Are you a law student or recent law school graduate who might be interested in serving in a Yates-led Department of Justice? If so, this reminder is for you: the deadline for applying to the DOJ Honors Program, the largest and most prestigious federal entry-level attorney hiring program of its kind, is just one week away, on Tuesday September 8, 2020 at 11:59 p.m. ET. So if you’re interested in applying, you need to act fast.
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For the 2020-21 Honors Program, there appear to be just 145 positions (not counting the 23 to 25 possible slots for informal participants) — a sizable, 34 percent drop from last year’s number of 221 positions. The number of slots in the program goes up and down, based in part on DOJ budget projections, and it dipped as low as 70 to 75 in the fall 2011 application cycle, in the wake of the Great Recession. So 145 positions is still well above that number — but it’s definitely on the low side for recent years, meaning that this application cycle will probably be quite competitive.
The DOJ Honors Program is the biggest and best-known of the federal entry-level attorney hiring programs, but it’s not the only one. Here are other governmental honors programs, listed in order of their application deadlines (click on each department’s or agency’s name for more information):
- Department of Homeland Security (DHS): September 8, 2020
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): September 11, 2020
- Department of Labor (DOL), Office of the Solicitor: September 14, 2020
- Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Office of Chief Counsel: September 30, 2020
- Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC): October 2, 2020
These are just examples. For more opportunities, surf over to USA Jobs. Some of the deadlines are almost here, so act fast.
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We are living in unusual and challenging times, so it is encouraging to see these excellent government hiring programs going forward as usual, especially at a time when many employers in the private sector have put hiring on pause. Good luck to everyone applying to these programs — and to everyone seeking employment of any type during the coronavirus pandemic.
David Lat, the founding editor of Above the Law, is a writer, speaker, and legal recruiter at Lateral Link, where he is a managing director in the New York office. David’s book, Supreme Ambitions: A Novel (2014), was described by the New York Times as “the most buzzed-about novel of the year” among legal elites. David previously worked as a federal prosecutor, a litigation associate at Wachtell Lipton, and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at dlat@laterallink.com.
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