In a night filled with live entertainment, big money and bad
lawyer jokes, “Bid for a Better World,” the 12th-annual
charitable auction for UCLA’s Public Interest Law Fund, held
Saturday, proved a successful event in raising money for summer
interns in the public interest field.
PILF is a student-run organization that raises money for law
students interested in the public sector to take unpaid summer
internships relating to their preferred field.
“Traditionally, if you wanted to go into the public
interest field, you would have to have parents willing to cover the
cost of summer expenses, or have some other source of
funding,” said Deborah Ho, the auction’s co-chair.
The 43 PILF grant recipients must already have acquired a summer
position, then prove their past experience in and dedication to the
internship’s field.
Such students are then able to take jobs in a wide range of
organizations, from Communities for a Better Environment ““ an
environmental justice non-profit ““ to the Center of
Constitutional Rights, the organization that began legislation for
the detainees at Guantánamo Bay.
“It was rewarding to feel like I was doing good work for a
community that really needs the help,” said Ethan Elkin,
second-year law student and PILF grant recipient.
PILF programs like these are the main force behind UCLA
Law’s active effort to encourage students to take jobs in the
public interest field.
Private sector positions generally have a large support staff of
attorneys, each with a relatively specialized knowledge of the
law.
But public interest law organizations are only barely able to
support their very small staff because they are a limited
financially, Ho said. This smaller staff requires a much broader
range of skills and knowledge of the law in each of their
attorneys, she said.
“If you’re lucky, your starting salary will be
$4,000 (per year),” Ho said. “Especially in light of
the fact that grad school tuition has risen so tremendously over
the past few years, it is important that events like (the auction)
are successful.”
Bidders, often veterans of the auction, showed no lack of
enthusiasm in the items available.
“It’s really entertaining to see some of the stuff
you can bid on in the live auction,” said law student Michael
Lee, referring specifically to a poker night with Judge Alex
Kazinski of the ninth circuit.
Other items included tickets to sporting events, discounted
vacation packages and various activities with law school faculty
and other distinguished legal figures.
“We’re very lucky that this program has run for so
many years, because we now have a base core of people who give
regularly,” Ho said. “And this year we have lots of new
auctions.”
The auction, however, is only one of the fund-raising events
that PILF holds.
The organization also coordinates a 5k run/walk, a pledge drive
and a student/faculty trivia challenge, which selects contestants
based on the total amount of raised contributions.