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Presented by the American Bar Association’s Law Student Division, the ABA Law Student Podcast covers issues that affect law students, law schools, and recent grads. From finals and graduation to the bar exam and finding a job, this show is your trusted resource for the next big step.
Todd Berger (00:00):
Law students often approach their careers with the idea of making a difference. While the law affords many avenues to accomplish that goal, rarely do law students start off with a vision of working in the world of local government law. When you represent a public corporation, your daily practice isn't just about real estate and transactions, it's a constant balancing act between constitutional rights and community politics. On today's episode, we shed some light on this practice area that most law students overlook, speaking with a dedicated public sector attorney who views municipal law as a true vocation. We break down the definition of a municipal corporation, explore why building institutional trust is the biggest modern challenge for local governments and discuss by being hungry, humble, and smart is the ultimate recipe for thriving in this field. This is the ABA Law Student Podcast. Hi, Eve. Hi, Nayeli. How are you doing, Eve?
Eve Albert (01:11):
Oh, I'm doing just great. The semester's over. So I'm working nine to five, Dolly Parton style and it's amazing. Yeah, that was a joke. You guys can laugh. It's amazing.
Todd Berger (01:23):
I got it. People can see me on camera. I am laughing, but I didn't want it to be distracting you. No,
Eve Albert (01:29):
It's a thinker. Got to take a minute.
Todd Berger (01:31):
I did. See, I was laughing. I had to think about who Dolly Parton was. And then I was also connecting because I'm not a big country music fan, but I knew that much. That's fair enough. I could see you in your conference room at work, so thank you for a lot of law students working over the summer different schedules, so thank you for being here. Of
Eve Albert (01:54):
Course. Yeah.
Todd Berger (01:55):
And speaking of someone who is no longer a law student, at least in a technical sense, kick it over to our latest and newest graduate, Nayeli, how are you doing?
Nayeli Diaz (02:06):
Oh, I'm good studying for the bar, so that's exciting.
Todd Berger (02:10):
And it felt good to finally be done law school?
Nayeli Diaz (02:14):
Yeah, it feels strange. It's like nothing's real. So I'm waiting for it to kind of hit me.
Todd Berger (02:20):
Yeah. Well, I'll just say this and then we'll talk about something better. But someone once told me studying for the bar, it is the toughest, maybe one of the lowest points in your professional career, but everybody gets through it. And then what invariably happens is there's all these people who are like, "I'm going to change. This is so awful. When I become a lawyer, I'm going to change it all and there's never going to be a bar exam. And this is just horrible. Write a passage." And then you become a lawyer and you forget all about that stuff. And so I don't know if you have thought about reforming the bar exam or not, Nayeli, but I can promise you that you will not do it. So you will pass and then- Don't challenge
Nayeli Diaz (02:58):
Me.
Todd Berger (02:59):
I've never seen anybody do it. You pass, that's it. But speaking of people who've passed the bar exam, you talked to a lawyer who obviously passed the bar exam and basically introduced us to what I thought was an interesting area of law, new area of law. So what are we going to hear about in today's episode?
Nayeli Diaz (03:19):
Yeah. Today we're going to talk to Dave Eberle. He's a municipal law attorney at Bloom Sluggit in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And the majority of his work is working as senior legal counsel for municipalities and public entities. So cities, towns, that kind of stuff.
Todd Berger (03:36):
Great. And what made you want to talk to Mr. Eberle about municipal law?
Nayeli Diaz (03:43):
Well, I learned about municipal law from one of my friends who practices municipal law and it was something that I don't think we had ever talked about here. And it is a very niche aspect of the law, but as someone who is very interested in public service, it stood out to me as a unique way of doing that where you're still working for the cities. I think he talks a little bit about it. It's cool to work for the people on a more personal level, like actually working on what's going to impact the communities. And so I really wanted to talk about that because I'm sure there are a lot of law students who are in law school to help people and this is another area that will help you do that, that people should know about.
Todd Berger (04:22):
Yeah, absolutely. You think a lot about the traditional areas of public interest law, which maybe we'll talk about a little bit later. You don't necessarily think about municipal law as one of those areas, but the guests, you had a really interesting discussion about what it is and how if you're one of those people who's public service oriented, it's definitely something you should consider that you might've otherwise missed. So I'm excited for it. I learned a lot. I didn't know what ... I had a vague concept of what the law was and what municipalities were before this. And then I get to listen to your interview and I put it all together and I think it was really interesting. I think a lot of people, even people who've been doing this for a while are going to learn a lot. So ready to get into it?
Nayeli Diaz (05:02):
Yes, sir. Hi, Dave. Thank you for being with us today. How are you doing?
Dave Eberle (05:10):
Hello. Thank you for having me. What a wonderful way to spend a Friday.
Nayeli Diaz (05:15):
So why don't we just start by talking a little bit about your legal journey, where you started and where you are now.
Dave Eberle (05:22):
Sure, sure. So obviously I went to law school. It's kind of a prerequisite to the whole legal thing. In law school, I knew I wanted to do some form of public sector work and often when you tell a career counselor, I want to do public sector, your options are go via prosecutor or don't go do public sector work. So I became a prosecutor. I was a prosecutor, assistant prosecuting attorney at a county. That's how we do it here in Michigan for a little under a year. Absolutely loved it, loved the job, loved the people, enjoyed working with victims. And then I got recruited to the firm I'm at currently, which is a municipal law firm. We do municipal law, public sector law, which we can get into what that means in a little bit. I worked here for a couple of years and then I had the opportunity to go clerk for Justice Vibiano on the Michigan Supreme Court because I hadn't done a clerkship before the opportunity arose.
(06:22):
I did that for a little under a year and then I came back as a law firm. So it worked out perfectly for me. I was very fortunate that the firm I'm at was okay with that. It's very unusual for somebody to take a leave of absence to go clerk because usually everybody's smart enough to do it on the front end. I wasn't. And here I am. Well,
Nayeli Diaz (06:39):
I don't know that was an option, but that's good to
Dave Eberle (06:41):
Know. But some places it is an option to do later. Apparently. Well,
Nayeli Diaz (06:44):
As you mentioned, you work in municipal law now and that's not something that I think a lot of law students are familiar with. So could you tell us just broad overview, what is municipal law? What's it work kind of like?
Dave Eberle (06:56):
Yeah, municipal law, it is a fantastic practice area and like you said, a lot of people don't really know about it. So I've met very few law students who are in law school and say, "I want to go into municipal law simply because it's not really shown as an option in any sense." We all tend to end up here through terms in our career and we all end up here and we're like, "If somebody would've told me this four years ago, I could have saved myself a lot of time." So what is municipal law? Municipal law is the representation of municipal corporations, which is not probably helpful. So let's tease that out a litle bit. What's a municipal corporation? A municipal corporation is a public corporation that's established to provide governance to a particular jurisdictional area. So there's two parts of that we could talk about corporation.
(07:49):
Everybody knows what a corporation is. It's an entity, it's perpetual, it can soon be sued, it can hold property, things like that.
(07:59):
It's public and being public, that speaks more to the purpose of it. A public corporation is established for the primary purpose of doing good for the population or providing governance. Compare that to a private corporation where at the end of the day, although they may do good, the goal is to make money for the shareholders or whoever is the owner or whoever. So that is what a municipal corporation is. We're the lawyers who represent them and that raises a couple issues. One, it's inherently you're doing law in an area that is both governmental and highly political. We work for elected officials, which is different than the private corporation. So there's that always that political balance. It's an organization that is governmental, it has different obligations and those obligations are not always clear because you have different stakeholders in the community and ultimately the electeds have to make the decision of how they're going to balance that from a policy perspective.
(09:03):
But in terms of, excuse me, the practice of law, you're doing all of those things that you would if you were a corporate attorney. We're still doing real estate. You're still doing transactions, but you're doing it through a municipal lens. There's different considerations both practically in terms of the policy decisions of the organization, but legally too. We have to follow the constitution. We have to constantly be concerned with due process issues, first amendment issues. So you really are a corporate attorney, for a very unique type of corporation.
Nayeli Diaz (09:43):
Yeah, that's what most interested me when I was looking into municipal law and learning about it is exactly how you said it's kind of like a middle ground. Like you said, you're representing corporations, but it's also more personal than that because there is community. And as you said, there are these zoning laws and all that kind of stuff within that. So how do you balance the legal risk, the political realities, the community impact when you're advising these municipalities?
Dave Eberle (10:09):
I think every attorney's got a different style. Obviously, I think mine's the best or the most preferred. I always say my goal is to put the decision maker, be that the elected officials or the city manager or the zoning administrator in the best position to make the decision they have to make. And oftentimes that involves outlining, here are the options, here are the risks associated with those options, and then giving my opinion on, can you do it? Yes or no. And then again, here are the risks. The goal is always to get them to yes. I think there's a book that they still read that in law school, like getting the yes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Most people, you don't want to be the attorney in my mind who's always saying, "No, you can't do that. No, you can't." Now that's the easy answer for sure, but that's not what you're brought on to do.
(10:57):
Your job is to take a complicated situation, take their problem, make it your problem and solve it for them.
(11:05):
So oftentimes it may be, "Okay, I understand you want to do that for a variety of political or policy reasons. Here is what I think are the best arguments to get us there, or can we get there to perhaps a different direction? Can we accomplish what you want to accomplish through a different route that would minimize the risks?" Then ultimately they have to make the decision. And I want to be very clear in giving them the options and the risks, I don't think it's beneficial to be wishy-washy. You don't want to, on one hand, but on the other somewhat argue it's like, "No,
Todd Berger (11:38):
My
Dave Eberle (11:38):
Job is to make sure that you're informed and that's not helping anybody. We can do this. Do I think we can do it? " Yes. "Here are the risks you need to be aware of. Option B, same thing. Option C, same thing. What do we want to do? Or do you want to send me back to the drawing board and tell me to get more creative?"
Nayeli Diaz (11:58):
That reminds me of something I think we were talking about last week, which was that I think that sometimes a lot of people think that law school and the law is really adversarial. I think to a certain extent that it is, but in my experience, it is so much more about communication and collaboration like you're mentioning, clear communication, especially with your clients.That is the majority of your work is talking to your clients and as you said, making things easily understandable for them and getting them to yes, but not in a negative way. Let's talk this through. Let's help you understand my experience and what I think will work, but also understanding their needs. And I think that's one of my favorite parts about the law that I think sometimes maybe early law students forget is that it's so much about collaboration with your co-counsel, with your partners at your firm and with the client themselves because they're ultimately who you're working for.
(12:48):
It's not just fighting opposing counsel for the sake of arguing, you're all trying to come to a solution together
Dave Eberle (12:53):
100%. And what you touched on that collaboration aspect, I know the use of AI it's a conversation everywhere, but it's also a conversation, a legal field and AI is getting better, but at the end of the day, AI is not going to have that relationship with the client AI is not going to have that personal touch, that human touch that allows you to say, "Okay, I am taking the emotion of the situation, I'm taking the politics of the situation and I'm taking the law and I'm finding the best answer." And that may be playing in a legal gray area. And as long as the municipality knows that and they're willing to accept that, okay.
Nayeli Diaz (13:33):
I think I totally agree with that. I think that's the thing that it can never take from us is that ability to have a human connection and a human conversation and understand on a deeper level as needed. So you've already talked a little bit about what your work entails, but can you take us through an average day in your life? What's your days normally look like?
Dave Eberle (13:52):
I would say what a day looks like has changed drastically as I've progressed in my career. As a baby municipal attorney, and I don't use that pejoratively, you're a baby attorney, that's what you are. A lot of time is spent simply researching, writing, rewriting after you get the edits back, researching again to find the thing you lost. And that's extraordinarily important. That's how you're establishing that baseline understanding. So at the beginning, a lot of time is spent in front of a computer doing the research and writing. You may end up getting to go to a meeting or two, largely to watch to learn.You may be one of the attorneys who are designated as a prosecutor may go prosecute municipal prosecution too. Cities also prosecute. Villages also prosecute. Townships also prosecute from their local ordinances. But as my career has progressed, it becomes a lot more directly client interfacing.
(14:57):
You're working with directly the zoning administrator, you're working directly with the city manager, you're working directly with the elected officials to get to the point where I am at where frankly, a lot of my time at this point is spent in meetings. It's working with the managers on the administrative side identifying the problems, coming up with solutions and just like they may task an issue to one of their department heads to resolve or to work on. I'll do the same thing with another attorney here and say, "Okay, here's the direction we want to go. Here's where I think you should look. Here's the guidance I have. Go ahead, execute, bring me back something. Let's review it and then I'll take it to the client."
Nayeli Diaz (15:40):
You talked a little bit about baby attorneys or young attorneys. So what are some qualities or some types of students or young attorneys who tend to thrive in municipal or public sector law?
Dave Eberle (15:54):
When I am hiring new attorneys, I make very clear, what are we looking for to any individual? There's a book out there and I'm going to forget the name, so I won't even try to raise it, but the author talks about characteristics of a good employee, hungry, humble, and smart, and that smart in that context is emotional intelligence.
Todd Berger (16:16):
We
Dave Eberle (16:16):
Want somebody who has a good balance of all of those things and some people will be more hungry than they are humble. Some people will be more smart than they are hungry and that's okay. But as long as we have a good balance, that's somebody who can be a team player and we very much have a team atmosphere. I think that's extraordinarily important. And then it's aside from that, do you have the intellectual chops to do the job and to do it well? And how can you prepare yourself for that work very hard in law school. And it's not that you're going to learn municipal law and law school, but it's that you're going to hone those research and writing skills. You're going to be accustomed to grinding, which is a part of the job so that when you get here, you'll be applying those skills in this context.
(17:08):
And we make very clear, "Hello, you've passed the bar. Congratulations. Take a couple weeks off to recover, come to work, and now we will teach you what you need to know and we will rely on the skillsets that you have developed in law school. In terms of experience, to the extent, and I think this goes for any law firm, we want to see that you want to practice our area of law to us and I think to most attorneys, we are a profession. We're trained, we have a code of ethics. This is not just a quote unquote job. It is a profession, it's a vocation. So we want to make sure that we are getting people who want to do municipal law. And that's hard to demonstrate. I mean, everybody in an interview can come in and say, This is the best thing I absolutely want to do.
(17:59):
It's like, okay, convince me.
Todd Berger (18:03):
So
Dave Eberle (18:03):
How can you do that? One, if you get internships in a municipal field or an adjacent field, for example, if you're able to intern at a city attorney's office somewhere that has an in- house city attorney's office,
(18:18):
That's great. If you're able to work at a law firm that does municipal law, that's great. If you're able to work as a prosecutor, as an intern as a prosecutor, that's great because it shows that you have a desire for public service and you're also building applicable skillsets. Absolutely. So that is also something we look for. And so did you work hard in law school? How are your grades? How's your writing? Are you a good writer? Can you think analytically? Does it flow? Everybody's going to get better and continue to get better as a writer, but do we have a good solid baseline? Are you hungry? I'm all smart. Do you want to be in municipal law? And then finally, if you can snag a clerkship before you start your job, that's also a great benefit. And I can speak to that and I mean, I've done it, but I also was shortsighted, I think, when I was a law student in that I knew I wanted to be a prosecutor.
(19:24):
So I lined up a whole bunch of prosecutor internships and those were fantastic. By the time I was a licensed attorney, I had already done a jury trial. I had already run multiple hearings. I'd already run a district court docket. I had what amounted to the experience of someone who'd been a new prosecutor for a year and that
Todd Berger (19:47):
Was
Dave Eberle (19:47):
Great and I demonstrated that that is what I wanted to do, but I could have done all of that and still gotten a clerkship or something like that. And by no means are clerkships the end all, be all, but I think they are ... I learned an extraordinary amount. I also met a lot of really smart people, people who are much smarter than me and had the opportunity to work with them. And that's extraordinarily valuable and it gives you an inside track of how does the court system work because as a law student, you often haven't been in court. You haven't been able to see that and that gives you that inside track.
Todd Berger (20:28):
We'll be right back after this.
Nayeli Diaz (20:36):
Well, you talked a little bit about how you maybe wish that you had done a clerkship earlier, but other than that, is there anything that when you look back at your time in law school that you wish that you had done differently, either academically, professionally, or personally that you think may have ...
Dave Eberle (20:51):
I think I would've worked a little bit harder. I mean, we all work hard and I think you get to the point where you look back and say, I gave 99% there. I think I could have given 100%. So just really taking advantage of the opportunities to make sure that you're not holding anything back, you're giving it everything you got. And you're taking advantage of the opportunities, not just academically, but to learn, to network. These are the folks that you're going to be practicing law with. It's to your benefit to have good relationships with them. It's frankly, if I'm looking for a senior attorney, the first thing I do is I go on LinkedIn and can I find somebody I went to law school with who has also somehow ended up in the municipal or municipal related field? And then I'm going to pick up the phone and call them and be like, "Hey, you want a job or you want to talk about coming over?" And that's way easier.
Nayeli Diaz (21:50):
Yeah, for sure. I think it definitely is, especially as I've already graduated, they tell you it throughout law school and I know it even more so now than I did throughout law school. So for sure, make sure that you're networking and networking authentically and intentionally I think is really important. What do you think was some of the best advice that you received at any point in your career, but maybe if you were earlier or now? I
Dave Eberle (22:15):
Think it was very helpful that when I came into career services at the time and I said, "I want to be a prosecutor," they were very like, "Then go get prosecutor
Todd Berger (22:26):
Internships."
Dave Eberle (22:27):
And not every law student knows what they want to do right off the bat and that's okay That's absolutely okay. But the sooner you can identify what you want to do, the sooner you can start tailoring your internships towards that field, which will be a benefit to you because we talked later to be able, one, you get the experience, but you've now demonstrated that, yes, I want to be in this field. And as an employer, that's very important to us. We don't want to hire somebody, however smart they may be who we think they're just trying us out.
Nayeli Diaz (23:03):
That makes sense. Looking ahead at the next few years, what are some challenges or changes that you see coming in municipal law that students should be aware of?
Dave Eberle (23:13):
Challenges for local government generally, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, institutional trust is low and when you work for an institution for whom institutional trust is low, that can be challenging.
(23:33):
So in many situations now, I'm of the firm opinion that a municipality constantly needs to be putting out feel good stories and some may say, "Well, you're selling yourself." But in reality, you are, you're still at that corporation, you're still that entity, public corporation. And it's important that there be that constant drumbeat of competency, look at all the great things we're doing so that when there is a contentious issue, for example, data centers, solar energy facilities, things like that, members of the public and the electeds themselves too can have confidence in the organization and the process. And even if their policy preference is not ultimately the winner, they can at least say, "Things were looked at, I can trust the proces," and that allows a community, frankly, to move on. If you're in a community where there's zero trust between the public and the elected officials, vice versa, between the elected officials and the city staff or vice versa, a contentious issue could be catastrophic to a community because yet it's a governmental, but it's still a body politic.
(24:56):
There's something to be said of community. This is the most base level of a body politic. It is your community. This is the people who are your neighbors and you don't want to feel like you're intention with them all the time. You want to be able to have that disagreement. So I think that's important. So practically, where does that leave us? It leaves us in my mind where city staff to include city attorney, city manager, you have the representation from the elected officials, but they are constantly thinking of that and saying, "How can we build trust in us as an organization so that we can weather those storms?" There's also the issue of the local control issue, which is hot in Michigan. I'm sure it's hot elsewhere, that really comes down to the issue of how much control should local governments have over local issues.
(25:56):
And there are arguments both way. I'm obviously a firm supporter of local control and I think that's interesting. So for example, in the state of Michigan, which I would argue is a quote unquote home rule state, I would say our constitution very much is structured such that local government should have a substantial amount of control over local issues and should be free from state interference on those issues, but that poses policy questions in terms ... So for example, in 2023, there was a large renewable energy statute passed, which allowed petted power producers and developers, if you will, who wanted to put an energy facility, so battery storage, solar, or wind in a local jurisdiction, they had the opportunity to do an end round around the local jurisdiction and they could go to the Michigan Public Service Commission and get a citing certificate from the state.
(26:55):
I would argue that's zoning, that's a local control and now we've circumvented that process. We have some bills pending right now in the Michigan legislature regarding housing that would take away local control by mandating certain things like a maximum minimum lot size or something like that. And those are things that should be talked about. Those are things that are good to talk about and there may be some benefit to adopting some of those concepts. My position would be that conversation and then the adoption of those concepts should be at the local level, not at the state level. So there's that constant tension I think going on and that's a very interesting area of the law for sure, because it's the combination of the law as well as the policy.
Nayeli Diaz (27:46):
For law students that are in law school, what do you think that some good courses or experiences, you talked about trying to work in city government as much as possible. Are there any other courses or activities in schools that you think would be beneficial for anybody who wants to work in municipal law?
Dave Eberle (28:03):
To the extent you have a land use and planning course, that would be beneficial. Obviously it's always hard because every jurisdiction's different. Every state is different. So you're getting the law school version of, "Hey, here's kind of the general lay of the land." And that's fine because that will at least orientate you to the subject matter. You will go in knowing I didn't know what zoning is to ... Now I know what zoning is. I know how it's different issues are treated in different jurisdictions, and now I need to learn how my jurisdiction does that. So if you can do that, con law, absolutely it's required. Con law one, con law two, but the more con law, the more administrative law you can take, I think that's a great benefit. The more research and writing courses you can take, even if they're not on public sector or municipal law, anything you can do to hone your research and writing will serve you well.
Nayeli Diaz (28:58):
You clearly are really passionate about municipal law. You've enjoyed your career in it. So what do you think are some bullet points that you want to leave our listeners with about why they should be interested in municipal law or maybe the most interesting things to you that if it sparks anything in one of our listeners that they should maybe look into municipal law? I
Dave Eberle (29:19):
Think a lot of people go to law school because they want to in some capacity make a difference and that's extraordinarily commendable and the hard part is, okay, how does the rubber meet the road on that? Municipal law provides you with that option. You get to work for local government. You get to work it for the level of government that is the closest to the people that is providing the most direct services to the people that are dealing most directly the thorny issues affecting the people, your friends, your neighbors, that community. And I think that is absolutely fantastic. I don't think you can find that anywhere else other than if You want to be on the more of the advocate side where you're working on those issues but with a clear policy preference. As the attorney for the government, we don't have a policy preference.
(30:10):
We can help you talk through the different policies and sometimes we have to wear that hat in the sense that a larger city is out going to have a very professional staff. They're going to have a trained city manager most likely has an MPA or some master's degree for that job and they're the ones who are going to be able to walk their elected officials through the policymaking process and leave them to a resolution. I work with a lot of very rural communities who don't have that professional staff. Value added and I think there's a lot of attorneys who do it this way. There's a lot of attorneys who don't do it this way, but they can help them work through that policy making process. I saw that as a benefit, so that's why I went and got my MPA too so that I can be qualified to have that conversation with them to, again, put them in the best position I can to help them make the hard decision.
(31:09):
Are
Nayeli Diaz (31:09):
There any organizations that you think are particularly helpful for law students to become involved in or think about being involved in municipal law across the country or maybe state specific?
Dave Eberle (31:21):
There's the International Municipal Lawyers Association IMLA. I think they have an option for law students to participate in that. So I would definitely recommend involvement there. Every state I assume is also going to have their version of a government law section. It's a section of the state bar that pertains to all the attorneys who practice government law. To the extent they have options for law students to participate, that's an absolutely great thing to do. And you can also come at it from the other side. So for example, there's organizations out there that may be more aligned with the city managers or the executives of these organizations. That's a great way to plug in because you're learning about it from the other side. So you can come to the table and be like, I was not in an organization of government lawyers, but I spent a lot of time working with city managers.
(32:19):
I spent a lot of time working with mayors. I understand local government and now I need to learn how to be a local government attorney.
Nayeli Diaz (32:27):
I think that's great advice. And so as we're wrapping it up here, do you have any parting advice to law students who are either just starting or in the middle or at any point? What would you want to tell them either about your field or about the practice of law in general to tell them to keep going or general advice?
Dave Eberle (32:46):
Yeah, you're going to make it. It'll be okay. Work hard. It'll be fine. The practice of law is challenging, but it is very rewarding. It's extraordinarily rewarding. And I think the key is finding an area and people that you'd like to work in and work with. If you end up graduating passing the bar and you find yourself just dreading going to work every day, it doesn't have to be that way. You do the best work for your client. It's good for your mental health to find the area of law that you like that makes you click and then find people that you enjoy being around. I think that's extraordinarily important. And sometimes it takes a while to figure that out and that's okay, right? That's all right.
Nayeli Diaz (33:36):
Well, that's wonderful advice. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Dave Eberle (33:40):
Thank you so much for having me.
Todd Berger (33:42):
We'll be
Dave Eberle (33:42):
Right back
Todd Berger (33:43):
After this. All right. So Eve, really interesting discussion about municipal, which I'm not sure how much you knew or didn't know about beforehand, but what did you find interesting about Nayeli's conversation?
Eve Albert (34:02):
I have a little bit of experience with municipal law, kind of what our guest was talking about how depending on the size of a city or town or village, whatever the municipality is, the way that the municipal lawyers will be dispersed or operating is either in small firms or in their own building where they're operating altogether. So I worked at a firm where I worked under the town attorney for one of my towns around me and it was really cool. A lot of what our guest was saying was reminiscent of that, but there were some things that I didn't get the opportunity to get firsthand experience with just because I worked on a smaller scale. I loved that he talked about all these different pressing issues and just the overarching idea of kind of balancing between doing what's good for the people and participating in protecting the town to the best of your ability.
Todd Berger (35:00):
What did you think, Nile?
Nayeli Diaz (35:02):
Yeah, I think what you've said, I've had the privilege of living in a lot of big cities throughout my life. Places where I think that maybe a lot of people who have only lived in bigger cities would think they have their own stufhouse. And learning about municipal law was a lot of learning that there are lots of little townships, lots of little, not to say it negatively, but lots of places that don't have the kind of infrastructure to have a lot of those in- house attorneys. And so I thought it was really interesting that to be a municipal attorney, they could work in whatever city, but they're still working for these townships. I think Dave talked about how he works for multiple townships, multiple different kinds of cities and places. And that was really cool to me to think that you can get to touch so many people's lives by doing this kind of law that really matters to a community.
Todd Berger (35:57):
Absolutely. And I think I know people now that I've done municipal, I didn't necessarily know it as that, but it makes perfect sense that there are the people who were sometimes with firms that got hired by townships or cities, but in big cities many times, it's funny, many, many of my students will go to New York City and they'll work for the city law department, which I imagine is probably one of the largest municipal law firms in the world or people will, when I was in Philadelphia would go and work for the city solicitor's office. And I think he's right that you didn't necessarily think about that as public interest law. You think about being a public defender or being a prosecutor or going to some kind of nonprofit that's working for poor people and you think of that as public interest law. But being a city attorney or a municipal attorney definitely is important because I guess you're thinking about the community.
(36:52):
Talked about advising politicians and part of it ethically too is lawyers don't just have to talk to or aren't just required to talk to their clients and I suppose the municipalities, their client about the literal law itself. You can also talk about the broader implications and all of that. And he's not the one who's ultimately gets to make those decisions, but you get to talk about important things we said, these are people's neighbors. These are our neighbors. We want to approach different issues in a way that makes for the betterment of the community. So I thought that was really important and a nice take on kind of public interest law. He didn't touch on it too much, but I also think to a certain extent protecting taxpayers is also important part of public interest law because I imagine these municipalities get sued a lot and sometimes they've done wrong and people should be compensated and sometimes maybe they should be and someone needs to work to protect the taxpayer's money.
(37:45):
So I think that was a part of it. I don't think about that as public interest law, but I thought there were a lot of really cool things that came out of it. And just kind of the last thing I would say that he talked about, which I, looking back on, I've known now from students and even people that I knew in practicing, there's so many different areas of law that you can attach to municipal law. It can be everything from personal injury law to transactional law to, you talked about administrative law to things that are even constitutional law issues, I guess things that involve finance and regulation and things like that. So I think there's probably a million different areas of municipal law you can engage in. So there's probably a lot of really interesting and pretty cool areas of law and challenges for attorneys who want to practice in that space.
Eve Albert (38:38):
Yeah. I think that is something else that I was thinking about while listening to the episode. I think when law students consider a future in politics, they're thinking being on some board, running for office one day or running for a judicial position, but this is another route that law students interested in politics could take to kind of flex those muscles and stay in that sphere while not being directly in the spotlight so to speak, but you still get to see those political decisions being made, the back and forth between different government entities. So that was something that I thought this episode really opened my eyes about. I had never thought about municipal law as a way to keep a toe dipped in politics. I'm personally not a big wanting to work in politics person. There's nothing wrong with that, but something to consider.
Nayeli Diaz (39:35):
That's a great point, Eve. And I think that is also what it made me think about is a lot of us are focused on a national level most of the time. It's like a big issue across the country is that a lot of local elections don't get a lot of people showing up and those kinds of things. And so exactly like you're saying, if you happen to be a law student who is interested in the political side, you can't just like jump to the national level. You've got to start somewhere and that somewhere is with the people in your city, in your state and exactly like you said, Eve, this allows you to get a handle on local ordinances, how they're formed, how they affect people, local laws and exactly how I believe you talked about like advising the people on those councils, getting to know them, getting to see what that work is actually like would I think behoove a lot of law students who are interested in that.
(40:23):
You get to still practice law. If you're like, "Oh, maybe one day I'll be a politician, you could practice law and municipal law, get to really make those connections on a smaller, more intimate level and see what it's actually about and then see how the ordinances you're helping draft actually affect people. " And then maybe then you're like, "Oh, okay, maybe I want to go and do this at a higher level or whatever." But it's an interesting entry point. I think that's a good point that you bring up because I don't know that I had thought about that.
Eve Albert (40:51):
Yeah. It all comes back to networking too, doesn't it? Networking, networking, networking. Always.
Todd Berger (40:58):
I think there's a lot of practical experience you get in this space too, that talking about going to politics, but even if some people might do this forever because there's public interest and they like doing it. And I mean, I think it's probably a little different if you're at a firm and then you need kind of a contract with these municipalities that can be there one day, it can not be there the next day. But I think people oftentimes when they'll go to work for the city or the state or whatever it is, there's a certain kind of stability to that, probably never get rich but you'll never be poor and probably get a lot of great experience doing it. I had a student who I spoke to I think last year and she's in New York City Law Department and she's like, "I just do depositions all the time." So maybe you stay there forever, you get better and better at it for the different reasons, really the stability you find the work interesting, but you can also leave there too.
(41:48):
And when you go and you leave and you've done this kind of personal injury work and you've done 4,000 depositions or whatever it is, then that makes you really marketable. So that's also something for people to think about. I wouldn't say that in a job interview like, "Well, I want to go here so I can get all this experience and then I can leave and make money is not a good thing to say." But I think they kind of realize that that's okay. That's what people do if you go to work directly for the government itself. So it's also going to be something people think about, gives you options long term, both if you want to stay there and also if you want to go someplace that might create other opportunities for you.
Nayeli Diaz (42:24):
Well, speaking of job interviews, he mentioned in the episode about when he's interviewing people, making sure that they actually care about the kind of law that they practice. And as we said, I graduated, I'm looking for work and I've been looking at lots of things as I'm sure lots of people listening are or are about to. It was nice to hear that from an employer quote, like an employer's perspective, from his perspective, right, making sure that the person that they're interviewing is interested in the kind of law they want to do. And I think a lot of law students towards the end of your thrill year, you get really nervous. You're like, "Oh, I got to get a job and I'm looking anywhere." And I have known people who take jobs that maybe they're not passionate about and then a year out they're miserable and they're moving and whatever.
(43:09):
So I would just urge a lot of people to think about that if you reach that time, try to have enough faith in yourself to look for something that you care about because that's where you're going to be doing the best kind of work. Be creative like this. I didn't know this was an option as someone who likes public interest and look at all those different places and think about what you want because the employers are going to see through that. They're going to see that maybe you aren't particularly interested in what the area is. So I think that was a good thing to keep in mind and being curious about that kind of stuff. And like also you mentioned, Todd, this wouldn't have been something that previously we would think about in the same level as a public defender or a prosecutor. But I think after this, I would certainly in my head kind of slot these in together as government public interest jobs, right?
(44:02):
Municipal law to firm, public defender, prosecutor. I think, especially because Dave was a prosecutor before, it does seem like what he discussed there was a lot of crossover. So it does kind of slot in together in this big pool.
Todd Berger (44:15):
Yeah, absolutely. I think that looks really interesting. It's another dimension to how you can find the practice of law rewarding in a lot of different ways. And so not one people necessarily had thought about. Although again, people, I guess students have found these jobs in some places for sure, but might not have been thinking about them like that. Or people who are thinking, "I want to do public interest law, might not have thought about this as a way to do it. " So those are really important. It's just one more way in which the practice of law creates all these different areas and dimensions that people can find rewarding as a part of their career. Well, Nayeli, I know that this is your last episode with us. Congratulations on graduating. I know you came in this year, you were an awesome host, really enjoyed all of the conversations that we've had and all of the guests you've interviewed.
(45:03):
So this was terrific. We will of course have another host to join myself and Eve next year, but they'll have big shoes to fill, but it's been awesome having you. Fortunately next year on the podcast, we'll have both Dolly Parton and Leon Rose, who's the president of the New York Knicks who every year try and get ... Leon, if you're out there, call me.
(45:28):
We're getting
Eve Albert (45:29):
Him next season.
Todd Berger (45:30):
Next year, you will miss those, Nayelli, but we are going to get that season. Well, we know you'll be listening and it was great having you and whatever you do, we know you're going to be awesome at it.
Nayeli Diaz (45:43):
Thanks guys. It has been a very fun year.
Todd Berger (45:47):
Thanks to our guest, Dave Eberle, for joining us on this episode and for helping close out our season. And once again, an extra special thanks to Nyellie Diaz for joining us as host this season. We're very proud of her and excited to see where her career is going to take her and the change she'll make in the world. But though the season is going into summer break, this isn't a time to tune out. In fact, it's actually the time to get involved. With Nayelli moving on, like I said, we're looking for a new host to join our team. If you want to join us to get your voice heard with a national audience and to talk with great guests, check out the show notes for this episode and you'll see a link for our host application form and maybe you can join us this fall.
(46:27):
Next, we'd like to thank our production partners at Marine Media and to thank the ABA Law Student Division for making this show a reality. And finally, thanks to all of you for listening along with us this year. We'll be back next fall with our next episode. See you then.