Legal intern spring 2027

Food & Water Watch is looking for a legal intern to join our legal team, Food & Water Justice (FWJ) team and help advance our legal work to protect our food, water, and climate. The legal intern will work closely with co-counsel, clients, and other staff at Food & Water Watch. This position is primarily remote.

About Food & Water Watch:

Food & Water Watch is working to create a healthy future for all people and generations to come—a world where everyone has food they can trust, clean drinking water and a livable climate. Making this happen requires involving people in the pressing issues of our time at the local, state, and federal level, building on one win after another, as we develop a larger movement that has the political power to make our democratic process work.

About the position:

The Legal Intern will report to the Legal Director and will work with other staff on the legal team to support Food & Water Watch’s work. The Legal Intern will participate in all aspects of Food & Water Justice’s work, including legal and policy research, litigation, and administrative advocacy.

This position is remote and unpaid with flexible hours during the Spring 2027 academic semester.

Responsibilities:

1. Advance high-impact legal work. Work with FWJ attorneys and outside co-counsel to represent FWW and allies on a varied docket of cases at different points in the litigation process.
2. Conduct quality research. Support our legal matters and grassroots organizing through strong caselaw research, fact-finding, and policy analysis.
3. Write for a legal audience. Use legal writings skills to effectively communicate complex and technical legal issues to team attorneys and allies in memos and other written work product.
4. Represent FWW. Maintain familiarity with Food & Water Watch’s priority issue campaigns and policy positions and be comfortable professionally advocating for FWW.
5. Carry out other projects as assigned. Legal interns are often asked to carry out and be proficient in other aspects of legal work, for instance FOIA review, record review, discovery.

Required Qualifications:

• Applicants must have at least 1 years’ worth of credits completed from an accredited law school before spring 2027.
• Applicants should be self-motivated, detail-oriented, and committed to the social and environmental justice mission of Food & Water Watch.
• Coursework or clinical experience with administrative, environmental, energy, and/or food law is strongly preferred.
• Applicants must demonstrate strong legal writing skills.
• Ability to work effectively with people of diverse racial, ethnic, class, age, gender, and sexual orientation backgrounds.
• Excellent time management & organizational skills and ability to balance multiple projects.
• Ability to work remotely using basic online programs, including email, Slack, and Google docs.

Compensation:

Unpaid internship

To apply please send a cover letter, resume, unofficial transcript, three references, and a short (5-10 pages) legal writing sample as a single PDF to Alex Davis, at adavis@fwwatch.org. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis. Position open until filled. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

We will review your application and if we feel that your knowledge, skills and abilities are potentially a good match for our organization, we will be in contact with you.

Food & Water Watch is an equal opportunity employer who encourages applications from women, people of color, LGBTQ individuals, individuals with disabilities, and other members of underrepresented groups. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of this role.

Food & Water Watch (FWW) is committed to the health and safety of its staff members. Moreover, FWW, as an organization, promotes science-based policy. Science clearly shows that unvaccinated populations drive the spread of the coronavirus and the emergence of new variants, and that unvaccinated people are more likely to contract COVID and experience severe symptoms. Effective immediately, it is strongly recommended that prospective new staff members provide proof of vaccination.