Human Rights Law

[eyeoftheligrr]

Anyone know what type of jobs there are in human rights?  what type of organizations can you work for?  what would your daily work entail?  how much would you be paid?  any QOL issues?

[Barney]

American might be your best bet in DC (unless you can get into G'town, in which case, go to G'town and don't think twice.) International Human rights is really their thing.  Plus, they have a larger international student population than anywhere else in the country, so you can make good contacts (this is essential, frankly, because International and Human Rights jobs are rare, and hard to get. Especially if you want to get paid for them).

Avoid other DC area schools.  Catholic and GMU are too conservative. Howard, Baltimore and UMD are too locally focused.

[realadvice]

I hate to be the one to write this, but unless you attend Harvard, Yale, Columbia, NYU, or Stanford (or another highly ranked school) getting a paying, high profile human rights job out of law school is very unlikely.  There are tons of people, especially at the top schools, that want international human rights, and they get first picks.  Not to say you won't have a great career in humn rights, but sometimes this site lacks real, down to earth advice. 

While American in DC or BC might have good human rights programs for what they're worth, they really can't compete with Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc.