Tomorrow's Advocates

Tomorrow’s Advocates enables select Lewis & Clark law students to work full time with PEAC during the summer months. Made possible with the generous support of the Lazar Foundation, the program provides significant benefits to students, PEAC and our clients:

• Students working with PEAC during the summer gain experience in public interest environmental litigation and advocacy though concentrated training and mentoring, client interaction, and intensive legal research and drafting.

• Financial need and lack of paid positions in public interest environmental law often force committed students to seek other types of employment. Tomorrow's Advocates thus enables some of the “best and brightest” environmental law students to follow their passion by working with - while learning from - PEAC to protect and improve the environment, throughout the summer and beyond. The experience gained, and contacts and relationships developed with PEAC clients and partners, often enable our clerks to find employment in the public interest environmental community after graduation.

• PEAC's ability to serve our clients is enhanced by our clerkship program. During the school year, law students working with PEAC for credit help us to create one of the nation's largest and most effective environmental law clinics. PEAC's full time summer clerks ensure the clinic's capacity throughout the year.

• The public interest environmental community, including PEAC clients and partners, reaps benefits from increasing the pool of law school graduates with substantial real-world experience and training. PEAC students and clerks are, literally, tomorrow's advocates for the environment. Many of our alums and past clerks now lead the charge in working to improve and protect our natural surroundings as attorneys in public interest, government, and private practice.

2008 Law Clerks

Neal Clark

Neal is a third-year law student serving as co-chair of the Environmental Law Caucus and coordinator of Lands & Wildlife at the Northwest Environmental Defense Center (NEDC). A recipient of the Natural Resources Law Scholarship, Neal is a member of the award-winning National Animal Law Moot Court team and spent his last summer clerking for the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition. A graduate of Bowling Green State University (B.A. 2005) in Environmental Policy, Neal is working on legal claims under the Clean Air Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, specifically with regard to emissions from coal-fired power plants, licensing of liquefied natural gas terminals and all other things carbon, climate change and air-quality related.

Tarah Heinzen

Tarah is a third-year law student serving on the Boards of the Friends of Family Farmers, NEDC and the Sierra Club Columbia Group. She is also the factory farm project coordinator for NEDC and co-founder of the law school’s MacGyver Appreciation Club (MAC). A distinguished graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota (B.A. 2003) in Environmental Studies and Geology, Tarah has previously served as a Sierra Club organizer and law clerk for the Environmental Integrity Project. This summer, she will be working on NEPA, endangered species, water quality, and factory farm issues.

Andrew Kerr