February 3, 2016, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Furman Hall 210
245 Sullivan St, New York, NY 10012
New York, NY 10012
This session is only open to NYU Law Students. Registration required. Register here.
Light dinner and refreshments will be provided
About the skills-building series
In recent years, NYU law students focused on public interest law and human rights have expressed a desire for more opportunities to develop practical skills that may improve their chances of obtaining employment in their fields of interest following graduation. In response, the Public Interest Law Center (PILC), the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) and the Robert L. Bernstein Institute for Human Rights have decided to jointly organize a series of inter-disciplinary skill-building sessions throughout the 2015-2016 academic year. There will be two interactive evening sessions per semester, beginning in the fall semester. These sessions are targeted at NYU law students interested in pursuing public interest careers and non-traditional lawyering jobs.
About this session: Using the Media
Reaching the public is often crucial for public interest and human rights lawyering. Social media now provides a pathway for reaching the public directly, but journalists continue to be crucial. This session will provide participants with strategies and techniques for attracting media interest in their work, focusing on questions including: How do you draft a press release that will get journalists to show up to your event? What are pitfalls to avoid when conducting live interviews? How can you use social media to draw attention to your work? How can you cultivate long-term relationships with journalists?
About the facilitator
Bec Hamilton is the Deputy Director of the Robert L. Bernstein Institute for Human Rights. Her scholarship spans the areas of public international law, criminal law, and human rights, building on her experience prosecuting genocide and war crimes, and her investigative work in conflict zones. Before joining NYU Law School, Hamilton was an Associate-in-Law and post-doctoral researcher at Columbia Law School. Previously, she served as a lawyer in the prosecutorial division of the International Criminal Court, working on cases arising from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Uganda and Sudan. She is the author of Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), which analyzes the growth of citizen activism against mass atrocities. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, Hamilton has worked as a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, and a legal correspondent for Reuters. Her writing for mainstream audiences has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The New Republic. She is admitted as an attorney in the State of New York, and serves as Co-Chair of the International Criminal Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law.
About the format
Participants will be expected to actively participate and to prepare an assignment before this session, in order to guarantee a more substantive and more focused discussion.