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By Andrew Cohen
Terry Galligan, Berkeley Law’s assistant dean of career development, has been elected president of NALP, the Association for Legal Career Professionals. NALP provides research and educational services to legal career professionals at virtually every American Bar Association-approved law school in the U.S., Canadian law schools, and hundreds of legal employers in both the private and public sectors.
Now serving a one-year term as president-elect, Galligan will spend a year as president and another year as immediate past president. He anticipates no shortage of challenges during this three-year volunteer commitment.
“The legal industry, both on the employer side and the law school side, is in a time of great flux and change,” Galligan said. “I think NALP serves its members best when it stays ahead of that change. While we can’t know how everything will look years down the road, we need to be plugged into what’s happening and stay proactive in our planning.”
According to the National Law Journal, about 30 law schools are offering or will soon offer a one-year Master of Laws degree. This signals an effort to diversify legal training education while recognizing that non-lawyers are increasingly providing law-related services. Other law schools are experimenting with a two-year J.D. degree.
“No one knows how things will look five years from now,” Galligan said. “Will some schools move away from a three-year program? Will there still be more than 200 U.S. law schools? NALP has to anticipate some of these trends and strategize accordingly. To be part of this change and have a chance to influence it a little bit is very exciting.”
Before joining Berkeley Law’s Career Development Office in 2002, Galligan served as program coordinator at Harvard Law School’s Office of Public Interest Advising. From 1990 to 1998, the last four years as partner, he was a litigator in the New York office of a global law firm. During that time, he helped organize a group of business leaders to provide support, mentoring, and summer jobs for students at a local public high school. Galligan was associate independent counsel in the Whitewater and related investigations in 1998, focusing on appellate work in the D.C. Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, and a partner at Cooke, Clancy & Gruenthal, a Boston litigation boutique, from 1999 to 2002.
He will lean on that well-rounded experience while helping NALP construct its five-year strategic plan for 2015-2020. The association is working to expand innovation and collaboration in the legal profession—and further diversify it—through education programs, career development services, and ethical hiring practices.
“Providing quality educational options for our members and publishing timely legal employment data are both vital to our success,” Galligan said. “NALP is the go-to source for what’s going on in the entry-level legal job market, but we’re working to enhance other career resources as well.”