Ex-DOJ Attorneys Find Community of Alumni Helping in Job Search

Ejaz Baluch joined the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division planning to stay for the rest of his career.

Six years later, after getting involuntarily reassigned to a new office, Baluch said he feels “lucky” to have landed back at his prior job with a nonprofit in Baltimore, the Public Justice Center.

Baluch is among 250 of the 380 attorneys who’ve left the Civil Rights Division in the second Trump administration. It’s part of the larger wave of cuts and voluntary departures that’s seen thousands of federal workers looking for new jobs. Not everyone is finding work as quickly as Baluch.

“It’s been a lot harder to find employment for my colleagues,” he said. “Most people have been looking for weeks, if not months.”

Five former federal attorneys who spoke to Bloomberg Law said they’ve benefited from LinkedIn group chats that share job postings to nonprofits like Justice Connection that offer legal counsel, mental health assistance, media training, and job-seeking help for DOJ alums.

Jobs are posted at least a dozen times per day in the Civil Rights Division Association LinkedIn group, where members have rallied to help one another, said Elizabeth Hecker, former acting deputy chief of the appellate section of the Civil Rights Division and now senior counsel at Crowell & Moring. “It really is a family,” she said.

Hecker was one of five managers in her office, and in April, she and her co-manager were the last ones to leave, she said. She thought she would retire at the DOJ and that the hardest thing for former federal employees is to find something they believe is “equally as important” as their sense of mission in government.

New Paths

After leaving government, federal attorneys have gone to private firms, advocacy groups, nonprofit organizations, in-house counsel, and academia, said Karen Vladeck, headhunter and co-founder of Risepoint Search Partners, a recruiting company for lawyers.

The search for employment is “very, very candidate-specific,” depending on the skill set each person is bringing and what their background has been, she said. Some attorneys end up with five or six offers, while others end up with none, she said.

Risepoint has placed 17 former federal attorneys into private firms and nonprofits since December 2024, Vladeck said. Not all former federal workers opt to work with a recruiter, which is recommended due to potential conflicts with pending litigation, she said.

Some have gone off on their own, establishing legal practices aimed at helping other ex-federal workers.

In February, Pamela Hicks, the former chief counsel of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), was fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi after working for the department for 23 years, she said.

Since her removal from the ATF, she said she has seen her agency “be pushed to the point of institutional collapse.”

In response, Hicks said she started DC Law Collective PLLC with Greg Pinto, general counsel at the Deacon Jones Foundation, to represent federal employees facing retaliation, termination, discrimination, and delays in justice under the Merit Systems Protection Board.

“These firings have been illegal firings, so it’s hard to tell what will happen,” Pinto said. “Our clients would all be reinstated in normal times, but we’re not in normal times.”

The deadline to file a complaint with the MSPB is 30 days, so former federal employees are encouraged to move fast, which is often difficult because they are still in shock from losing their historically stable jobs, Pinto said.

New Suits

Similarly, former DOJ attorneys Clayton Bailey and Jessica Samuels, who quit earlier this year also created a firm to represent federal workers.

Their firm, Civil Service Law Center LLP, has filed suits in two separate cases representing former Health and Human Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees who are challenging their mass terminations.

“We wanted to try to find ways to use our experience litigating in federal court, dealing with federal court issues, and dealing with government litigation specifically to try to help those people and try to get relief for as many people as possible,” Clayton said.

Departing DOJ lawyers have found other ways to help former colleagues.

Hundreds of people have reached out to Justice Connection, the nonprofit group Stacey Young helped found to provide pro bono legal representation and other services.

With an influx of former attorneys looking for jobs, the work is “emotionally taxing” and intense to be involved in, but Young, who left the DOJ in January after 18 years there, said it “feels good to be doing something important” during this time.