UNC law students impacted by Trump executive order

In late January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing hiring of federal civilian employees. In alignment with this order, the Department of Justice revoked job offers for the prestigious Attorney General’s Honors Program, impacting third-year law students and graduates planning to work as federal attorneys through the program.

At least one UNC School of Law graduate was impacted by the rescinded offers, according to a source familiar with the matter. UNC was also included on the DOJ’s list of law schools that the 2024 Honors Program attorneys and summer law interns attended.

A UNC undergraduate alum who said they applied for and entered the program during Trump’s first term requested anonymity because of their current job’s policies.

“I think that the DOJ Honors Program is the single best way to learn how to be a lawyer, especially one who’s litigating at a really high level,” they said.

The alumnus said people enter the DOJ through the program to serve across administrations, which come with policy and position changes.

“I was surprised but not shocked,” they said. “You know, I think that the administration has been very clear about the level of regard it has for federal employees.”

UNC School of Law Associate Dean for Careers and Professional Development Robert Birrenkott, who oversees the career development office, did not respond to The Daily Tar Heel’s requests for comment.

The impacted law students and graduates were sent a short email on Jan. 22 from the DOJ Office of Attorney Recruitment & Management that said their offers were revoked. 

Current federal employees were also sent an email on Jan. 28 with an offer to resign from their positions by Feb. 6 while continuing to receive their salary and benefits until Sept. 30.

“I think it’s sort of speculative, but it’s difficult to think that something like revoking offers for the Honors Program is not sort of part and parcel of this bigger attempt to not even shrink the government — just to cut it off at its knees,” the anonymous former student said.

Taylor Hastings, a UNC undergraduate and William & Mary Law School alumnus, said he feels for the impacted students who were well-qualified for selective private firm jobs, but dedicated their lives to public service instead.

“It creates kind of a narrow window of potential job opportunities and an extremely competitive group of people applying for them,” he said.

Hastings, who started The Hastings Law Firm in Chapel Hill, said a job offer from a federal agency does not hold legal force until the employee actually begins work. Due to potential lawsuits and societal pressures, he said private law firms rarely rescind offers on such a wide scale.

“Law school graduates who once envisioned long careers in public service might start to turn elsewhere,” he said. “They’ll turn to private firms and won’t trust government hiring, so it really can have a lasting and permanent impact on the quality of talent that is fed into this pipeline of federal government jobs.”

UNC senior Neya Garcia said she knew about the Honors Program from working at the nonprofit The Appellate Project in Washington, D.C., last summer. She said the organization’s mentorship program included both mentors who completed the program and mentees who were applying for it.

Garcia, who is the secretary for UNC’s chapter of Phi Alpha Delta pre-law fraternity, said her conversations about the rescinded offers included shocked reactions and wanting to make undergraduates more aware of the impacts.

“The nature of law and that field generally is that you have your offers incredibly far in advance, so rescinding them at this stage is pretty detrimental to the students, I would assume,” she said.

The Washington Post reported other impacted students and graduates from Harvard, Duke, Georgetown, Berkeley, Stanford and the University of Virginia law schools.

“It’s really unfortunate to have the first step in your career be something that very much is having the rug pulled out from underneath you,” the former Honors Program participant said. “But I hope that folks don’t abandon this desire to be in public service because it really is just a wonderful place to be.”

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