Careers and Alumni

The Hubbell Environmental Law Initiative equips Iowa Law students with the skills, experiences, and professional networks needed to launch careers in environmental, energy, and natural resources law.

Below you will find information about access to student resources, potential career paths, and previews of our featured alumni.

Student Resources

Professional Development

HELI supports students seeking legal careers in the environmental community. We provide stipends for unpaid environmental law work, support student travel to professional development opportunities, and are developing a growing professional network to connect students with organizations of all sizes and fields.

Jobs and Internships

HELI updates job opportunities in 12Twenty each week. To search for these opportunities, in 12Twenty go to Job Listings and search for 'environmental' in the search bar!

Student Oportunities

Through the Hubbell Environmental Law Initiative, Iowa Law students gain hands-on experience, national exposure, and critical support to launch careers in environmental, energy, and natural resources law. HELI provides summer stipends, conference travel, field-based learning, and mentorship to help students engage directly with environmental law.

Interested in a career in environmental law?

Alumni Spotlights

Q & A with two Iowa Law alumni now based in environmental law careers

Spencer Culver

What did you do during your summers that got you where you are today?

I had two summer internships. The first was with the federal public defender’s office in the Northern District of Iowa. I found it to be valuable to determine if I wanted to pursue litigation. Ultimately, I did not want to be a litigator. Your first summer is a good opportunity to see what skills, practice areas, organization types, etc. may be the right fit or may not be what you are looking for. I wanted to pursue an energy-related summer associate position in my second summer. I applied at firms across the country, and I landed at Polsinelli in Kansas City. They are a full service law firm but do exceptional work in the energy permitting and energy regulatory spaces. During that time, I prepared agreements for independent power producers to enter into with counties, drafted a memorandum regarding demand response aggregation services, and attended a state public utility commission hearing for a multi-state electric transmission line. I found immense value in a firm that encouraged summer associates to pursue practice areas that interested them and to specialize during their 10-week summer internship. During that time, I made valuable connections with attorneys who are now close colleagues.

What coursework did you take during your time in law school that you found most beneficial?

A variety of courses were valuable. Energy law with Shannon Roesler was the most valuable course since it is a close fit to what I do now. The summer term contract drafting bootcamp with Andrew Crouse was very practically valuable, since I regularly draft agreements. I found Property II with Dean Hines to be a highly useful course on land use and zoning, which is directly pertinent to my day-to-day practice. Participating in Iowa Law Review was exceptionally helpful, as my Student Note allowed me to research a topic in energy law that was meaningful and helpful for my future practice.

What is something about the legal field or law school that you wish you would have known earlier?

I wish I knew how generous attorneys are with their time when providing career advice to law students or young lawyers. Even senior attorneys with demanding schedules will take a half hour to discuss career opportunities or share lessons learned with law students to help them find the right path for their legal career.

How did attending law school in Iowa impact your career, personal goals, or values?

Iowa was a great fit for me. I had a first-class legal education that placed great emphasis on the value of legal writing and provided a rigorous and demanding curriculum to prepare me for the legal field. The amount of independence to research and chart my own course was a key ingredient for my discovery of energy law as a career field. The support of the Hubbell Environmental Law Initiative played a crucial role in supporting my efforts to participate in the national environmental law moot court team, which sharpened my oral advocacy skills and challenged me to become a stronger writer.

What advice would you give to current or incoming law students?

Challenge yourself with difficult course work and complex paper topics. Reach out to more attorneys for advice about practice areas early on in your law school career.

Spencer Culver graduated from Iowa College of Law in Spring of 2024. He now serves as an attorney for Polsinelli Law Firm in Missouri.

Hudson Kingston

What was your first job out of law school? How did that first experience out of school impact you?

Before my JD ended I was in Singapore doing a masters of law program through NYU and the National University of Singapore, so I didn’t immediately launch into the workplace after my time at Iowa. However, my first full-time work after that program and taking the bar was at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), a small governmental agency in Washington, D.C. The CEQ oversees the federal government’s implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act, which is often called our nation’s environmental Magna Carta. Ever since that time I have been strongly interested in environmental policy as a truth telling practice – NEPA is fundamentally a transparency law that requires the government tell the truth about what it intends to do to communities, and communities get a chance to respond on the record.

What is something about the legal field or law school that you wish you would have known earlier?

Local government is an extremely important body of law and policy that I don’t think I learned anything about for many years out of law school. People care a lot about what their city is doing, but it’s rare that a lawyer actually learns the ins and outs of how that system operates.

What skills do you rely on today that you learned from experience rather than coursework?

Presenting to non-legal audiences is something that I greatly enjoy now and was able to learn though repeated practice at the Public Health Law Center. Giving a legal presentation that is not boring or pedantic is hard to do at first, but it’s great when you can connect with people on policy matters that are important to them.

What were the 3 most influential moments or decisions that have led to where you are today?

In law school I attended a EJF job conference in DC and decided (after hearing an inspiring lunch speech by a famous death penalty lawyer) to go talk to the folks that had not selected me for an interview. This ended up as a summer internship at Earthjustice and changed the trajectory of my whole legal career.
The great recession hit while I was in my JD program. This helped me to see the value in pursuing my masters degrees rather than going into a chaotic job market immediately. While I don’t practice international law every day, my extra education on international law has actually come up frequently in the areas of consumer protection, environmental law, and the important issue of Federal Indian Law and the treaties that make up that field.
I have had several “career pivots” between environmental law and consumer protection/public health positions. Each of these has forced me to think about why I am a lawyer and why it is important to use legal tools to serve people who are targeted by bad actors. Without these changes I would not appreciate the rich history and legal tools of environmental law, and I would have significant blind spots in areas that have become important to my work and the larger population over time. It’s also very interesting to be able to move into and out of issues of high technological innovation and see how legal systems do or don’t work well in these new spaces.