DO you have a passion for the law and interest in helping to preserve natural resources? If your answer is “yes” then perhaps environmental law is a career you want to pursue.

ID Your Career chats this week with attorney Danielle Andrade, legal director for the Kingston-based environmental lobby organisation, Jamaica Environment Trust (JET).

Andrade, 26, is a past student of the University of the West Indies and Norman Manley Law School. She has been JET’s legal director for three years, handling a variety of controversial matters involving hotel developments, while helping to build awareness about the environment and the laws that were drafted to facilitate its preservation.

Who is an environment lawyer?

There are different kinds of environmental law. You have business environmental law, which is normally where you work for a corporate law firm and you have a specialisation in environment matters. You would normally work for clientele, usually corporations, interested in furthering their interests and who need advice or a lawyer to help them protect their profits while navigating the complexities of environment legisation. Then you have public interest environmental law (which is what I practise). It is normally done at different levels – non-profit environmental law (organisations/firms) and you also have work in government. With public interest law, you are not representing a client or individual interest but the interest of the public on environmental issues.

What is the value of the work that you do?

It is invaluable because you are helping people, helping communities protect their environment, which includes their basic rights to clean water, clean air and access to important resources.

What prompted your entry to the field?

My love for the environment.

What are the academic requirements for getting into your field?

You have to be a qualified attorney-at-law. You have to achieve the legal education certificate from the Council of Legal Education and that you obtain once you have passed through law school. Environment is more hands-on experience thing than qualifications per sé.

Trained as an environmental lawyer, what other options are open to you?

Working with a law firm as a specialised environment lawyer; working with government or government agency (such as) the National Environment and Planning Agency or the Forestry Department. There are some lawyers who marry private work with public interest work So they have a private practice and they do pro-bono/public interest law cases.

What are the challenges to practising environmental law?

Public interest work doesn’t pay. It is not a profit-making business. You don’t have a clientele that you are charging. It is always a challenge to identify sources of funding for this kind of work. You have to really love what you are doing.

How much can an individual make on an annual basis?

You probably earn between half and two-thirds of what your contemporaries who work in private law firms earn. You definitely earn less than what others are earning, which is from about $1.8 million to $2 million.

Why would advise anyone to get into this line of work?

If you like work that is satisfying and if you have the heart to do this sort of work and care about how people’s lives are affected, then this is the kind of work that you would want to do?