Lisa Helem, editor-in-chief of The National Law Journal "It is a very difficult time to be a government lawyer right now, a career government lawyer. There's no question about that," said Massey & Gail partner Matthew Collette, a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Department of the Justice.

In our October cover story, C. Ryan Barber takes a look at the new normal for some career DOJ lawyers in the age of Trump. Viral video, along with controversial, and sometimes evolving, policies, have combined to create unique challenges for the lawyers who must advocate for the U.S. government through Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

Next, Tony Mauro reports on a research effort that could have a ripple effect on the legal profession. California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu, Jeremy Fogel, a former U.S. district judge for the Northern District of California, and the American Bar Foundation are combining their collective brainpower to unpack why so few minorities serve as law clerks, particularly on federal appeals courts.

As Fogel said, "If you rely on the traditional channels, you end up finding people like you. … Having an echo chamber is not a good thing."

The end goal? To come up with solutions for judges, law students and professors in the law clerk hiring process. It's all relevant to the larger diversity and inclusion discussion taking place in the profession. How do we expand the pipeline across the board?

Speaking of diversity, we honor three Washington, D.C. -area legal departments for their industry-shifting work in that arena and in major deals and litigation, community impact and overall excellence. It's all in our 2019 D.C. Legal Departments of the Year special report.

This month also marks the print debut of our new NLJ series "On the Rise: Voices From Young Lawyers." In print and online, we're featuring commentary from our 2019 D.C. Rising Stars and other prominent young attorneys in Washington and beyond.

The writers will tackle key topics on business development, successful law firm diversity practices and more. In this month's column, MoloLamken's Eric Nitz writes about how young lawyers can build winning strategies for client development.

We hope you enjoy the October issue and, as always, we love to hear from you. Please email me with your big practice wins, ideas for contributed pieces or to chat about trends you are seeing in the market. You can also find me on Twitter: @lhelemNLJ. Thanks for reading!