A political campaign is the effort to win votes for a particular candidate. It typically involves raising funds, organizing supporters, and distributing information about the candidate to voters. A campaign may be a formal, structured, and organized operation or it can be less focused and informal.
The campaign may use a variety of tools to communicate with the electorate, including traditional media (newspapers and television), social networking sites, and email campaigns. Many campaigns also host town halls and public events to present their platform and engage with voters. In addition, the campaign may use deep canvassing techniques to obtain voter information.
Campaigns must weigh the costs and benefits of their various strategies and budgetary options to decide which messages to send out to their audience. They must identify the most salient issues and the best methods to reach out to voters. They must also take into account the impact of incumbent politicians and other factors like changing demographics on their voter outreach strategy.
Lawyers often work on campaigns in a variety of capacities, such as fundraisers, political desk representatives, speechwriters, and schedulers. They can also be advance team leaders, field organizers or managers, volunteer coordinators, and technology managers. In addition, lawyers have a great deal of flexibility in how they can contribute to a campaign, since most positions start as volunteers.
Depending on the type of campaign, lawyers might be involved in fundraising, or they might help with organizational tasks such as preparing policy statements or scheduling interviews and hustings (the term hustings originally referred to a physical platform where candidates presented themselves before an election committee). Some campaigns may hire law students to take part-time jobs as political advisers.