There cannot be many government recruitment campaigns where coral reefs, manta rays and weekend diving form a serious part of the pitch.
But in Palau, the Office of the Attorney General is looking beyond conventional legal recruitment channels as it searches for four new Assistant Attorneys General, and the international scuba diving community has become part of that search.
The Office of the Attorney General of the Republic of Palau is currently seeking two attorneys for its Civil Division and two for its Criminal Division in Koror.
The positions are being promoted directly to divers through advertising in diving publications and through connections within the US diving community.
It sounds like an unusual way to recruit government lawyers.
But it has already worked.
From California to Palau
Melanie McDonald is now an Assistant Attorney General in Palau’s Civil Division.
A native of Houston, Texas, McDonald spent many years connected with the diving community around Oceanic Ventures in Houston before moving to San Diego County in 2019.
Her connection with diving ultimately led her to Palau.
McDonald told The Scuba News that she first learned about the Attorney General position when Ann Keibler, co-owner of Oceanic Ventures, forwarded the vacancy to her.
“The diving was a huge factor for me,” McDonald told The Scuba News. “I would not have heard of the position, much less considered it, if I weren’t a diver.”
Palau was not an unknown quantity.
McDonald had first visited in 2012 for a week aboard a liveaboard and had subsequently dived destinations across the Caribbean as well as French Polynesia, Fiji and the Philippines.
Whenever somebody asked her to name her favourite place to dive, she said the answer remained the same.
Palau.
So when a professional opportunity appeared that could put her there permanently, she paid attention.
“At 62, going on 63, when I saw the ad, I saw this as an opportunity to continue to use my law degree to support myself while living in a diving vacation paradise,” she said.
After years of long hours, billable targets and a high-pressure private-practice environment, the possibility of combining legal work with a very different lifestyle proved compelling.
McDonald relocated to Palau from California in 2025.
More Than 300 Dives Later
A little over a year after arriving, McDonald completed her 300th dive in Palau.
She dives on most weekends and public holidays.
Her working week, meanwhile, is very different from the private-practice career she left behind.
“I had never worked an 8-5 job in my life,” she told us. “For me, given that I can dive every weekend and holiday, and given that it’s an 8-5 job, it’s like a semi-retirement job for me in comparison to the hours I used to work.”
That does not mean the legal work stops at five o’clock every day. McDonald said emergencies occasionally require evening or weekend work, but described those occasions as rare.
Outside the office, diving is only part of the change.
She has taken up outrigger canoeing, swims over coral reefs and has become involved in a community that includes diving, paddling and local sporting events.
“My stress level is so much lower,” she said. “I know part of that is the job, and part of it is being in, under, on, or near the ocean every day.”
Recruiting Through the Dive Community
McDonald’s route to Palau helps explain why the Attorney General’s latest recruitment drive is appearing in places where lawyers might not normally expect to find government vacancies.
The campaign grew partly from connections involving California’s Marin Scuba Club.
Club member Julie Finley, herself an attorney who previously worked for Palau’s Attorney General and has returned to Micronesia regularly to dive, connected Attorney General Ernestine K. Rengiil with fellow Marin Scuba Club member and communications professional Gil Zeimer.
That relationship developed into a recruitment campaign specifically designed to put Palau’s legal vacancies in front of divers.
The current campaign is seeking four Assistant Attorneys General and includes advertising aimed at the North American scuba market.
There is some logic behind the unconventional approach.
Moving thousands of miles across the Pacific to a small island nation is a substantial lifestyle decision. Finding qualified attorneys who already understand Palau, or who have a strong reason for wanting to live there, potentially changes the recruitment equation.
For McDonald, diving provided exactly that connection.
What Are The Jobs?
The current vacancies comprise two Assistant Attorney General positions in the Civil Division and two in the Criminal Division.
Palau is a Freely Associated State with the United States, and its legal system has substantial similarities with the US system. The current recruitment information specifically encourages US-based attorneys and lawyers with experience practising in US courts to consider applying.
Applicants must hold an appropriate law degree and be an active member in good standing of a recognised bar. Litigation experience, together with strong analytical and writing skills, is preferred.
Compensation for the current vacancies is advertised at between US$70,000 and US$90,000, depending upon experience and the position.
Contracts initially run for two years and may be renewed. Recruitment and repatriation costs are included, together with airfare and provisions relating to moving household goods.
The positions also provide up to five weeks of annual vacation and approximately two and a half weeks of sick leave.
For the right candidate, however, the unusual benefit is what happens outside the office.
A Different Kind of Career Move
McDonald is careful not to suggest that relocating to Palau will suit every attorney.
Her adult children were already independent, she was not tied into a law-firm partnership and she had reached a point in her career where a major change was possible.
“Obviously, everyone must make that decision for him/herself,” she told The Scuba News.
But for an experienced lawyer who is already a diver, the calculation can look rather different.
McDonald said she regularly meets visiting divers who are envious when they discover that living in Palau means she can finish the working week and spend the weekend diving.
The Attorney General’s recruitment campaign is effectively looking for other lawyers for whom that combination might be enough to turn an overseas vacancy into a realistic proposition.
And McDonald’s experience demonstrates something else.
This is no longer simply an advertising concept built around the idea of working beside some of the world’s most famous dive sites.
One diver has already seen the advert, applied for the job, crossed the Pacific and built a new life around it.
Three hundred dives later, she appears to have made considerable use of the opportunity.
Attorneys interested in the current vacancies can contact Attorney General Ernestine K. Rengiil at ekrengiil57@gmail.com, using the subject line “AAG Palau.”
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