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The cubicle in Michelle Oliel's office is covered with buttons bearing the names of political candidates she has supported over the years: Bob Rae, Paul Martin, Hillary Clinton.

Ms. Clinton's name is also emblazoned on the window of her office door, and attached to the lapel of her grey blazer in the form of a red, white and blue pin.

A copy of Jean Chrétien's biography is visible among the files on her desk, while a picture of Ms. Oliel with former president Bill Clinton is pinned to her assistant's cubicle.

Ms. Oliel, 26, does not work for a politician, although she recently returned from a month on the U.S. presidential primary trail volunteering for Ms. Clinton. She is a student at law, spending her articling year in the Toronto offices of the firm Fraser Milner Casgrain, where she hopes to be hired on in the tax or municipal law branches.

But for her, politics is not just a part-time passion, it's a part of her identity at work - and an interest she believes differentiates her from colleagues.

"Politics is an important part of résumé building," she said. "It's given me my own niche," she says.

Having inside knowledge of the world of politics can make an employee an in-demand lunch companion, and break the ice with senior executives with whom you would otherwise have little interaction.

But is it appropriate to voice your opinions in the cafeteria about Barack Obama's electability, or to wear your Bitch is the New Black T-shirt in the boardroom?

In his Businessweek column last month, Bruce Weinstein, a.k.a. the Ethics Guy, recently came down against discussing politics at work.

"Preferences about music, art or food are three of the many areas in which reasonable people may disagree," he wrote. "Your co-worker likes Madonna and you like U2? No problem. "However, when someone holds contrary political beliefs from us, do we say that he or she merely has a different opinion? No. We say, rightly or wrongly, that he or she is mistaken, and this has troubling implications in the workplace."

Stewart Friedman, director of the work-life integration project at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, took an opposite stance in last month's Harvard Business Review. He argued that political discourse is just another way for employees to bond in the workplace.

"As long as the discourse is civil, such conversations enhance esprit de corps and a greater sense of belonging to something that's bigger than your own small world of work and family," he said. "Smart managers, therefore, encourage real connections among people, not just as employees but as real human beings dealing with the difficulties

of everyday life. They build community."

A survey by the American Management Association reflected the lack of consensus on the topic, finding that 39 per cent of business people are comfortable discussing politics in the workplace, 13 per cent are extremely comfortable and 26 per cent are somewhat uncomfortable.

But Ms. Oliel sees no problem in making her liberal bent known at the office.

She jokes about having "indoctrinated" the articling student with whom she shares an office, but said she has never got into a fight with anyone over political matters.

"It's always good to have something that you're good at and you enjoy doing," she said. "If you're excited about something, people like to talk to you about it."

She began volunteering for political campaigns as a teenager in Thornhill, Ont., after reading Ms. Clinton's book, It Takes a Village, and went on to study political science at university.

When her idol's presidential campaign began, she landed a volunteer gig through a friend who worked in the office of Mr. Spitzer, then governor of New York - a connection she exploited in the nick of time, it turned out.

During her four-week unpaid leave, she co-ordinated Clinton rallies in California and Nevada, met both Ms. Clinton and her husband and made what she considers valuable lifelong connections.

It does not seem to matter to her legal career that she does not have a track record of backing particularly successful candidates. She worked on Mr. Martin's leadership campaign, as well as that of Mr. Rae. She quit her position with Michael Ignatieff's leadership bid because of controversial comments he made about Israel.

But when she interviewed for articling positions with various Canadian law firms, the first question she was invariably asked focused on her political past, and not her LSAT scores.

"Usually the first thing is, 'How did you get that job and what is it like?' " she said.

Some firms looked at her political experience with skepticism, interpreting it as evidence that she was not looking for a long-term legal career, she said.

But most saw the experience as transferable to the legal profession and seemed to relish the idea of having a politically savvy lawyer on staff.

"It goes beyond just knowing this person and being able to make connections; it's being able to really understand how things work to service clients, network, team-build," she said. "Those are all parts of the legal profession."

And while she will not necessarily wear her Hillary pin in meetings with clients, her anecdote about fetching food from Wendy's for Mr. Clinton is a surefire ice breaker, not to mention a good way to

get face time with a senior partner.

"People definitely find it impressive," she said. "But at the end of the day, it's how your work translates and how hard you work when you are here."