Public Interest Fellowships

Overview
The term “fellowship” applies to a broad range of programs. This program will focus on public interest fellowships that are “project based” and are intended to fulfill a specific purpose over a specified period of time. Fellowships are one of the only ways to get an entry-level job at a public interest legal organization. While some large public interest agencies, such as public defender and government offices, hire new attorneys routinely, many smaller or national non-profit organizations can only support talented new attorneys that come with a fellowship.

Types of Fellowships
Project-based fellowships are fellowships funded for projects developed by an applicant in conjunction with a sponsoring nonprofit organization. Funders typically have limitations on what they will fund, or focus their funding on particular issues or types of projects. Fellowships are for a finite period of time, often two years. Continuation of the project work, or employment with the sponsoring agency after the specified term is up, will depend on finding funding from other sources.
Organization-based fellowships are fellowships administered by nonprofit organizations. The organization determines the salary, duration and scope of work of the fellowship. This type of fellowship is essentially a temporary job designed for new law graduates with little experience in the area of practice. There is no expectation that the fellowship will lead to permanent employment with the organization.

Firm-based fellowships come in two basic different forms: (1) a law firm places a fellow with a designated public interest organization for a fixed period of time; (2) a law firm hires a fellow to work exclusively on pro bono matters. In both cases, the fellow is paid by the firm, at a salary determined by the firm, which is often at the same level as traditional new associates. These fellowships are of varying duration.

Sponsoring Organizations
Many nonprofit legal organizations have an organized application process for selecting candidates for fellowship sponsorship. Some are much more informal about selecting fellowship applicants, but in either case, the process is much like applying for a job. Research various agencies to determine your area of interest, and make contact with the director or managing attorney to inquire about fellowship sponsorship. At the first contact with an agency, there is no need to have a well-developed project in mind. Many organizations will have project ideas that can help you develop and refine your proposal, but a candidate with several ideas for projects is more likely to be selected by a host organization than one with no ideas at all.

Be familiar with the mission of the agency and be prepared to argue how your proposals conform to that mission, and that they will meet needs of the organizations clients not already being met. Once an agency selects you to sponsor for a fellowship, many drafts of the proposal will change hands before you submit the final application.

Developing a Project
Rutgers faculty are pleased to assist and can be extremely helpful in brainstorming fellowship project ideas. Faculty familiar with the area of practice can help anticipate problems with a particular idea, or point out ways to make a proposal stronger and more appealing to a sponsoring agency. Many students will develop ideas for a fellowship proposal while interning at various public interest agencies in their law school summers. Others will have ideas based on nonprofit employment or volunteer experience prior to law school. The project must be designed to provide innovate, effective legal advocacy on behalf of individuals, or sometimes groups, that are not adequately represented by the legal system.

Timing Considerations
Most fellowship applications are due in the early fall of the 3L year, or in the fall before the project is to begin for other law school graduates. This means that you should be interviewing with potential sponsoring agencies in the spring of your 2L year, at the latest. Most organizations are well aware of the timing of fellowship applications, and should be able to accommodate interviews accordingly. If you have interned for your sponsoring agency in your 1L summer, you may be able to begin the process much earlier. In general, you and the partner agency will be drafting, editing and completing your fellowship application over the summer before the 3L year.
For students who will be clerking for a year after graduating, a similar schedule will apply. In order to meet the application deadlines, you will need to prepare your proposal and interview with potential sponsor agencies in the spring of your 3L year. For a 3L applying for a fellowship, timing the interviews and application process around the bar examination will be an important consideration.

Financial Considerations
Most fellowships come with a salary in the range of $35,000 to $50,000. As an employee of the sponsoring agency, you will be entitled to whatever benefits full-time employees receive. Most fellowships also include a loan repayment program, which helps keep expenses at a reasonable level considering the relatively low salary. In addition to the fellowship loan repayment program, most fellows are also eligible to participate in the Loan Repayment Assistance Program sponsored by Rutgers School of Law – Camden. The new College Cost Reduction Act of 2007 may provide additional benefits to fellows in the form of loan forgiveness or income-based loan repayment.

Three Major Fellowships

Skadden
Skaddenfellowships.org

The Skadden Fellowship Foundation, described as "a legal Peace Corps" by The Los Angeles Times, was established in 1988 to commemorate the firm's 40th anniversary, in recognition of the dire need for greater funding for graduating law students who wish to devote their professional lives to providing legal services to the poor (including the working poor), the elderly, the homeless and the disabled, as well as those deprived of their civil or human rights. The aim of the foundation is to give Fellows the freedom to pursue public interest work; thus, the Fellows create their own projects at public interest organizations with at least two lawyers on staff before they apply.

Fellowships are awarded for two years. Skadden provides each Fellow with a salary and pays all fringe benefits to which an employee of the sponsoring organization would be entitled. For those Fellows not covered by a law school low income protection plan, the firm will pay a Fellow's law school debt service for the tuition part of the loan for the duration of the fellowship. The 2008 class of Fellows brings to 536 the number of academically outstanding law school graduates and judicial clerks the firm has funded to work full-time for legal and advocacy organizations.

We wish to note, however, that the Fellowship Program is not a substitute for Skadden's considerable pro bono efforts. As a charter signatory of the American Bar Association's Law Firm pro bono Challenge, Skadden pledges to commit time equivalent to at least three percent of the firm's annual billable hours to work on Pro Bono matters. Our attorneys are engaged in a range of pro bono and community activities. The foundation and Fellowship Program were created to complement these efforts, as we believe there is no substitute for full-time public interest work.

It is the firm's hope that, through their efforts and their example, Skadden Fellows will increase and improve the legal services available to the less fortunate in our society. Indeed, there is the expectation that the members of this cadre of new public interest lawyers will, individually and collectively over the course of their careers, have a profound effect on the quality and delivery of legal services. Since the inception of the program, almost 90 percent of the Fellows have remained in public interest or public sector work.

The Skadden Fellowship Foundation is governed by a 12-member board of trustees composed of seven distinguished persons not affiliated with Skadden, Arps, four partners from the firm and a second-year Fellow. Fellows are chosen in December of each year and begin their work in the following autumn.

Equal Justice Works
http://www.equaljusticeworks.org/programs/fellowships

The Equal Justice Works (formerly NAPIL) Fellowships Program was launched in 1992 to address the shortage of attorneys working on behalf of traditionally under-served populations and causes in the United States and its territories. Recognizing that many obstacles prevent committed attorneys from practicing public interest law, including the dearth of entry-level jobs and daunting educational debts, the program provides financial and technical support to lawyers working on innovative and effective legal projects. The two-year Fellowships offer salary and generous loan repayment assistance; a national training and leadership development program; and other forms of support during the term of the Fellowship.
In 1997, with the support of a substantial matching grant from the Open Society Institute (OSI), the foundation created by financier and philanthropist George Soros, the Fellowships Program was expanded to encourage partnerships between law firms, corporations and public interest organizations to fund Fellowships. As a result, in 1998, the Fellowships Program, then called NAPIL Equal Justice Fellowships, became the nation’s largest postgraduate legal fellowship program by supporting 86 fellows working on domestic violence, homelessness, community economic development, immigration, civil rights, juvenile justice, employment rights, access to health care, consumer fraud, environmental justice and other critical issues. Equal Justice Works is currently supporting 100 Fellows in the field: 50 Fellows who began in September 2004 and 50 new Fellows who began last fall.

Equal Justice Works is committed to recruiting attorneys who represent a variety of experiences and backgrounds and to providing them with a strong foundation on which to build a public interest career. Equal Justice Works Fellowships seek to develop the public interest law leaders of the future, whether they continue to work in the nonprofit arena or become pro bono advocates in the private bar.

Independence
http://www.independencefoundation.org/fellow_law.html

The Independence Foundation is committed to the support of free legal services for poor and disadvantaged residents of the Philadelphia region. The centerpiece of this commitment has been the Independence Foundation Public Interest Law Fellowship Program. Created in 1996, the Fellowship Program is the only regionally concentrated program of its kind. It has had a direct impact on the lives of thousands of people who would otherwise have been unable to secure access to the justice system.

Through the Fellowship Program, the Foundation funds the compensation and cost of employment benefits for accomplished young lawyers who have decided to employ their considerable talents in public interest service. In an additional component of each Fellowship grant, the Foundation assists the Public Interest Law Fellows in the repayment of their often substantial educational loans. Thus the Foundation enables some of the best and brightest law school graduates to come to the Philadelphia area and obtain employment with an organization based in this region that provides free legal services to poor and disadvantaged people. People served include the elderly, the disabled, the homeless, and others deprived of their human or civil rights.

Importantly, the Foundation requires that the focus of all Fellowship work be on the direct representation of disadvantaged clients. Although the Foundation recognizes the value of broad based policy development, the Foundation is more interested in supporting direct legal services for those who cannot otherwise obtain the professional assistance they need to navigate the complicated judicial and administrative systems that affect their lives on a daily basis.

Fellowship Assistance at Rutgers
Assistance with planning for your fellowship proposals is available from various faculty members, and specifically from Dean Eve Klothen, Assistant Dean for Pro Bono and Public Interest Programs (eklothen@camden.rutgers.edu or 856-225-6608 ) and Rebecca Baehr, Career Planning Specialist (rbaehr@camden.rutgers.edu or 856-225-6543).