Congratulations To The 2017 Skadden Fellows
Congratulations to the winners of the Skadden Fellowships, and good luck to them as they start working next year at wonderful organizations around the country.
Here are three lists. The first shows the schools that have sent the most graduates into Skadden Fellowships for the past nine years (fellowship classes 2009 to 2017). The second shows all law schools that have sent graduates into Skadden Fellowships for the same period. The third shows the 2017 Skadden fellows and the organizations they’ll be working for.
LAW SCHOOLS WITH THE MOST SKADDEN FELLOWS (2009-2017 FELLOWSHIP CLASSES)
Normally we list the top five schools, but because of the ties for third and fifth, we’ll list the top six schools in terms of producing Skadden Fellows:
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1. Harvard – 46
2. Yale – 33
3. (tie) NYU – 18
3. (tie) Stanford – 18
5. (tie) University of Michigan – 13
5. (tie) U. Penn. – 13
LAW SCHOOLS WITH SKADDEN FELLOWS (2009-2017 FELLOWSHIP CLASSES)
American University – 4
Boston College – 1
Boston University – 1
Chicago – Kent – 1
City University of New York – 6
Columbia – 12
Denver – 1
DePaul – 2
Duke – 3
Fordham – 3
Georgetown – 9
GW – 1
Harvard – 46
Howard – 1
John Marshall (Chicago) – 1
Loyola (Los Angeles) – 2
Michigan State – 3
Northeastern – 4
Northwestern – 2
NYU – 18
Rutgers / Camden – 1
Seattle – 1
Stanford – 18
Suffolk – 1
Tulane – 1
University of Arkansas – 1
UC Berkeley / Boalt Hall – 8
UC Irvine – 2
UCLA – 10
U. Chicago – 8
University of Connecticut – 2
University of Illinois – 1
University of Maryland – 1
University of Miami – 1
University of Michigan – 13
U. Penn. – 13
University of Texas – 2
UVA – 4
University of Washington – 1
University of Wisconsin – 1
Vanderbilt – 4
Villanova – 1
Washington & Lee – 2
Wash U. – 1
Wayne State – 1
West Virginia – 1
Widener – 1
William Mitchell – 1
Yale – 33
TOTAL: 255
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SKADDEN FOUNDATION — 2017 SKADDEN FELLOWS
Galen Ages
University of California, Berkeley School of Law
Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center
San Francisco, CA
Establish the Inland Empire Workers’ Rights Project. Through an on-site clinic, a toll-free helpline, community trainings and individualized advocacy, the project will provide free legal services to low-income clients regarding the full range of employment issues they face.
Allyson Bain
Northwestern University School of Law
Roger Baldwin Foundation of ACLU
Chicago, IL
Through direct client services, impact litigation and public policy reform, will work to improve mental health treatment for low-income children, including those in state custody who have psychological or other invisible disabilities.
Natasha Baker
George Washngton University Law School
Open City Advocates
Washington, DC
Provision of post-disposition representation to female youth who are transitioning back to the community after incarceration at New Beginnings, the Washington, D.C. juvenile prison.
Will Bloom
Yale Law School
Community Activism Law Alliance (CALA)
Chicago, IL
Direct representation and eventual impact litigation on behalf of low-wage immigrant workers combining organizing and the settlement process to ensure lasting workplace protections and organizing rights for those workers.
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Blair Bowie
University of Pennsylvania Law School
Campaign Legal Center
Washington, DC
Direct services and eventual impact litigation for citizens with prior convictions in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, to challenge overly broad felony disenfranchisement laws and financial barriers to restoring voting rights.
Annemarie Caruso
City University of New York School of Law
Main Street Legal Services
Long Island City, NY
Provision of direct representation to K-12 students living in public housing in Queens, N.Y. at all levels of educational disruption, including classroom removal, in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, grade retention and special education.
Ariana Cernius
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
Bet Tzedek Legal Services
Los Angeles, CA
Direct representation of indigent Los Angeles County residents with invisible disabilities such as mental illness, and intellectual and other developmental disabilities, to maintain and/or reinstate government benefits. Will also work to improve government screening tools to increase the number of indigent invisibly disabled persons accessing the public benefit system.
Olivia Cole
Duke University School of Law
Swords to Plowshares
San Francisco, CA
Advocacy for women veterans who are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population in San Francisco, due in part to a high rate of trauma and poor access to disability benefits. Will remove obstacles to obtaining veteran disability benefits through targeted legal outreach and direct representation.
Sophie Elsner
Harvard Law School
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid
Austin, TX
Direct representation of low-income, predominately Spanish-speaking tenants facing eviction and rent increases. Will work with a newly-formed tenants’ rights organization to enforce existing, yet underutilized tenant protections to create a model for sustainable affordable housing.
Maggie Gribben
City University of New York School of Law
Justice At Work
Boston, MA
Direct representation of low-wage workers in newly developed “wage courts” in the Boston Municipal Court Small Claims Division to combat widespread wage theft by ensuring robust enforcement of the state’s strong wage and hour laws.
Kelly Head
Georgetown University Law Center
Delaware Community Legal Aid Society
Wilmington, DE
Direct representation to victims of human trafficking and intimate partner violence in the expungement and vacatur of victimization-related criminal convictions, with an additional provision of services on access to public benefits, housing and immigration status.
Brian Highsmith
Yale Law School
National Consumer Law Center
Boston, MA
Develop new ways to apply existing consumer law protections to prevent abusive and unlawful collections of criminal justice debts. Will use direct representation and legal education to help low-income families vindicate their rights, and work to strengthen protections against harmful collection practices through policy advocacy and impact-focused litigation.
Dana Leib
University of Michigan Law School
Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem
New York, NY
Direct representation of former foster children who are now young parents facing child welfare proceedings. Will fight to end the Administration for Children’s Services’ practice of using these parents’ own childhood medical records as evidence that they are currently unfit parents.
Elizabeth Levitan
University of Pennsylvania Law School
Youth Advocacy Foundation
Boston, MA
Direct representation for youth in the delinquency system to ensure that they receive all special education services necessary to avoid school failure and successfully reintegrate into school and the community. Will develop a sustainable system for post-sentencing educational representation for court-involved youth statewide.
Oscar Londono
New York University School of Law
Community Justice Project
Miami, FL
Will establish an onsite legal clinic at the Miami Workers Center to provide wage theft defense, systemic advocacy and community education for low-income domestic workers in Miami-Dade County.
Monica Macias
Michigan State University College of Law
ACLU of Michigan
Detroit, MI
Advocacy to protect the civil rights of immigrant children and families harmed by the Flint water crisis, by utilizing a three prong approach of community outreach, impact litigation and a communications campaign to address the severe consequences of lead exposure.
Cara McClellan
Yale Law School
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
New York, NY
Impact litigation on behalf of black girls in Baltimore excluded from school because of disabilities. Will also seek to reform discipline practices and support the girls in advocating for themselves.
Shayna Medley
Harvard Law School
American Civil Liberties Union, LGBT & HIV Project
New York, NY
Direct services, impact litigation and legal education to ensure safe school environments and access to single-sex spaces for transgender youth in rural, low-income areas with a focus on Southern and Western states where the rights of trans youth are most under attack.
Oluwadamilola (Dami) Obaro
New York University School of Law
Urban Justice Center, Community Development Project
New York, NY
Direct representation, community education and advocacy for low-income New Yorkers facing financial crisis due to unlawful debt collection lawsuits seeking rental arrears, years after a tenant’s displacement, or eviction from his or her home.
Veryl Pow
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Washington, DC
Direct representation of indigent persons in civil collection suits initiated by bail bonds companies in Baltimore. Will also seek to limit the power of the commercial bail industry to stall reform of Maryland’s bail system through impact litigation and policy advocacy.
Derecka Purnell
Harvard Law School
Advancement Project
Washington, DC
Impact litigation to challenge police practices under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fourth Amendment, and challenging overbroad criminal laws under the 14th Amendment.
Shakeer Rahman
Harvard Law School
The Bronx Defenders
Bronx, NY
Direct representation of indigent people in the Bronx who seek to recover damages in small claims court when they are injured by police or other members of government agencies. Will focus on injuries that are individually too small for civil rights lawyers to address, but that can have an outsize impact in the lives of impoverished people.
Tarra Simmons
Seattle University School of Law
Public Defender Association
Seattle, WA
Direct representation and policy advocacy on behalf of former justice-involved individuals to remove barriers to successful entry. Will particularly work to overcome barriers to employment, housing and legal financial obligations.
Julia Solorzano
Yale Law School
Southern Poverty Law Center
Atlanta, GA
Advocacy to address worker safety and health in poultry processing plants in the southeastern United States, in particular ergonomic and medical mismanagement issues, and the denial of bathroom breaks, through strategic OSHA complaints and impact litigation.
Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez
Harvard Law School
Veterans Legal Services
Boston, MA
Direct representation of veterans in the Greater Boston area on access to benefits, housing and family law. Will also create partnerships with re-entry programs and other community organizations.
Dorothy Tegeler
Yale Law School
Urban Justice Center, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project
New York, NY
Provision of comprehensive legal services to Central American refugee families in New York City and surrounding areas including Long Island and Westchester County. Will also support refugees nationwide through popular education and creative use of technology. Will use a mass-texting program operated by the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and a private Facebook group run by the organization and will partner with Catholic Legal Immigration.
Julie Veroff
Yale Law School
American Civil Liberties Union –
Immigrants’ Rights Project
San Francisco, CA
Direct representation, impact litigation, policy advocacy and community education to challenge and dismantle barriers to equitable public education for immigrant youth and their parents in California’s Central Valley and Bay Area.
Vivian Wong
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
Learning Rights Law Center
Los Angeles, CA
Provision of trauma-informed special education legal services to system-involved youth with disabilities who face school pushout due to unaddressed mental health needs. Will empower youth to learn self-advocacy skills in addition to educating community members about disability as a strength, rather than an inevitable weakness.
Tiffany Yang
Stanford Law School
Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs
Washington, DC
Direct representation and impact litigation to dismantle barriers to housing and employment of low-income persons upon re-entry to the greater D.C.-Baltimore area.
Emily Zhang
Stanford Law School
American Civil Liberties Union, Voting Rights Project
New York, NY
Impact litigation and advocacy to expand access to the franchise for vulnerable populations by eliminating earlier registration deadlines for voters in Arizona and South Carolina.
2017 Skadden Fellows [Skadden Foundation]
Earlier: Congratulations To The 2016 Skadden Fellows
Congratulations To The 2015 Skadden Fellows
Congratulations to the 2014 Skadden Fellows
Congratulations to the 2013 Skadden Fellows
Congratulations to the 2012 Skadden Fellows
Congratulations to the 2011 Skadden Fellows
David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. He previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Newark, New Jersey; a litigation associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; and a law clerk to Judge Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at [email protected].
