Pro Bono

Congratulations To The 2019 Skadden Fellows

These are exciting times for public interest lawyers -- and exciting times for Skadden Fellows.

By David Lat on November 20, 2018 5:42 pm

We write about the announcement of the Skadden Fellowships annually, but it seems that we missed the 2018 class of Fellows (perhaps because I traditionally write the story, and I was on parental leave last year, after my husband and I welcomed our son into the world). So we’re going to make up for it this year.

Here are four lists. The first list shows the schools that have sent the most graduates into Skadden Fellowships for the past eleven years (fellowship classes 2009 to 2019). The second list shows all law schools that have sent graduates into Skadden Fellowships for the same period. The third and fourth lists show the 2018 and 2019 Skadden Fellows, respectively, and the organizations they’ll be working for.

Congratulations to the 2018 and 2019 Skadden Fellows, and thanks to them for their great work in service of the public interest.

LAW SCHOOLS WITH THE MOST SKADDEN FELLOWS (2009-2019 FELLOWSHIP CLASSES)

1. Harvard – 55
2. Yale – 40
3. NYU – 28
4. Stanford – 20
5. University of Pennsylvania – 15

LAW SCHOOLS WITH SKADDEN FELLOWS (2009-2019 FELLOWSHIP CLASSES)

American University – 4
Boston College – 1
Boston University – 1
Chicago – Kent – 1
City University of New York – 8
Columbia – 12
Denver – 1
DePaul – 3
Duke – 4
Fordham – 4
Georgetown – 11
GW – 1
Harvard – 55
Howard – 1
Indiana – 1
John Marshall (Chicago) – 1
Loyola (Los Angeles) – 2
Michigan State – 3
Northeastern – 4
Northwestern – 4
NYU – 28
Roger Williams – 1
Rutgers – 2
Seattle – 1
Stanford – 20
Suffolk – 1
Tulane – 1
University of Arkansas – 1
UC Berkeley / Boalt Hall – 12
UC Davis – 1
UC Irvine – 2
UCLA – 14
U. Chicago – 8
University of Connecticut – 2
University of Illinois – 1
University of Maryland – 2
University of Miami – 1
University of Michigan – 14
U. Penn. – 15
University of Texas – 2
UVA – 5
University of Washington – 1
University of Wisconsin – 1
Valparaiso – 1
Vanderbilt – 4
Villanova – 1
Washington & Lee – 2
Wash U. – 3
Wayne State – 1
West Virginia – 1
Widener – 1
William Mitchell – 1
Yale – 40

TOTAL: 313

SKADDEN FOUNDATION — 2018 SKADDEN FELLOWS

Alexis Bailey
University of Michigan Law School
Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service
Lansing, MI
Provides direct representation and community education to protect the rights of Michigan veterans with disabilities.

Elizabeth Bixby
Stanford Law School
Legal Aid at Work
San Francisco, CA
Will provide direct representation and eventual impact litigation advocating for exploited domestic workers in the Greater Bay Area.

Michelle “Minju” Cho
Yale Law School
Asian Americans Advancing Justice
Los Angeles, CA
Provides direct representation of low-income Asian immigrants in civil lawsuits against fraudulent immigration service providers. Also assists victims in applying for U and T visas.

Shane Crary-Ross
University of California, Berkeley School of Law
California Rural Legal Assistance
Santa Rosa, CA
Establishing a medical-legal partnership to address economic and housing insecurity that endanger the health of individuals and families living in poverty in western Sonoma County.

Conchita Cruz
Yale Law School
Urban Justice Center, Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project
New York, NY
Provides direct legal services to asylum seekers who fled violence only to become victims of domestic violence and consumer fraud in the United States.

Nolan Downey
DePaul University College of Law
Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law
Chicago, IL
Provides direct representation of food assistance recipients whose benefits were terminated erroneously due to reinstatement of federal time limit provisions; will identify systemic issues to be addressed through eventual impact litigation.

Catherine Humphreville
Harvard Law School
Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation
Brooklyn, NY
Provides transactional legal services to nonprofits seeking to form community land trusts and small businesses in East New York to preserve and create permanently affordable housing. Additionally, generates community-based economic development.

Hong “Chen-Chen” Jiang
Harvard Law School
TeamChild
Seattle, WA
Advocates to establish Washington students’ right to equitable alternative education by being the first to enforce the state’s recent legislation through direct services and impact litigation.

Eleanor Kittilstad
Northwestern University School of Law
Equip for Equality
Chicago, IL
Provides advocacy and direct representation of Illinois elementary school children with disabilities, at administrative and due process hearings, who have been referred to police and acute mental health crisis programs by their schools for behaviors that should be addressed at school.

Brian Klosterboer
Harvard Law School
American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Texas
Houston, TX
Provides direct representation and eventual impact litigation for LGBT youth in Texas schools who are currently homeless, or are at risk of experiencing homelessness by challenging discrimination and harassment.

Kathy Lu
Yale Law School
Sanctuary for Families
New York, NY
Provides direct representation, community education and policy advocacy to ensure the safety and empowerment of Chinese immigrant survivors of gender-based violence in New York City. Also provides Chinese-language legal services in family law, immigration and civil litigation.

Linda Morris
University of Maryland School of Law
American Civil Liberties Union – Women’s Rights Project
New York, NY
Provides direct representation and advocacy to dismantle housing barriers for low-income women of color, due to landlord screening policies that bar applicants with eviction records in Baltimore County, Maryland, and beyond.

Patricia Okonta
Columbia University School of Law
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
New York, NY
Provides impact litigation and advocacy for low-income people with past criminal records to remove barriers to housing.

Albert Pak
University of Pennsylvania Law School
Michigan Community Resources
Detroit, MI
Provides transactional legal services to low-income entrepreneurs and small businesses in Detroit neighborhoods to support economic revitalization.

Kinjal Patel
Duke University School of Law
Staten Island Legal Services
Staten Island, NY
Provides direct legal representation of low-income LGBTQ and HIV-affected Staten Islanders on health-related issues, government benefits, housing and family matters.

Jessica “JP” Perry
City University of New York School of Law
New York Civil Liberties Union
New York, NY
Provides direct services and eventual impact litigation to promote equal access to education for low-income immigrant children on Long Island who are facing discrimination and inadequate services.

Mason Pesek
New York University School of Law
Legal Aid Society of Cleveland
Cleveland, OH
Establishing workers’ rights clinics in two low-income neighborhoods in Cleveland: Central and Slavic Village. Provides direct legal representation on wage theft and overtime violations under the Fair Labor Standards Act and on workplace safety issues under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Educates workers on how to identify violations and/or how to speak to employers about working conditions.

Samantha Reiser
New York University School of Law
Legal Action Center
New York, NY
Provides direct representation and policy advocacy to combat the employment barriers and socioeconomic consequences low-income New Yorkers face due to criminal records.

Satcha Robinson
Georgetown University Law Center
Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia
Washington, DC
Provides direct representation, community outreach and policy advocacy to assist low-income individuals to remedy civil collateral consequences of their involvement in the criminal justice system.

Cory Sagduyu
University of Virginia School of Law
Ayuda
Falls Church, VA
Provides comprehensive legal services for low-income immigrants who have been victims of workplace crimes or labor exploitation. Addresses issues of overtime and minimum wage claims, EEOC complaints, sexual assault or harassment, labor trafficking and breach of contract claims. Also provides representation on applications for U and T visas.

Lindsey Smith
New York University School of Law
Brooklyn Defender Services
Brooklyn, NY
Provides direct representation and eventual litigation for indigent Brooklyn youth who face economic instability and arrest due to criminal justice debt.

Aubrey Sparks
Harvard Law School
Mountain State Justice
Charleston, WV
Provides direct legal services to low-wage workers in the service and retail industries in southern West Virginia. As the state shifts from an extraction economy to a service economy, this emerging class of workers is left vulnerable to employer abuse without the means to exercise their legal rights. Concentrates on claims arising from multilevel marketing pyramid schemes and their employment of low-income rural women.

Jennifer Terrell
Washington University School of Law
Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Chicago, IL
Provides advocacy to decrease racial disparities in voting in Illinois by ensuring that re-entering citizens have fair access to efficient registration and are not deterred from voting. Specifically focuses on implementing and enforcing Illinois’ new automatic voter registration law and ensuring that re-entering citizens are included in the reform.

Jonathan Topaz
Harvard Law School
American Civil Liberties Union – Voting Rights Project
New York, NY
Provides advocacy for indigent ex-offenders’ voting rights by challenging felony restoration laws in South Carolina and Connecticut through impact litigation and policy advocacy.

Julie Veroff
Yale Law School
ACLU – Immigrants’ Rights Project
Oakland, CA
Provides 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.

Jayme Wiebold
University of Pennsylvania Law School
Iowa Legal Aid
Des Moines, IA
Provides direct representation of low-income Iowans experiencing legal problems as a result of vehicle ownership, who are particularly vulnerable to predatory lenders or who have been sold cars that need significant repairs.

Emily Wilkinson
Harvard Law School
Legal Services Center
Jamaica Plain, MA
Provides direct representation of low-income clients facing debt collection lawsuits in state court. Will create a Small Claims Action Network to combat debt buyers’ abuses of small claims court.

Audrey-Marie Winn
New York University School of Law
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
New York, NY
Will provide direct representation and eventual impact litigation supporting workers in the New York City app economy.

Larken Yackulic
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
Inner City Law Center
Los Angeles, CA
Provides holistic eviction defense to prevent homelessness and housing insecurity for families in Los Angeles County. Addresses issues including public benefits claims, family law proceedings, temporary restraining orders, expungements, debt collection and unlawful eviction actions.

Victoria Yee
New York University School of Law
Wage Justice Center
Los Angeles, CA
Provides direct legal services and community education to low-wage immigrant Chinese workers in Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Valley, to recover their unpaid wages and apply the National Labor Relations Act’s Section 7 protections to combat retaliation.

SKADDEN FOUNDATION — 2019 SKADDEN FELLOWS

Christina Avalos
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA
Direct representation of children who have been separated from their parents by immigration enforcement, focusing on guardianship, custody, housing stability, and health care.

Hugh Baran
New York University School of Law
National Employment Law Project
New York, NY
Direct representation of low-wage workers in the New York tri-state area in mandatory arbitrations for claims of sexual harassment, discrimination, and wage theft.

Indiana University School of Law
Indiana Legal Services
Establish the Opportunity Barriers Clinic to address the civil consequences of court debt faced by low-income Indiana residents. The clinic will focus on re-entry issues such as expungements, specialized driving privileges, and wage garnishment.

Michaela Bland
Rhode Island Center for Justice
Providence, RI
Direct representation, community education, and legislative advocacy to defend students’ right to an education free of racially charged and discriminatory suspensions.

John Bonacorsi
Stanford Law School
ArchCity Defenders
St. Louis, MO
Direct representation, policy advocacy, and eventual impact litigation to secure and maintain housing for homeless persons and those facing eviction in St. Louis.

Angela Breining
University of California, Davis School of Law
Centro Legal de la Raza
Oakland, CA
Create mobile clinics to provide direct representation, community education, and potential impact litigation on behalf of low-wage immigrant workers in California’s rural Northern Sacramento Valley in employment claims including wage and hour, discrimination and retaliation, and workplace safety.

Akilah Browne
Fordham University School of Law
New Economy Project
New York, NY
Provide transactional legal services to grassroots organizations seeking to develop non-profit community land trusts to foster the creation and preservation of permanently affordable housing for poor New Yorkers.

Kamala Buchanan
Georgia Legal Services Program
Atlanta, GA
Direct representation and community education on behalf of low-income students of color in various Georgia counties to address racially disparate public-school discipline.

Hillary Chutter-Ames
Northwestern University School of Law
Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI)
Chicago, IL
Direct legal services to a coalition of community-based organizations working to decrease police violence, reduce constitutional violations, improve police accountability, and make neighborhoods safer.

Nicole Endsley
Georgetown University Law Center
Tahirih Justice Center
San Bruno, CA
Holistic direct representation and community outreach to foreign-born women, girls, and LGBTQ individuals in the Bay Area who are survivors of human trafficking and other gender-based violence.

Reynaldo Fuentes
University of California, Berkeley School of Law
The Partnership for Working Families
Oakland, CA
Direct representation and policy advocacy on behalf of Bay Area warehousing and logistics industry workers who are misclassified as contractors.

Joanna Gardner
Rutgers University School of Law
HIAS Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
Direct representation and community outreach on behalf of immigrant victims of severe domestic violence, to secure humanitarian immigration relief as survivors of trafficking, and access benefits that will empower them to live independently of their traffickers.

Jess Hunter-Bowman
Valparaiso University School of Law
National Immigrant Justice Center
Goshen, IN
Direct representation, community outreach and legal education, and strategic advocacy to secure U- and T-visas for low-income immigrant victims of crime and human trafficking in chronically-underserved areas of Indiana.

Ysabel Jurado
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
Bet Tzedek Legal Services
Los Angeles, CA
Holistic legal services to prevent the displacement of tenants, community organizations, and small businesses in Los Angeles’ Historic Filipinotown (HiFi), through direct representation of tenants in housing matters and transactional assistance to local small businesses and non-profits.

Healy Ko
Yale University School of Law
Korean Resource Center
Los Angeles, CA
Direct representation, outreach, and community education to Korean immigrant women and children survivors of domestic violence in LA and Orange County.

Sarah Lakhani
University of California, Berkeley School of Law
Immigrant Legal Resource Center
San Francisco, CA
Provide legal advice to government agency clients as an embedded attorney at SF Human Services Agency, to address immigrants’ fears and misinformation about the potential negative immigration consequences of accessing public benefits.

Elizabeth Leiserson
Yale Law School
Southern Migrant Legal Services, A Project of Texas Rural Legal Aid
Nashville, TN
Individual and administrative advocacy on behalf of foreign agricultural H-2A workers, initially focusing on tobacco workers in Kentucky, who are paid less than federal requirements due to a state agency’s systematic enforcement failures and approvals of unlawfully low wages.

Emma McLean-Riggs
University of California, Berkeley School of Law
Colorado Juvenile Defender Center
Denver, CO
Direct representation of children on the sex offender registry in civil de-registration and school disciplinary hearings throughout the state of Colorado.

Jason Pedraza
New York University School of Law
Education Law Center
Newark, NJ
Direct legal representation and know-your-rights trainings to protect the educational rights of disadvantaged preschoolers in New Jersey as the state expands access to pre-K to additional low-income communities.

Malita Picasso
City University of New York School of Law
American Civil Liberties Union – LGBT & HIV Project
New York, NY
Direct representation, policy advocacy, and community education for low-income transgender elders to ensure access to affirming health care and to challenge discriminatory practices and policies by elder care service providers.

Sunney Poyner
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
Victim Rights Law Center
Boston, MA
Direct representation to secure government benefits for people with disabilities who are survivors of sexual assault.

Westley Resendes
Yale Law School
ACLU Foundation – Disability Rights Project
San Francisco, CA
Litigation and advocacy to reduce the excessive presence of law enforcement in elementary schools and to protect young children with disabilities from the trauma of unconstitutional arrest and handcuffing.

Molly Rugg
New York University School of Law
Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem
New York, NY
Direct representation of families in Manhattan public housing whose tenancy is affected by a family member’s criminal justice contact.

Sharion Scott
Washington University School of Law
Advancement Project
Washington, DC
Impact litigation, community education initiatives, and advocacy during the implementation of new voting rights laws to restore voting rights of formerly incarcerated individuals.

Gabriela Siegel
New York University School of Law
Make the Road New York
Brooklyn, NY
Direct representation, community education, and community-directed policy advocacy of immigrant domestic workers and cleaners in New York City and Westchester facing workplace exploitation and hazardous working conditions.

Elizabeth Soltan
Harvard Law School
Community Legal Services of Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA
Expand a medical-legal partnership in West Philadelphia by providing employment and public benefits representation to stabilize the income of families with newborns.

Victoria Wenger
New York University School of Law
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
New York, NY
Impact litigation and community education to ensure voting rights in the South by identifying and challenging potential barriers to voting and expanding access to voter registration.

Michael Zuckerman
Harvard Law School
Ohio Justice and Policy Center
Cincinnati, OH
Direct representation of re-entering citizens to help them overcome legal barriers, establishing an office in one of Cincinnati’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, Avondale.

Earlier:

DBL square headshotDavid Lat is editor at large and founding editor of Above the Law, as well as 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].

« Previous 1 2