Congratulations To The 2019 Skadden Fellows
These are exciting times for public interest lawyers -- and exciting times for Skadden Fellows.
(photo by David Lat)
For law students and lawyers interested in public interest and pro bono work, these are exciting times. Ample opportunities exist for lawyers to make a difference today.
“The climate for public interest work has never been better,” said Susan Plum, founding director of the Skadden Foundation, which just announced the recipients of its 28 Skadden Fellowships (the 2019 class). “I speak at law schools around the country, and wherever I go, it’s standing room only.”
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Each year, the Foundation provides Fellowships to 28 talented young lawyers, allowing them to pursue public interest work on a full-time basis. As we’ve mentioned before, Skadden Fellowships “are viewed as the public-interest world’s version of Supreme Court clerkships or Rhodes Scholarships.” They have launched the legal careers of numerous public interest attorneys, with 90 percent of Fellows remaining in public interest.
Interest in Skadden Fellowships is as high as it’s ever been. As Plum told me when I interviewed her about the latest class of Fellows, “Young people are thinking, ‘It’s now or never.’ There’s so much attention on public interest work, and there’s so much anger — they want to step up and try to do something.”
Each year, more than 200 law students apply for the 28 Fellowships (or sometimes more than 28, if additional funding comes through; for example, when he was alive, Skadden founding partner Joe Flom would generously fund additional Fellowships). The applicants are a self-selecting group, because each applicant must propose a public interest project and find a sponsoring organization willing to host the aspiring fellow and her work (the grant actually goes to the organization, not the individual). The sponsoring organization must be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides civil legal services to the poor, including the working poor, the elderly, the disabled, or those deprived of their civil or human rights.
What does the Foundation seek in applications? As noted on its website, “Selection is based on a variety of factors, including the qualifications of the applicant (competency, academic performance, character and demonstrated commitment to the public interest), the demonstrated effectiveness of the sponsoring organization, the quality of the proposed project and the worthiness of the project’s goals.”
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“We try to stay away from what’s sexy and what’s hot,” Plum said. “We focus on the work. Nobody knows what the clients need better than the applicants, because they’ve worked closely with the agencies in developing their proposed projects.”
“We don’t decide in advance on any allocation of Fellowships — say, six in housing, four in education,” Plum added. “Under our definition of poverty, everything compounds everything. Only privileged people have categories.”
I asked Plum what stood out to her about the latest class. She cited the diversity of law schools from which the new Fellows hail.
“We tend to be very heavy with Harvard and Yale,” she said. “But this year we welcomed Fellows from a number of new schools, like Roger Williams, Indiana, and Valparaiso. This is great because poor people are everywhere, not just in New York and San Francisco.”
Next year, after leading the Skadden Foundation for more than 30 years (since 1988), Susan Plum will hand over the reins to Kathleen Rubenstein, currently the Associate Director of the Foundation. But Plum will continue to be involved with the Foundation’s important work as senior advisor. And even though she will no longer be working seven days a week — running the Foundation, while also serving on ten boards and mentoring more than a dozen law students and lawyers — she is confident that the Foundation will continue to flourish.
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“The program gets stronger each year,” Plum said. “We have so many former Fellows who are doing public interest work across the country, including ones who are teaching public interest law, and they are extraordinary role models for the new Fellows.”
“We want to celebrate the public interest, and we want every law school in America to celebrate public interest. The program just keeps going, successful beyond our wildest dreams.”
(Flip to the next page for lists of the 2018 and 2019 Fellows, as well as a list of which law schools have produced the most Skadden Fellows over the years.)
David 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 dlat@abovethelaw.com.
