The Harvard Law Review has announced the creation of a public interest fellowship, which will enable one recent Harvard Law graduate to spend a year following law school working in public service.
The program’s inaugural fellow, who will be selected in the fall of 2017, will receive funding to support a year of work in a public interest-related role within a nonprofit organization, the government, or another institution. The fellow will have the opportunity to have a short piece relating to his or her work considered for publication in the Law Review’s online Forum at the end of the year.
Said Law Review President ImeIme Umana: “We are so excited to establish this fellowship, which will further our goals of promoting scholarship in the public interest, bridging the divide between legal scholarship and legal practice, and playing a positive role in our broader Law School community.”
Said Assistant Dean for Public Service Alexa Shabecoff: “I’m thrilled that the Law Review will be funding a public interest fellowship. There is such great need for public interest lawyers but most organizations don’t have the budget to hire to meet the need. At the same time, so many stellar HLS students want to do public interest work but are confronted by a scarcity of entry-level public interest positions. This new fellowship will help an amazing HLS student launch their public interest career while providing badly needed services.”
The fellow will receive a $65,000 stipend and healthcare benefits. A committee of Law School professors independent of the Law Review will select a student or recent graduate with a demonstrated interest in both public interest work and legal scholarship. Any person who will graduate from Harvard Law School at the end of the academic year in which he or she applies, or who has graduated from the Law School in either of the previous two years, will be eligible to apply for the fellowship. The Law Review will announce further details about the fellowship and the application process over the summer.
The Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal scholarship. For more than 130 years, dating to the work of Law Review co-founder Justice Louis Brandeis LL.B. 1877, the Law Review has had a tradition of supporting scholarship in the public interest.