Congratulations To The 2022 And 2023 Skadden Fellows
What are the top 10 law schools for sending lawyers into these prestigious fellowships for public-interest work?
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Different people go to law school for different reasons, which is one common critique of the one-size-fits-all approach of U.S. News. If I controlled law school rankings, I would have interactive rankings: you would weight different criteria—e.g., Biglaw placement, clerkship placement, debt upon graduation, strength in a particular area of law—and you would get a customized ranking of the schools that best fit your needs.
Which law schools excel at sending their graduates into public-interest law? It’s more difficult to measure than Biglaw or clerkship placement. It’s not easy to get hired by a prominent public-interest organization straight out of law school, and it’s harder for law schools to track their alumni after they’ve been out of school for a while.
One of the few ways to get into public-interest work immediately or shortly after graduating from law school is to snag a Skadden Fellowship. These prestigious fellowships, the public-interest version of Supreme Court clerkships, allow law school graduates and outgoing judicial law clerks to spend two years working full-time in the public interest. Since the program launched in 1988, the Skadden Arps law firm, for which the Skadden Fellowships are named, has funded 962 Fellows.
As I previously explained, each year hundreds of law students and clerks apply for the 28 fellowships. The application process is demanding because it requires much more than just your résumé and transcript:
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.
I have been tracking Skadden Fellowships, just as I track SCOTUS clerkships and Bristow Fellowships, for years. I missed last year’s Skadden Fellows, so this story features the 56 impressive young lawyers who represent the 2022 and 2023 Skadden Fellowship classes. I have listed them, plus their law schools, sponsoring organizations, and projects, at the end of this post, along with all schools that have produced Skadden Fellows in the past 15 years (fellowship classes 2009 to 2023).
Which law schools have produced the most Skadden Fellows over the past 15 years? Here are the top 10:
Harvard – 74
Yale – 58
NYU – 39
UCLA – 24
Stanford – 23
U. Penn. – 19
UC Berkeley – 18
University of Michigan – 17
Columbia and Georgetown (tie) – 14
It’s not surprising to see Harvard and Yale, two of the nation’s most prestigious law schools, at the top of the list. On a per capita basis—adjusting for Yale’s much smaller class size, around 200 graduates versus Harvard’s 550 or so—Yale is the #1 school when it comes to Skadden Fellowship placement.
It makes sense to see NYU Law as #3. It’s an elite school like Harvard and Yale, and it’s also well-known for its commitment to public-interest work. It offers extensive support to law students committed to public interest—most famously the 20 Root-Tilden-Kern scholarships it offers each year, but several other scholarships as well. NYU is often compared to its uptown rival, Columbia, and the schools are close on many metrics—but when it comes to Skadden Fellows, NYU is the clear winner.
Similarly, the #4 school, UCLA—the only school outside the top 14 to make the list— has a high-profile and longstanding commitment to public-interest careers. The David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law & Policy, one of legal academia’s most robust public-interest programs, celebrated its 25th anniversary this year.
Congratulations to the 2022 and 2023 Skadden Fellows, their law schools, and their sponsoring organizations, and good luck to the Fellows as they work on their worthy projects. And thank you to all Skadden Fellows—past, present, and future—for their work to advance the public interest.
[UPDATE (11:42 p.m.): Two readers raised interesting questions about whether (1) conservative host organizations and (2) projects focused on abortion rights and reproductive healthcare are eligible for consideration for Skadden Fellowships. I can confirm that they are eligible, provided that they meet the eligibility requirement of addressing the civil legal needs of people living in poverty in the United States. For more, see this Twitter thread.]
LAW SCHOOLS WITH SKADDEN FELLOWS (2009-2023 FELLOWSHIP CLASSES)
American University – 4
Boston College – 2
Boston University – 2
Chicago – Kent – 1
City University of New York – 10
Cornell – 1
Columbia – 14
Denver – 1
DePaul – 3
Duke – 4
Florida International University – 1
Fordham – 6
Georgetown – 14
GW – 2
Harvard – 74
Howard – 1
Indiana – 2
John Marshall (Chicago) – 1
Loyola (Los Angeles) – 3
Michigan State – 3
Northeastern – 10
Northwestern – 6
NYU – 39
Roger Williams – 1
Rutgers – 3
Seattle – 1
Stanford – 23
Suffolk – 1
Tulane – 1
University of Arkansas – 1
UC Berkeley – 18
UC Davis – 2
UC Irvine – 4
UCLA – 24
U. Chicago – 8
University of Connecticut – 2
University of Illinois – 1
University of Kansas – 2
University of Maryland – 3
University of Miami – 1
University of Michigan – 17
University of Oklahoma – 1
U. Penn. – 19
University of South Carolina – 1
University of Texas – 4
University of Tulsa – 1
UVA – 6
University of Washington – 1
University of Wisconsin – 1
Valparaiso – 1
Vanderbilt – 4
Villanova – 1
Washington & Lee – 2
Wash U. – 4
Wayne State – 1
West Virginia – 1
Widener – 1
William & Mary – 1
William Mitchell – 1
Yale – 58
TOTAL: 426
SKADDEN FOUNDATION — 2022 SKADDEN FELLOWS
Jill Applegate
University of Texas School of Law
Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem
New York, NY
Will provide direct representation in immigration proceedings for immigrants who have received deportation orders due to prior criminal convictions, but who have the right to remain in the US.
Nola Booth
Cornell Law School
Legal Assistance of Western New York
Ithaca, NY
Will expand an existing medical-legal partnership to Tompkins County, New York to serve low-income families, especially single mothers and pregnant or postnatal parents, providing representation in family court and securing benefits.
Ekaterina Botchkareva
Columbia University School of Law
Capital Area Immigrants' Rights (CAIR) Coalition
Washington, DC
Will provide immigration representation and medical advocacy to low-income immigrants experiencing health-harming conditions in immigration detention through a medical-legal partnership.
Nicole Cabañez
Yale Law School
Prospective Fellow
National Consumer Law Center
Washington, DC
Will provide direct representation using various consumer protection laws, community education, and policy reform for non-English speaking consumers to advance their rights to participate in the American financial system.
Grace Carson
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
Tribal Law and Policy Institute
West Hollywood, CA
Will establish and institutionalize a comprehensive restorative justice system for tribal nations in order to rehabilitate drug users and address harm caused on reservations.
Ava Cilia
Harvard Law School
Brooklyn Defender Services
Brooklyn, NY
Will address the harmful impacts of the New York State Central Registry of Child Abuse and Neglect (SCR), representing individuals challenging their erroneous inclusion on the registry or seeking employment unrelated to their registration. Will also provide training and support policy advocacy by a coalition of impacted parents.
Anthony Damelio
Fordham University School of Law
Catholic Migration Services
Sunnyside, NY
Will provide direct representation for low-wage immigrant workers in New York City who experience workplace health and safety and other employment law violations in partnership with two worker centers.
Drake Darrah
Georgetown University Law Center
Prospective Fellow
National Association of the Deaf
Silver Spring, MD
Will advocate for access to programs and services for deaf families and deaf children in the child welfare system. Will provide direct representation in Washington, D.C. and Maryland, train families and professionals, and advocate nationally to ensure qualified deaf parents are not discriminated against in becoming foster and/or adoptive parents.
Liza Davis
University of Michigan Law School
American Civil Liberties Union - Women's Rights Project
New York, NY
Will provide direct legal representation, outreach and education, and advocacy to disabled Black girls in Michigan and across the country to combat discriminatory exclusionary school discipline policies and practices.
Laura Flores
University of California, Irvine School of Law
Justice Action Center
Los Angeles, CA
Uses advocacy and litigation strategies to challenge the federal agency practice of sharing and using information related to the trauma, mental health, and behavioral issues experienced by unaccompanied immigrant children in ways that exacerbate their trauma and undermine their ability to secure immigration relief.
Paula Garcia-Salazar
Yale Law School
The Legal Aid Society
New York, NY
Provides direct legal services to low-income people to secure the release of cellphones that have been seized by police while simultaneously seeking systemic reforms to New York's unjust property seizure system through impact litigation and the implementation of Due Process hearings.
Glynnis Hagins
University of South Carolina School of Law
NAACP
Columbia, SC
Will challenge housing discrimination through affirmative litigation, onsite at a local housing navigator program created during the pandemic. Will develop training and Know Your Rights manuals, and will create an education clinic in partnership with local school districts to provide school-based housing assistance.
D.C. Hiegert
University of Kansas School of Law
ACLU of Kansas
Mission, KS
Provides direct representation, community education, and policy advocacy for LGBTQ+ Kansans to enforce, strengthen, and expand existing state and federal legal protections and increase awareness of these protections.
Diana Howat
Northeastern University School of Law
Youth Advocacy Foundation - The EdLaw Project
Boston, MA
Will provide direct representation of court-involved youth and young adults with disabilities in the Boston area to enforce their education rights and support young people in self-advocacy.
Jack Hsia
Georgetown University Law Center
Communities Resist
Brooklyn, NY
Will provide low-income Asian American immigrants housing legal services and wraparound immigration legal services that include access to housing benefits. Will also provide Know Your Rights and community education.
Emma Hulse
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
New York Civil Liberties Union
New York, NY
Will provide direct representation, impact litigation, and policy advocacy to address the overrepresentation of students of color, immigrant youth, and emergent bilingual students in special education in Westchester County.
Nevah Jones
University of Virginia School of Law
Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy
Charlotte, NC
Will expand the existing medical-legal partnership between the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy and Atrium Health to ensure veterans have effective medical evidence for disability and discharge upgrade claims.
Wafa Junaid
Northwestern University School of Law
American Civil Liberties Union - Immigrants' Rights Project
New York, NY
Will provide direct representation, impact litigation, public education, and policy advocacy to challenge Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (“ICE”) Intensive Supervision Appearance Program a highly invasive monitoring program used to expand ICE's surveillance and control of immigrant communities.
Shariful Khan
Yale Law School
Public Justice - Students' Civil Rights Project
Washington, DC
Will provide direct representation and systemic advocacy on behalf of low-income students of color in the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area facing racially hostile school environments, both harassment and inappropriate discipline.
Kaitlynn Milvert
Harvard Law School
Equip for Equality
Chicago, IL
Provides direct representation to address the long-term and collateral consequences of guardianship for adults with disabilities in Illinois. Will expand access to less restrictive alternatives through outreach, training, and resource development.
Cristina Moreno
Boston University School of Law
Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project
Washington, DC
Is protecting and expanding asylum-seekers’ rights by directly representing the host’s member-leaders in their immigration matters, supporting member-led advocacy, and challenging practices that limit access to asylum, through impact litigation.
Jacquelyn Oesterblad
Yale Law School
Public Justice - Debtors' Prison Project
Oakland, CA
Will provide direct representation and impact litigation on behalf of unhoused people in Arizona challenging the collection of fines, fees, surcharges, and court debts arising from homelessness-related offenses.
Kavya Parthiban
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)
Berkeley, CA
Will provide advocacy for low-income disabled parents in dependency proceedings, enforcing non-discrimination rights and ensuring access to responsive services and accommodations. Will also provide direct representation and co-counsel cases with family defense attorneys, along with systemic advocacy, and community education.
Eliza Quander
Northwestern University School of Law
Legal Aid Chicago
Chicago, IL
Will provide direct representation and community education for students who have dropped out of school or are at risk of dropping out, in school discipline, special education, and enrollment disputes to enforce their educational rights.
Andrea Reyes Corena
University of California, Davis School of Law
Dolores Street Community Services
San Francisco, CA
Will provide direct immigration representation of undocumented workers in the informal economy in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Will engage in a mutual-aid model of community education alongside partner organizations to expand access to immigration legal information.
Diana Sanchez
Stanford Law School
Immigrant Defenders Law Center
Los Angeles, CA
Will challenge the detention and surveillance of immigrants with disabilities through impact litigation asserting their rights under disability laws and the federal Constitution, direct representation in habeas and bond proceedings, and the formation of a working group of advocates on these issues.
Delaram Takyar
Yale Law School
Tennessee Justice Center
Nashville, TN
Will establish a medical-legal partnership between Tennessee Justice Center and the Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Center to provide legal services, for low-income women living in rural Tennessee. The project will focus on clients' access to healthcare and nutrition benefits, in an effort to improve maternal and child health outcomes.
Katie Whitley
Indiana University Robert H McKinney School of Law
Indiana Legal Services
Indianapolis, IN
Will create the first school-based civil legal aid initiative in the Indianapolis region designed to serve low-income families with school-aged children experiencing housing and economic instability. Will also engage students in creating Know Your Rights educational materials in housing law and public benefits.
SKADDEN FOUNDATION — 2023 SKADDEN FELLOWS
Megan Carr
City University of New York School of Law
New York Lawyers for the Public Interest
New York, NY
Enforce New York’s recently enacted Environmental Rights Amendment and provide training and resources for community advocates in areas coping with detrimental environmental and health burdens.
Jessica Cianci
Harvard Law School
Mental Health Advocacy Services
Los Angeles, CA
Legal advice to self-represented litigants, direct representation, and strategic representation for people with disabilities in Los Angeles County’s Mental Health Court and the planned CARE Court system.
Rubin Danberg Biggs
Yale Law School
New York Civil Liberties Union
New York, NY
Increase access to affordable housing by addressing housing discrimination against Section 8 voucher recipients through direct representation and community education, as well as challenging municipalities' exclusionary zoning laws through impact litigation.
Matthew Escalante
New York University School of Law
Legal Aid Chicago
Chicago, IL
Holistic representation of undocumented immigrant youth in the areas of immigration, education, and public benefits.
Raymond Fang
Yale Law School
Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA
Transactional legal services fostering community control and collective ownership of permanently affordable housing, representing community land trusts, tenants’ unions and housing cooperatives.
Isabel Flores-Ganley
University of California, Los Angeles School of Law
Raise the Floor Alliance
Chicago, IL
Direct representation, administrative advocacy, and community education through worker centers to support undocumented workers' organizing to address working conditions, utilizing new federal policies to secure immigration relief for all workers on a site where employers engage in immigration-related retaliation.
Michelle Fraling
Yale Law School
ACLU Center for Liberty
Washington, DC
Individual and strategic litigation on behalf of low-income veterans and servicemembers to ensure equitable access to gender-specific healthcare.
Makayla Harrison
University of Pennsylvania Law School
Education Law Center
Philadelphia, PA
Legal representation of students in psychiatric hospitals and other residential treatment facilities to ensure access to educational services, with an initial focus on students in foster care in Philadelphia.
Adam Hines
University of Oklahoma Law School
ACLU of Oklahoma
Oklahoma City, OK
Expand procedural due process protections for tenants in eviction proceedings.
Jordan Hoffman Kahle
Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
Heartland Center for Jobs & Freedom
Kansas City, MO
Direct representation on workplace legal issues including wage-and-hour, unemployment, and safety violations. Collaborate with local organizing groups to empower workers to understand and assert their rights to fair wages and safe workplaces.
Liz Jacob
Yale Law School
Sugar Law Center for Social and Economic Justice
Detroit, MI
Direct legal service for clients experiencing energy insecurity, including utility debt and power shutoffs. Legal support for community-led policy change challenging inequitable energy burdens.
Ricardo Jimenez Solis
Harvard Law School
Northeast Justice Center
Lawrence, MA
Representation to secure release from detention and immigration relief for eligible immigrants whose cases have been placed in DOJ's Dedicated Docket.
Bridget Lavender
University of Pennsylvania Law School
ACLU National Legal Department
New York, NY
Litigation in multiple state courts challenging laws that criminalize the life-sustaining behavior of the unhoused, as well as advocacy for an unhoused bill of rights.
Zakiya Lewis
New York University School of Law
Incoming Fellow
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Washington, DC
Develop litigation challenging anti-diversity and inclusion laws, to support low-income students with marginalized, intersectional identities who benefit most from culturally responsive and inclusive learning environments.
Annie Lo
New York University School of Law
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
New York, NY
Prevent displacement of low-income Asian American communities through a combination of individual representation to help tenants affirmatively secure safe living conditions, and representation of community-based organizations seeking community control over land use and affordable housing.
MaryGrace Longoria
Florida International University College of Law
Legal Services of Greater Miami
Miami, FL
Representation of students with disabilities addressing special education and related needs, with community education and pro bono engagement.
Sarah Lucero
Loyola Law School, Loyola Marymount University
Disability Rights California
Los Angeles, CA
Representation of Native youth with disabilities facing school discipline. In partnership with Native organizers, challenge disproportionality in school discipline and require schools to meet students' academic and cultural needs.
Dana Matsunami
University of California, Irvine School of Law
National Center for Youth Law
Honolulu, HI
Establish a right to counsel for youth in the child welfare system in Hawai’i, through strategic litigation and youth-led coalition advocacy to develop a culturally responsive and youth-centered representation model.
Lily Novak
Yale Law School
Rights Behind Bars
Washington, DC
Represent noncitizens with psychiatric disabilities in ICE detention to secure their release, so that they can seek appropriate care and participate in their immigration defense in their community.
Laura Petty
Fordham University School of Law
Advancement Project
Washington, DC
In partnership with youth and parent-led grassroots organizations in low-income communities of color, challenge school closures and the privatization and funding policies that cause them.
Amy Reavis
University of California, Berkeley School of Law
Montana Legal Services Association
Helena, MT
Holistic representation to survivors of domestic violence, including misdemeanor expungement, public benefits assistance, and advocacy to ensure that survivors secure and retain employment and safe housing.
Sarah Rosenkrantz
Harvard Law School
Greater Boston Legal Services
Boston, MA
Direct representation, community organizing and training, pro se materials, and policy advocacy on behalf of tenants who are Section 8 voucher-holders facing eviction or termination of their vouchers.
Bex Rothenberg-Montz
New York University School of Law
Housing Works
Brooklyn, NY
Affirmative litigation to combat rampant source of income discrimination, and representation on related housing matters and access to public benefits.
Michaela Shuchman
New York University School of Law
Bronx Legal Services
Bronx, NY
Implement a trauma-sensitive and healing-centered approach to school discipline through direct representation of students at suspension hearings, community education, and the creation of a best-practices resource guide.
Noelle Smith
Stanford Law School
ACLU Foundation - Immigrants' Rights Project
San Francisco, CA
Advocate for farmworkers asserting wage-and-hour rights, through direct representation under California law and state constitutional litigation in New Mexico, where farmworkers are excluded from basic wage-and-hour protections.
David Sunshine Hamburger
New York University School of Law
Georgia Legal Services Program
Savannah, GA
Legal representation for public housing residents challenging uninhabitable conditions, opposing plans to demolish developments, and enforcing tenants' rights in the event of displacement by any demolition.
Cathy Zhang
Harvard Law School
Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund
New York, NY
Litigation, administrative advocacy, coalition building, and public education challenging state-implemented barriers to transgender individuals’ gender-affirming healthcare.
Heather Zimmerman
Yale Law School
ACLU of Maine
Portland, ME
Direct civil representation, potential impact litigation, and policy advocacy to challenge the policies and practices that punish unhoused people, including trespass orders that bar individuals from accessing shelters.
Earlier:
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While your list includes places one through nine, it’s interesting to note that CUNY and Northeastern are tied for tenth place, with ten fellows apiece. The top ten schools are all at the top of the USNews rankings, but CUNY and Northeastern outperform their traditional placements. Both law schools brand themselves as public interest focused institutions; their performance lends some credibility to that claim.
I'm so glad you posted about this, David. I was a Skadden Fellow from 2005 - 2007 (puffs up chest in pride after reading "the public-interest version of Supreme Court clerkships...") and it was an extraordinary experience.
There's nothing really liberal per se about the Fellowship. They fund new lawyers to work for organizations that are providing free core civil legal services support to the poor. Full stop. Lots of housing and evictions, support for foster youth, accessing public benefits. dealing with collateral consequences of criminal convictions, domestic violence issues, etc.
One notable change is that I notice far more projects focused on immigrant communities - there are some really innovative projects in there!
I though the question about whether they fund conservative organizations was a little odd. Conservatives should be just as interested in providing free legal help for the poor as liberals, particularly religious conservative lawyers. That said, in my experience the program is quite left leaning - I don't know if that is self-selection among the applicants or selection bias by the Fellowship trustees. My guess is primarily the former.