Equal Justice Works Fellowships

Equal Justice Works (EJW) Fellowships provide the opportunity for young lawyers to positively impact vulnerable communities around the country. Each year EJW select qualified and passionate lawyers who have developed new and innovative legal projects that can impact lives and serve communities in desperate need of legal assistance. Depending on funding, EJW provides between 60-80 two-year fellowships annually. Fellows receive a competitive salary, generous loan repayment assistance, connections to their prominent sponsors, participation in trainings, and additional support during their two-year tenure. The EJW fellow selection process is highly competitive, and the application deadline is mid-September. The application process for an EJW Fellowship involves four key requirements:

  1. You must be a third-year law student, a recent law school graduate, or an experienced private sector attorney who demonstrates a commitment to public interest law. Your law school must be an Equal Justice Works member law school. If your school is not on this list, please email Fellowships@equaljusticeworks.org.

  2. You must identify a qualifying nonprofit host organization that will provide you with a full-time position upon receiving a fellowship. Candidates and organizations can partner in any number of ways—a candidate may approach an organization with a proposed project idea, or an organization may recruit an applicant. Candidates may have interned with a host organization but cannot be a current full-time employee with the same organization.

  3. The host organization must be willing to be your employer during the two-year fellowship term as well as provide you with supervision, a workspace, employee health and fringe benefits, and the materials (computer, internet access, phone, etc.) that you will need to successfully complete your project.

  4. Together with your host organization, you must design a new project that focuses on legal advocacy on behalf of disenfranchised individuals, groups, or issues not adequately represented in our legal system. Legal advocacy includes direct legal representation, legal education, legal training, community organizing, transactional work, policy work, and administrative representation. Your project proposal should clearly state how the project will address a specific legal mater, how it will positively impact the targeted population, and how the host organization will support your efforts. EJW reviews the applicants and selects projects that can be matched with potential sponsors. Fellowships are sponsored by private law firms, foundations, individual donors, corporations, and bar associations. Sponsors determine who they would like to interview and schedule the interviews on a rolling basis during the fall and winter. Offers are also made by the sponsors on a rolling basis from November through April.