Fellowships

Fellowships provide an opportunity for recent law graduates to engage in public interest legal work for one or two years after graduation. A fellowship is a "specified sum, awarded after law school graduation for a fixed time period (usually one or two years), to fulfill a fairly specific purpose."¹ Fellowships are also sometimes called grants, awards, scholarships, or even internships. The three main types of fellowships are project fellowships, staff fellowships and teaching fellowships. Fellowships can be found in all areas of the law and are often defined by the creativity and interest of the law student. Although salaries and benefits provided vary greatly depending on the fellowship, salaries can range from $20,000 to $75,000, with the average fellowship paying a salary in the mid-$30,000 range. These salaries are comparable to many judicial clerkship salaries, and although lower than most firms, can be considered an investment in the future because of the experience and work the student will be able to complete in a fellowship.

Appendix 1 of this handbook contains lists of Fellowship Sponsors, Staff and Project Fellowships, Teaching/Research Fellowships, and Miscellaneous Fellowships. The information has been adapted from The Comprehensive Fellowship Guide-The Ultimate Resource for Law Students & Lawyers published by PSLawNet. For more information regarding any of those fellowships, consult the full text guide in the Career Services Office.

Fellowship Sponsors

Fellowship sponsors are organizations that host fellows to do a specific project for one or two years. The fellows receive funding from a grant organization to perform the project. Sponsors require interested applicants to develop or collaborate on the development of an original project for the application for funding. Many sponsors set their application deadlines significantly ahead of those set by the grant organizations to allow for thorough project development.

Grant organizations require that fellows design an original project to perform at a non-profit organization for one to two years. The grant organizations commonly have particular limitations on the projects they will fund or have particular issues or types of projects they prefer.

Staff and Project Fellowships

Applying for staff fellowships is much like applying for any other job; however, the position is designed to last for only one to two years. Organizations that provide these fellowships provide funding for fellows to work on a specific project within that organization for the duration of the fellowship. These fellowships often provide the fellow with invaluable experience working as a public interest lawyer. Some staff fellowships provide funding to allow fellows to work with any non-profit public interest law organization. These are to help fellows pursue public interest law positions they could not otherwise afford due to student debt.

Project fellowships provide interested applicants with the funding to work on a specific project with a host non-profit public interest organization. Students interested in project fellowships should develop a project idea, either alone or in coordination with a public interest organization before or during the summer after the second year of law school.

All of these fellowships are highly competitive. Though many have application deadlines near the end of the calendar year, many keep their application deadlines open until later in the academic year.

Teaching/Research Fellowships

Many teaching or research fellowships are like staff fellowships; the only difference is that the fellow should earn an advanced degree by the end of the fellowship. Others provide funding to applicants who are either pursuing or near the end of earning an advanced degree. Much of the funding for these fellowships is devoted to providing scholars with the means to pursue advanced research or to complete a writing project. Many of these fellowships are law-related, but some of them are non-legal, as well. Applicants who are interested in pursuing additional degrees would do well to apply for these fellowships.

Miscellaneous Fellowships

The following fellowships vary between legal and non-legal, as well as other opportunities that do not fit the definition of staff or teaching/research fellowships. Some of the following opportunities are also project fellowships, but they do not have a specific legal goal as their purpose.

(Public Interest Handbook, pp. 25-26).