Youth Justice Alliance

Summary: We are creating a pathway from Title-1 high schools and underrepresented communities to law school by offering a four-year, paid YJA Fellowship that provides legal training, internship funding, mentorship, career guidance, and law school admissions support.

Our four-year program is intentionally planned to help address the most common barriers to the legal profession. The fellowship begins the first summer after high school graduation with an intensive residential Summer Institute that includes rigorous and relevant legal instruction from leading practitioners, visits to the courthouse for trial observations, meetings with local judges, and recreational programming for cohort bonding. For completing this training, fellows receive a $500 stipend. We also provide a $200 gift card for professional clothing so that every fellow can feel confident heading into a courtroom regardless of financial resources. The second summer, fellows earn $18 per hour during a judicial internship. The third summer, fellows earn a $20 per hour for an internship with a legal service non-profit. Finally, in the fourth summer, fellows receive $1,500 toward an LSAT course and LSAT exams. Between our summer programming, we offer career guidance, lunches with lawyers, mentorship, and cohort reunions.

We will produce law school candidates with experience working for legal nonprofits, serving under judges, and knowing how to succeed academically in law school. And when they inevitably face challenges our organization has not prepared them for, they can reach out to us, their nonprofit supervisor, their judge mentor, or one of our many other volunteers to answer their questions. Those relationships do not have an expiration date, nor does our support network.