Ford Foundation Law School Public Interest Fellowships

The Ford Foundation Law School Public Interest Fellowship Program supports first- and second-year law students at Harvard Law School, as well as New York University, Stanford, and Yale Law Schools.

Description

Ford Fellows participate in a 10-week summer internship at a Ford grantee organization whose work focuses broadly on legal analysis, litigation, and public policy advocacy. Twenty fellowships will be awarded to Harvard Law School students for summer 2014. The fellowship carries a stipend of $9,750.

Working closely with lawyers and advocates, fellows gain exposure to a variety of  practice settings and issue areas including reproductive rights, civil rights, gay, lesbian, and transgender rights, immigrants’ rights, prisoner and ex-offenders’ rights, voting rights, children’s rights, and other areas of concern with respect to social justice and equity. 

In September 2013, the Ford Foundation announced it will extend the Ford Foundation Law School Public Interest Fellowship program to include post-graduate fellowships. Three post-graduate fellowships will be awarded to Harvard Law School students this year. The post-graduate fellowship supports work with a Ford grantee organization with a base salary of $45,000 and benefits.

The fellowship program is a part of the Ford Foundation's Social Justice Fellowships Initiative. In 2013, the inaugural year of the program, the Ford Foundation Law School Public Interest Fellowship connected 100 law school students with grantee organizations across the United States and around the world. Ford Fellows will gather in fall 2013 for the first annual Ford Foundation Public Interest Law School Symposium at the Ford Foundation Headquarters in New York.

Eligibility

First- and second-year students are eligible for this fellowship.

Participating Grantee Organizations

Information about the participating Ford Foundation grantee organizations is available through the password-protected website, www.fordlawfellowships.org. Contact OPIA at opia@law.harvard.edu to request the Harvard Law School user name and password.

Application Requirements

Applicants must submit:

•   Application form, including ranked list of up to five Ford grantee organizations where you would like to complete your fellowship
  • For organizations with separate locations, each location counts as a separate organization for purposes of your ranking. A student’s chances of successfully matching with an organization increases with the number of organizations ranked. 
• Cover letters tailored to each organization to which you are applying
• Resume
• A personal statement of no more than 750 word, addressing the following questions:
  • Why do you want to participate in the Ford Foundation Law School Public Interest Fellowship program?
  • What do you want to accomplish as a Ford Fellow in summer 2014?
  • What examples of past leadership, or potential for future leadership, make you a competitive candidate for the Ford Foundation Law School Public Interest Fellowship?
• Unofficial law school transcript (second-year law students only; first year law students do not need to submit a transcript)

Application Instructions 

Deadline for second-year law students: Monday, September 30, 2013 at 12 p.m. (noon).

Deadline for first-year law students: Friday, December 6, 2013, at 12p.m. (noon).

All application materials should be submitted by email to opia@law.harvard.edu. Materials should be attached as separate PDFs. Each file should be named as follows:

•  Application form and ranked list of up to five grantee organizations: FirstName_LastName_application
• Cover letters: FirstName_LastName_jobcode
  • NOTE: You must submit a separate cover letter in PDF for each organization you are applying to. For organizations with separate locations, each location counts as a separate organization for purposes of your ranking.You may submit up to five separate cover letters.  The cover letters should be named as FirstName_LastName_job code. Job codes can be found at www.fordlawfellowships.org.
• Resume: FirstName_LastName_resume
• Personal statement: FirstName_LastName_personalstatement
• Law school transcript (second-year students only): FirstName_LastName_transcript

Harvard Law School applicants must also submit a hard copy of all application materials to the Bernard Koteen Office of Public Interest (Wasserstein Hall, Suite 4039).

Placements

A selection committee reviews all applications for the Ford Foundation Law School Public Interest Fellowship, and selects the 20 Harvard Law School students who will receive a summer fellowship.

Fellows are placed at a Ford grantee organization through a matching process which takes into account a fellow’s ranking of organizations as well as an organization’s ranking of fellows whose applications they reviewed.

Each fellow’s application materials are forwarded to the grantee organizations ranked in his or her application. Organizations will receive student applications (resume and cover letter only; organizations will not receive a student’s personal statement, ranked list, or transcript). Organizations may wish to conduct interviews.

Every effort will be made to match selected students with one of their ranked organizations. In the event a student is not matched, he or she will have the option to rank additional organizations to secure a placement. By submitting this application, the applicant agrees to accept an offer from any of his or her ranked choices. 

Application Timeline 

Further Information for Applicants

The Ford Foundation Law School Public Interest Fellowship is an opportunity to work at organizations around the globe and to become involved in a cohort of fellows at HLS and beyond.  

If you apply for the fellowship, be sure that your selected organizations match the kind of work you want to explore during your 1L or 2L summer. Students are encouraged to discuss their interest in the program and their application materials with an OPIA advisor before applying.

For information on how the Ford Foundation Law School Public Interest Fellowship affects the Student Contribution from Summer Income and Harvard Law School financial aid, please refer to the HLS Student Financial Services website.

Program Requirements

Students selected to participate in the Ford Foundation Law School Fellows participate in activities that enhance their connections with other fellows, and assist in the development of the program.

Activities include a series of required reading and response papers. Fellows also participate in an annual symposium, held at the Ford Foundation in New York, and assist with recruitment of fellows for the following year.

Past Ford Fellows from Harvard Law School

See Helios for reviews of host organizations by HLS students.