The Urban Justice Center is particularly proud of our successful sponsorship, to date, of 23 public interest law fellowship candidates, who have been awarded echoing green Public Service Fellowships, Skadden Fellowships, Soros Justice Fellowships, Equal Justice Works Fellowships, Open Society Institute New York City Community Fellowships, an Arthur Liman Public Interest Fellowship, a Kirkland & Ellis Fellowship, a Berkeley Law Fellowship, and a Tom Steel Fellowship.

Fellows bring enthusiasm, commitment, and creativity to our advocacy efforts, and we thank their sponsors for supporting their cutting-edge legal work. We welcome inquiries from law students and judicial law clerks who are interested in applying for fellowships, and are pleased to work with you to develop ideas and proposals.

Contact us at fellowships@urbanjustice.org to discuss your interest in working with us.

Fellowship Opportunities with the Community Development Project

The Urban Justice Center announces the opportunity to apply for sponsorship by the Community Development Project (CDP) for fellowship opportunities for employment in the fall of 2009 (applications due fall 2008).

The Community Development Project is seeking prospective third-year law students and recent law graduates currently in clerkships or with clerkships beginning in the fall to sponsor for public interest fellowships, including the Skadden, Equal Justice Works Fellowship, Kirkland & Ellis Fellowship and the Liman Fellowship. We are looking, in particular, for fellowship applicants interested in providing legal services in the areas of housing, consumer debt, economic development, workers' rights, right-to-organize litigation, or zoning enforcement and land use.

The mission of CDP is to provide legal support to community-based and grass-roots organizations throughout New York City. The project assists these organizations in advancing their organizing goals, and provides legal support in the form of litigation, transactional assistance and technical advocacy support. CDP currently works with grass-roots groups on low-income housing issues, workers' rights, immigrant rights, environmental justice, and community economic development projects. CDP also assists groups in the areas of non-profit law, corporate governance, and tax law, as well as helping groups expand their programs and services. (For more information about our work, please consult the CDP's pages on the Urban Justice Center web-site by clicking here.)

QUALIFICATIONS

Applicants with experience working with, in, or on behalf of community-based organizations are strongly encouraged to apply. Applicants of color and applicants with foreign language abilities, particularly Spanish, East Asian and South Asian languages, are also strongly encouraged to apply.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

Interested applicants who are eligible for the fellowships described above (i.e., prospective third-year law students, recent law graduates currently in clerkships or those with clerkships beginning in the fall), should send a resume and cover letter, including a brief description of their area of interest and/or proposed project. Applicants should show a basic familiarity with the fellowship opportunities available and the requirements of each. Please note: this is not a job posting. General application materials will not be considered. Send the requested documents by e-mail or regular mail postmarked by June 30, 2008 to mbiklen@urbanjustice.org or Molly Biklen, c/o Urban Justice Center, 123 William Street 16th Floor, New York, NY 10038. Please submit inquiries by e-mail only to mbiklen@urbanjustice.org. Applicants must either be admitted to the New York Bar, or sitting for the New York Bar in July 2008 or 2009.

Fellowship Applicants - Community Development Project

MENTAL HEALTH PROJECT SEEKS FELLOWSHIP APPLICANTS

The Mental Health Project of the Urban Justice Center is a 15-person interdisciplinary group of organizers, advocates, social workers, and lawyers serving low-income people with psychiatric disabilities in New York City. We have benefited greatly from Skadden, Equal Justice Works, Kirkland and Ellis, and Open Society Institute fellows in the past, and seek fellowship applicants to sponsor in the upcoming year.

The Mental Health Project

Three tenets guide our work. First, we go to our clients–to hospital psychiatric wards, welfare centers, and residences for low-income people with psychiatric disabilities—rather than making them come to us. Second, our social workers, lawyers, and advocates work and learn together to provide holistic services to each of our clients. Third, based on our direct advocacy, we pursue systemic reform. Our interdisciplinary approach and combination of direct services and systemic advocacy have yielded several groundbreaking reform efforts covered extensively by the New York Times and other media, including:

• Koskinas v. New York City Health and Hospitals Corp., a class action requiring hospitals to ensure that patients discharged from psychiatric wards have adequate government benefits, housing, and outpatient treatment (called "discharge planning");
• Brad H. v. City of New York, a class action requiring New York City jails to provide discharge planning to led to the 25,000 people with psychiatric disabilities released each year from city jails instead of dumping them in Queens Plaza at 3 a.m. with no medication and a $3 metrocard; Harris v. Eggleston, a class action to force New York City to reinstate the food stamps of over 100,000 people with disabilities who lost them due to a computer glitch when they were approved for SSI (the federal disability benefit for poor people); and
• Civil Rights Complaint against the New York City Human Resources Agency ("HRA"), a multi-complainant, multi-agency administrative complaint to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights claiming that HRA, the city welfare agency, completely fails to accommodate people with psychiatric disabilities, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Interested applicants should visit the Mental Health Project by clicking here.

The Application Process

We will review applications on a rolling basis, but we highly recommend sending us materials as soon as possible because several fellowship programs have deadlines in early September.

Applicants should first research the fellowships they would like to apply for. We suggest Echoing Green, Skadden, Equal Justice, the Soros Justice Advocacy, Senior and Media Fellowships Program, and New Voices Fellowships. This is not a complete list; several fellowships are available only to graduates of certain schools, e.g. Kirkland and Ellis for Columbia and NYU graduates and Arthur Liman for Yale graduates.

To apply for sponsorship from the Mental Health Project, email your resume, a list of the fellowships for which you seek sponsorship, and a one-page description of your project to wlienhard@urbanjustice.org. Note that while we are open to all proposals, we are particularly interested in projects concerning:

1. Reasonable accommodations for people with psychiatric disabilities in the welfare system;
2. Application of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Tennessee v. Lane to the New York City Civil Courts, particularly Housing Court
3. Eviction cases in which the tenant's psychiatric disability is strongly implicated in the action against him or her, such as: 1) nuisance cases in which the behavior complained of is related to psychiatric disability in some manner; 2) New York City Housing Authority evictions based on drug activity in which the tenant's disability played a role; or 3) "Collyer's" cases, involving tenants whose psychiatric disability causes them to fill their apartments from wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with items collected for years;
4. Obtaining public benefits such as Medicaid, Food Stamps, Public Assistance, and SSI for people with psychiatric disabilities in hospitals, prisons, jails, or other institutions before they are discharged; or
5. Difficulties faced by parents with psychiatric disabilities in Family Court.

The ability to speak Spanish and professional or personal experience with the mental health system are strong plusses. The Urban Justice Center is an equal opportunity employer. Mental health consumers, people with disabilities, people of color, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-gendered people are encouraged to apply.

After we have selected an applicant to sponsor, we will work with the applicant to submit fellowship proposals. Due to the high volume of applications and our limited resources, we cannot respond to telephone or email inquiries or send rejection letters.

Fellowship Applicants - Mental Health Project

Non-Discrimination Policy

The Urban Justice Center does not discriminate against any applicant on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, physical or mental disability, political belief, marital status, veteran status, age, gender identity, or sexual orientation.