Legal Fellowship Sponsorship

About the Legal Aid Justice Center:

The Legal Aid Justice Center is a nationally recognized, non-profit organization that partners with communities and clients to fight for racial, social, and economic justice. We understand that the harms our clients endure are inextricably linked to overarching systems of injustice. Together we are dismantling those systems through a combination of community organizing, litigation, policy advocacy, public relations, and individual legal services.  

Very recently, we helped lead the fight to reform Virginia’s unemployment insurance system including advocacy that resulted in the distribution of over $1 billion in illegally withheld payments to over 160,000 Virginians. During the pandemic, we helped hundreds of families avoid eviction through a combination of legal representation and help accessing rent relief funds. Our staff are on the front lines of some of the most important anti-poverty fights happening today.  

Founded in 1967, LAJC has offices in Charlottesville, Richmond, Petersburg, and Falls Church and provides services under six key program areas: Civil Rights & Racial Justice, Economic Justice, Youth Justice, Health Justice, Immigrant Justice, and Worker Justice. For more information, visit www.justice4all.org. 

About the Position:

LAJC is seeking to host one or more recent law graduates as public service fellows in one of our three main offices in Virginia (Richmond, Falls Church, or Charlottesville). Fellowship candidates must be rising third-year law students, third-year law students, or recent law school graduates, with a demonstrated record of public service and a willingness to apply for public interest legal fellowships. This position depends on the candidate obtaining fellowship funding from a private funding entity in partnership with LAJC.

In addition to serving clients with their legal needs, past fellows have had the opportunity to assist with clinical supervision, staff high impact cases with nationwide implications, engage in movement lawyering and community organizing, and participate in legislative and other policy advocacy. 

Depending on individual interest and location preference, the fellow may work on various poverty law issues, such as:  access to public benefits; housing access and affordability; consumer protection; workers’ rights; healthcare and rights of people with disabilities; immigrants’ rights; access to education and civil rights enforcement in schools; children’s mental health rights; juvenile legal system involvement and the rights of incarcerated children; and the criminalization of poverty through policies and practices that target people because of poverty and race. However, the position ultimately entails carrying out the work as proposed in the candidate’s fellowship application according to the terms and requirements of the fellowship. 

Applicants should view this position as a four-part process:

First, selected applicants will be offered an interview with a small team of LAJC staff. The interview will be roughly 1-hour and will focus primarily on the logistics of the proposal.
Second, after all applicants are interviewed, selected applicants will work with LAJC to develop their fellowship application materials, usually requiring the applicant to describe the work they aim to undertake at LAJC through the fellowship. This phase of the process is an ongoing conversation between the applicant and members of LAJC’s leadership team wherein the applicant describes the structure and mechanics for their proposed work, receives feedback from LAJC based on its needs and the dynamics of the issue(s) the work aims to address.
Third, upon reaching consensus as to the project proposal, the applicant with LAJC support, will prepare and submit the required materials to one or more public interest law fellowship funding entities for review. LAJC and the applicant will maintain their relationship throughout this second application phase so that LAJC can continue to support the applicant’s candidacy for this outside funding.

Finally, if successful, fellows will begin their fellowship at LAJC in September 2025. 

Areas of Particular Interest to LAJC

Civil Rights & Racial Program (in Richmond and Charlottesville:

Pretrial justice.
Fines and fees.
Conditions of confinement.
Statewide implementation in July 2025 of Virginia's first record sealing legislation.

Housing & Consumer Justice Program:

Manufactured home preservation (centered in NoVA, but providing resources to rest of state).
Affordable housing preservation in partnership with one or more community partners (any location).
Fair housing impact advocacy in NoVA or Richmond.

Worker Justice Program:

H-2B migrant worker and anti-labor trafficking advocacy.

Racial Equity: Promote racial equity across all dimensions, including within LAJC, by doing the following:

Helping to recruit, retain, and support both staff and leadership that reflect the racial composition of our community.
Cultivating respect for the work of and expanding resources for non-attorney staff that are disproportionately people of color. 
Creating spaces for staff to discuss issues of racial, gender, and all other issues of marginalization.
Pushing for institutional and cultural changes by management, the board, and staff to further promote racial equity.