Postgraduate Legal Fellowship Sponsorship Opportunity - Bronx Legal. Services

Bronx Legal Services seeks applicants to sponsor for a Skadden, Equal Justice Works, or Kirkland & Ellis Fellowship opportunity beginning Fall 2027. You must be a law school graduate at the time the fellowship commences. Your application must include a detailed project proposal, which fits within one of the priority areas discussed below. Additional application requirements are discussed below. Specifically, we are seeking fellowship applicants for the Neighborhood Stabilization Project, Education Law Unit, Immigration Rights and Advocacy Project, Public Benefits Unit and LGBTQ+ Advocacy Project.

Bronx Legal Services, the Bronx office of Legal Services NYC, is the largest provider of free civil legal services in the borough, and one of the largest single legal services offices in New York City. Our mission is to advance society's promise to its most vulnerable members that all are entitled to equal access to justice through our legal system.

Our Education Law Unit assists hundreds of New York City schoolchildren and their families each year to ensure access to quality education through our holistic model of representation. We represent students who are most at-risk and in need of advocacy, including students living in poverty, students with disabilities, students facing exclusionary discipline, English Language Learners (“ELL”s), and other vulnerable student populations and their families. We assist families with a host of education issues including special education services and placement, disciplinary proceedings, compensatory educational services, and language access.

In addition to representing individual students and their families, we also seek to address systemic issues impacting the clients we serve. Through litigation, advocacy, education, and collaboration, we seek to eliminate the school to prison pipeline, promote social, emotional, and mental health support and inclusive environments in schools, and foster the development of healing centered schools ((https://www.legalservicesnyc.org/resources/how-can-i-help-my-school-become-more-trauma-informed/).

The Unit is interested in working with a potential fellow to create a project at the intersection of discipline and disability in schools. A potential project could involve advocacy around the manifestation determination review process and other protective efforts to lessen the disproportionate imposition of exclusionary discipline on students with disabilities.

Our Neighborhood Stabilization Project—is a unit that houses two practice groups, Homeowner Preservation and Community Economic Development (“CED”), both practice groups provide free legal assistance to low to middle income Bronx residents with the goal of preserving intergenerational wealth, preventing displacement, and creating opportunity for communities suffering from economic inequality and racial disparities.

Our Community Economic Development (“CED”) practice group offers legal assistance to community groups, not-for-profit organizations, low-income housing cooperatives, and small and micro businesses on transactional matters. We work to fortify historically marginalized communities by assisting with among other things, corporate formation, tax-exempt status, commercial leases, and representation in special construction financing transactions with New York City governmental agencies, to preserve affordable housing, expand economic opportunities to communities of color, and protect the diversity of the neighborhoods we serve. Recent matters include:

Representing the Board of a 48-Unit, low income, limited equity, cooperative in obtaining over $12 million in construction financing from the New York City Department of Housing and Preservation and Development (“HPD”) and a private lender to perform much needed repairs and renovations, preserving important affordable housing stock for future generations.

Advising a community-based group on Community Land Trust board governance issues and assisting with the revision of organization’s By-laws.

Assisting a community-based group to become a 501(c) (3) a not-for-profit corporation for the purpose of assisting Bronx communities in creating, implementing, and maintaining, an emergency response and disaster plan.

The Neighborhood Stabilization Project seeks to sponsor a rising third-year law student or a recent law school graduate with a judicial clerkship in its CED practice. Interested applicants should have a proposed project related to any one of the following core community economic development issues: neighborhood revitalization, preserving affordable housing, building wealth, or encouraging entrepreneurship.

Our Immigrant Rights and Advocacy Project represents low-income Bronx immigrants in their immigration matters. The unit is an interdisciplinary team comprised of attorneys, social workers, BIA accredited representatives and paralegals. The unit represents people on applications for U and T nonimmigrant status, VAWA self-petitions, battered spouse waivers, asylum, petitions for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (“SIJS”), lawful permanent residency, citizenship, family-based petitions, waivers of inadmissibility, consular processing, and family court matters in connection with SIJS petitions. The unit also conducts trainings in immigration law for community members and advocates throughout the Bronx and facilitates the Bronx Immigration Partnership ( https://static1.squarespace.com/static/566c1f060e4c116bdc024131/t/56aa557c25981de521971dc6/1454003580660/print_eng.pdf)

We seek project proposals in areas such as addressing community education, responding to increased immigration law enforcement and representing immigrant survivors of violence on their immigration matters.

Our Public Benefits Unit (“PBU”) provides comprehensive legal assistance on a full spectrum of benefits issues, including cash public assistance, SNAP, WIC, Access-a-Ride, and other city- and state-administered benefits. Unique among legal services, our PBU also provides assistance with health advocacy and health law issues, primarily Medicaid and home care services to ensure that people can age in place as an alternative to institutionalization. We provide representation in administrative hearings as well as in appeals in state courts. Our focus is on ensuring equal access to benefits for all low-income New Yorkers, and we bring litigation to challenge systems, laws, and policies that trap unlawfully or unfairly trap people in poverty. Embedded in our PBU is our Medical-Legal Partnership (“MLP”). Our MLP provides comprehensive legal assistance to patients at a federally-qualified health center located in the South Bronx. We invite projects that focus on any issue relevant to public benefits, including our MLP, such as:

 Expanding our MLP to work on a specific legal issue (e.g., home care denials) and/or for a specific audience or “population” (e.g., people in their perinatal period, older adults)

 Challenging the substantial delays and decrease in SNAP and public health insurance due to the newly-changed and newly-created (for Medicaid) “work rules”

Our LGBTQ+ Advocacy Project handles individual cases and identifies systemic issues affecting these communities. We handle a wide variety of matters in a general practice model including public benefits, family, divorce, domestic/intimate partner violence, health, and education matters. We also represent clients on discrimination claims before the Commission on Human Rights. Our Project coordinates with LSNYC's Citywide LGBTQ+ Project and works closely with CBOs throughout the City who work with LGBTQ‐identified people. We invite projects that focus on any legal issue or barrier facing low-income Bronxites who identify as LGBTQ+, with a preference for projects that focus on a legal issue and/or specific “populations” under the LGBTQ+ umbrella (e.g., people who identify as TGNC).

Starting salary will be no less than $88,181.00. Salary will increase according to the Collective Bargaining agreement during the course of the Fellowship.

LSNYC offers one of the most generous benefit packages to staff among legal services providers, including:

50% remote work schedule

exceptional healthcare, dental insurance, a vision plan

23 vacation days per year (increasing to 28 days after the first year)

18 sick days per year, 7 personal days

Student Loan Repayment Assistance Program

financial assistance for adoption, surrogacy, and infertility treatments

financial assistance for gender affirming care

generous 403(b) retirement plan"

Spanish helpful and valued, but not required.