Fellowship Posting (Fall 2026): Bronx Legal Services

Bronx Legal Services seeks applicants to sponsor for a Skadden and possibly other Fellowship opportunities beginning Fall 2026. 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, and our Housing Projects.

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.
• Assisting a community-based group become a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation and be the first organization to operate a free boxing gym and community center focused on youth in the Bronx
• Advising a community-based group on Community Land Trust board governance issues and assisting with the revision of organization’s By-laws.
• Assisting small business owner in commercial lease dispute; obtained settlement for restaurateur that allowed her to exit lease without penalty and allowed her to remove restaurant equipment from location.
• 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 housing practice is comprised of two units: Universal Access to Counsel (UAC) and Tenants’ Rights Coalition (TRC). Both units represent tenants in housing court, administrative forums, appellate courts, and other state and federal courts. UAC primarily represents individuals facing eviction while TRC focuses on group representation of tenants seeking improved housing conditions, rent reductions due to poor housing conditions, and opposing efforts by landlords to obtain approvals for building-wide rent increases.

The housing practice seeks fellowship applicants interested in a project focusing on the rights of tenants in supportive housing. Such a project could work with both individual supportive housing tenants and groups of supportive housing tenants and could focus on issues including the obligation of supportive housing providers to work with tenants to avoid eviction proceedings; rights of supportive housing tenants to reasonable accommodations, fair rules regarding transfers, and safe and habitable apartments; and the rights of supportive housing applicants to a fair application process.

Skadden Fellowships provide a salary of $68,000 and benefits for two years to recipients. The fellowship also includes a stipend for attending relevant legal conferences, and the foundation will reimburse the sponsoring organization for the cost of certain benefits like medical, dental, and life insurance. Salary details are posted here (https://www.skaddenfellowships.org/applicant).

Other fellowships may differ slightly, but starting salary will be no less than $65,000.00

As per the LSNYC website (https://www.legalservicesnyc.org/news/legal-services-nyc-lssa-agree-on-new-3-year-contract-after-months-of-bargaining/) LSNYC continues to offer 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