Innovating indigent holistic defense: 2-year fellowship program
Is your law school looking for public defense fellowship programs?
Do you have law students looking for a career in public defense, abolition, and civil rights?
If so, please contact our CEO, Drew Willey, or Legal Case Manager, Kevin Coker, to hear more about partnering with Restoring Justice to place your graduates with us! We will be accepting three fellows each year from law schools across the country to come to Houston, TX to fight for freedom from the third largest jail in the country that needs more reform than anywhere else, given the Southern shadows of injustice that harm our fellow Houstonians most in need every day.
Our fellowship program will instill holistic and client-centered representation values and tools, allowing them to sustain their careers in public interest without burning out.
After the bar exam, law school graduates will receive the following opportunities during our 2-year full-time fellowship program:
Experience practicing holistic indigent criminal defense (incorporating expert legal representation, social service resource connecting, trauma-informed counseling, and community support together for the best services to clients possible)
Case-by-case hand-on training from dynamic national leaders in indigent defense
State of the art mitigation implementation into every case
Compelling and empathetic storytelling skills
Post-conviction advocacy exposure
System Impact project implementation
Peer mentoring exposure with future fellowship classes
Help applying to Gideon’s Promise Texas Future Indigent Defense Leaders 2-week client-centered public defense training
Help applying to a police accountability/civil rights training program
Experience working with local and national civil rights, advocacy, and community groups
Upon completion of the program, placement options for full-time employment and career advancement opportunities with our public defense and civil rights partner offices
And best of all - a full-time salary commiserate with market rates!
While this program is in its inaugural year, Restoring Justice has a proven track-record guiding law students in this work. We’ve managed a robust legal internship program since our founding. From that program, 85% of our legal interns stayed working in public defense full-time upon graduation.
Our purpose and focus of this program is culture change in the broad indigent defense community so that no accused person is left behind! For further information about the fellowship program within our Strategic Plan, please click here. Here are a few more details about the program:
Each fellowship will begin in September after the law school graduates have taken the bar exam and recovered. Their 2-year fellowship with us will follow a timeline that has been intentionally structured to allow a humble and loving progression of attorney growth for optimal implementation of true client-centered and holistic care for every single client they serve.
A couple points on the timeline also deserve deeper explanation here. After learning the hardships of holistic care during the first three months, their first legal assignments will be parole clients. Parole work is almost always mitigation-focused. The necessity to focus primarily on mitigation affects an attorney’s advocacy in a way that centers the client. Indigent defense innovation requires improved mitigation for any type of case. Therefore, parole work can necessarily instill holistic representation values for attorneys. This first step is a great service to people sentenced to prison and an incredible training tool to have new attorneys handle a parole case as their first legal assignment. Additionally, every defense attorney is required to advise clients on possible parole consequences, and this engagement allows them to experientially learn that advice to provide expert service to all our clients.
Starting at the end of their first year, each attorney will propose a System Impact Project. They will highlight the injustices felt strongest by those most in need in our system. We have previously been successful with projects for heightened discovery litigation and reducing jail phone costs, giving our team impact project experience that we can teach to the fellows. Formalizing a System Impact Project idea by every fellow would expand their views on the possible impacts they can make to the system, and will spark broader changes. Examples of project ideas that they could develop include:
Jail phone costs and communication costs minimization
Court-setting private consultations with in-custody clients (right now there is no chance to have private conversations with clients in custody during court, which is the most pertinent time our clients need advice)
Discovery/Disclosure Accountability
Restorative Justice/Community Courts
Civil Rights Initiative (aided by a current project with Civil Rights Corp.)
Family Defense
Charging Document/Intake System Legality
The fellows will work with the entire RJ team on their projects for oversight and guidance on how to identify and implement policy change ideas, including what partners to utilize and funding needs (cost) and opportunities (i.e., grants) for their chosen project. They will think broadly about how to incorporate fundraising and budgeting towards their goals and effecting change in the system, while also giving them higher exposure and leadership opportunities with our partners, strengthening our partnerships along the way. The projects necessarily involve identification and the combination of: impact litigation (lawsuits), policy work (educating elected officials/govt. service providers), and public advocacy (publicity campaigns, town halls, marches, and other actions). These formalized projects would also allow us to stay responsive to the most immediate and biggest needs of our clients while encouraging the fellows to explore long-term career opportunities beyond front-line representation. In their final year, the fellows will continue their client-centered and holistic representation, help mentor the new class of fellows, and implement their System Impact Project. Upon graduation from their two-year fellowship, they will always be a part of our community through ongoing alumni networking programs.
We are hoping our first fellowship class begins September 2023, so we are starting to recruit now!
Each fellow costs about $150,000/yr., or a total of $300,000 for their 2-year experience to remain committed to expert service, innovation, and highly skilled practitioners valued properly at relative market-rate.