On the surface, little seems to have changed since George Floyd’s murder ignited massive racial-justice protests last year. Police violence against Black and brown people remains a near daily occurrence. Legislative efforts to suppress voter turnout and disenfranchise people of color have grown in number and intensity. And policy makers and school boards are restricting teachers’ ability to discuss our nation’s legacy of slavery and systemic racism.
In reality, the racial reckoning of 2020 was just the first step in a battle that is now playing out in courtrooms and legislatures across the country. It is in those arenas — where unconstitutional practices are challenged and new policies crafted — that the changes demanded by protesters will ultimately become law.
Civil-rights lawyers are the linchpin of this work. In the last year, they have filed dozens of lawsuits to fight voter suppression laws in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and other states. They have worked with community leaders, public-health experts, and advocates to create policies to reduce police violence and have filed lawsuits to block policies that perpetuate inequity in education. They are now examining the spate of local resolutions and laws that prevent classroom discussions about race and LGBTQ issues.
These lawyers provide the legal foundation for advocates and nonprofit organizations fighting on the ground for racial justice. But unless more funding is available to support their training and retention, there won’t be enough of them to sustain the ongoing battle.
One-third of law students say they entered law school to “advocate for social change,” according to the American Bar Association, but only 7 percent of 2020 graduates took positions in public-interest law — a slight increase from previous years. The National Center for Access to Justice has documented a significant shortage of legal-aid lawyer, finding that nearly half of states have fewer than one civil-legal-aid lawyer for every 10,000 people living below 200 percent of the poverty line.
The reason for these shortages is clear. With law-school debt averaging $160,000, most graduates can’t afford to take public-interest jobs that have starting salaries in the $48,000 to $58,300 range. By comparison, first-year associates at private law firms make $165,000 on average. In a 2020 survey conducted by the American Bar Association, one-third of lawyers said student loans forced them to choose a career path different from the one they originally intended.
Many prestigious and well-funded law schools have loan-repayment assistance programs that offer financial aid in the form of forgivable loans to graduates who choose to pursue public-service law. But such arrangements are much harder to come by at less well-endowed schools, many of which attract students of color, immigrants, and older part-time students whose career choices are constrained by prohibitive debt.
We believe this is an area where philanthropy can make a real difference. By supporting a range of innovative approaches, grant makers can significantly expand our nation’s army of civil-rights and public-service lawyers. Here are a few strategies to consider:
Fund civil-rights-law scholarships. In January, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund launched the Marshall-Motley Scholars Program, which offers free tuition and room and board, summer internships, and postgraduate fellowships to students who commit to at least eight years of civil-rights work in the South. With foundation investments, scholarship programs like this one, which currently supports 10 students, could expand their reach and help more students become civil-rights lawyers.
Similar scholarship efforts can also go directly to individual law schools. For example, with a $10 million grant from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation, Howard University recently launched a public-service scholarship program that awards full tuition to incoming students with strong academic credentials committed to careers in public-service law.
Invest in public-interest centers. Law school public-interest centers provide students with educational opportunities and work experiences that can lead directly to careers in social-justice law. But the depth and breadth of these programs vary widely.
Some schools have well-funded centers that provide direct work experience on a range of social-justice issues such as human rights, gender and sexuality, and climate change. At Northeastern University’s Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration, law-student volunteers interested in immigration rights meet with immigrants held in ICE detention facilities, perform intake on incidents of hate and harassment, organize training sessions, and conduct research and discovery.
But programs of this type are expensive and unavailable at most law schools, making the development and expansion of these centers ripe for philanthropic investment.
Develop fellowships programs. Many nonprofits offer public-interest-law fellowships, but low compensation — typically $30,000 to $65,000 — makes them out of reach for graduates who need to pay off large student loans. These fellowship programs would benefit tremendously from philanthropic support.
One recent example is the Lynn Walker Huntley Social Justice Fellowship, recently launched by the Southern Education Foundation and named for a mutual friend and colleague of the three of us. The goal of the fellowship is to identify and train the next generation of leaders in civil-rights law who can follow in the footsteps of leaders like Lynn Walker Huntley, who served as a lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, led the Ford Foundation’s Rights and Social Justice Program, and became the first female president of the Southern Education Foundation. By offering a sizable stipend, the fellowship helps to offset the high cost of student loans while providing legal talent to nonprofits. It is the kind of model that could be funded and copied at other civil-rights-focused organizations.
Foundations can also support fellowship programs through organizations such as Equal Justice Works, which provides fellowships for lawyers and law students to work at legal-services organizations. Through support from foundations, as well as law firms, corporations, and individual donors, the organization provides salaries, loan-repayment assistance, and leadership training for attorneys who provide free legal counsel in civil cases to low-income individuals who cannot afford a lawyer.
In this moment, we face a great opportunity to make progress on racial justice and equity — but also major barriers. The strategic acumen and legal knowledge of well-trained civil-rights attorneys is vital to move the ball forward. Thousands of talented young lawyers are ready to answer the call. We just need to provide them with the support necessary to follow their career path of choice.
