Legal aid fellowships give young lawyers inclined toward public service the experience and support they need. There’s no better example than the Skadden Fellows program. For 27 years the firm has underwritten the salaries of young lawyers working full-time for nonprofit legal groups. Since 1988 Skadden has supported 733 fellows, and it’s aiding 28 more this year. According to public filings by the Skadden Foundation, the firm spent $3.4 million in 2013 to support fellows, or 0.15 percent of Skadden’s $2.23 billion of revenue that year.
When Skadden started this fellowship program, it hoped other firms would follow its lead, but none has come close to Skadden’s commitment. David Stern, executive director of the fellowship program Equal Justice Works, suspects that Skadden set the bar so high with such an ambitious program that others were reluctant to create a similar program. Instead, some firms support two-year fellowships through Equal Justice Works, at a cost of $56,000 per fellow per year.
