As Equal Justice Works Fellows, Ben Gleekel ’23 and Lucy Chin ’24 are committed to making a difference in their communities. With backing from Equal Justice Works (EJW), the nation’s largest nonprofit supporting law students and lawyers in public interest legal careers, Gleekel is working in immigration law, while Chin is focused on criminal justice reform issues.
Amanda Furst, assistant dean and chief of staff at Minnesota Law, is a former EJW fellow who has served on the organization’s advisory committee. She says the fellowship is one of the country’s most prestigious awards in public interest law.
“The Law School is committed to preparing students to tackle some of the biggest challenges of our time,” says Furst, who notes that being an EJW fellow helps jumpstart careers and provides a path for future leaders. “It’s especially exciting to see recent graduates make an impact immediately after graduation as EJW fellows.”
Charting their Paths
Gleekel and Chin are part of EJW’s Design-Your-Own Fellowship program, which allows applicants to choose the cause or community in which they want to work. To receive the highly competitive, two-year fellowship, applicants partner with a host organization, develop a project to fill an unmet public interest need, and then secure a sponsorship with the help of EJW.
Gleekel is hosted by the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and sponsored by the 3M Company, with the support of Faegre, Drinker, Biddle & Reath. Immigrant Law Center provides legal services to low-income immigrants through legal clinics and policy reform.
“There are only a handful of people fully representing low-income immigrants in immigration court proceedings in Minnesota,” says Gleekel, who was also part of the Saeks Public Interest Residency Program that allowed him to work full-time at the Immigrant Law Center as a 3L. “It’s just not sustainable if we’re trying to help as many people as possible.”
This led Gleekel to suggest a change in operations. “My idea is to just focus on helping people where they’re at — with FaceTime with a lawyer for a day, you can help them get an application filed or help them at least learn their rights. Even though they don’t have a lawyer to represent them through the entire case, we may be able to increase their chances of not getting deported to a really dangerous situation, separated from their families, detained, or whatever could happen as a result of their case.”
Photo: Tony Nelson
Chin, hosted by The Legal Revolution and sponsored by Dorsey & Whitney LLP and U.S. Bank, works with currently or formerly incarcerated individuals on pardons, commutation, and resentencing cases; researching and writing in partnership with people who are justice-impacted; and making sure policy changes are implemented. “What I’ve come to appreciate with post-conviction work is it’s a way to correct for past injustices that folks have faced and to make sure that if a person has served time in prison their sentence doesn’t continue to disadvantage their experiences,” Chin says. “It’s about making sure that they have equal access to anything that someone who hasn’t been incarcerated would have access to, given that serving a sentence in prison is meant to be the punishment. There’s no reason these folks should be continually disadvantaged, which they currently are in many ways in our system. It’s a piece of the criminal justice reform puzzle that I hadn’t appreciated before coming to law school, and now I feel it is an important space
to affect change.”
Making a Difference
Minnesota Law has strong ties to EJW. Former dean Garry W. Jenkins served on the EJW board. James Chosy ’89 currently serves on the board and was honored with the organization’s Scales of Justice award last year. More than 30 alumni are former fellows, including Heather Abraham ’12, associate professor and director of the Civil Rights and Transparency Clinic at the University of Buffalo Law School; Andrea Jacoski ’16, associate director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law; and Anne Dutton ’17, senior counsel for the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies in San Francisco.
Verna L. Williams, CEO of EJW, says 92% of low-income people don’t get enough legal help. “That translates into millions of people not getting legal problems resolved or being on the wrong end of the legal stick,” she says. She says that supporting the EJW Fellows as they find their path in public interest law is vital.
“When I think that the vast majority of them are going to stay in this work, that’s exciting,” says Williams. “With their projects, they are so creative, entrepreneurial, and
dedicated to making them successful. They’re not cynical. They want to get in there, roll up their sleeves, and tackle the big problem.”
Ruth Isaacson, assistant director of public interest in the Law School’s Career Center, works closely with students on fellowship applications and says it’s a cause
for celebration when a student lands an EJW fellowship.
“The students who are ultimately awarded fellowships are among the top public interest students in the law school,” she says. “And that goes beyond just their GPAs; it also captures the nonnumerical credentials that make Minnesota Law students exceptional in terms of commitment to social justice and their involvement with the community.”