Addressing a Growing Need

Earlier this year, the Minneapolis-based Great North Innocence Project (GNIP), which frees people convicted of crimes they did not commit and prevents wrongful convictions, faced a significant budget setback. The Department of Justice rescinded a three-year $600,000 federal grant, which the organization planned to use to support its legal staff. An increase in staff over the last five years has led to more than doubling the number of wrongfully convicted people they helped to exonerate.

As the organization looks to raise the lost grant money elsewhere, one saving grace came in the form of recent Minnesota Law grad Nate Bander ’25, a Robina Post-graduate Fellow. Until this year, the Law School has selected one recent graduate for the public interest fellowship. Funded by philanthropy, these fellowships provide funding for full-time work in a legal or policy role at a nonprofit or government agency. This year, three fellows were selected to address the growing need at many organizations across the country.

GNIP’s executive director, Sara Jones ’88, says that Bander, who served as a law clerk at GNIP last year, was able to hit the ground running. He’s working on specific innocence cases with other lawyers as well as doing legislative policy work in Minnesota and the Dakotas. With previous experience as a policy and legislative affairs intern for Governor Tim Walz, the position was a perfect fit for Bander.

“Nate’s work with us as a clerk was fantastic and really shone,” Jones says. “That’s why we were interested in him coming back as a Robina fellow. And because he’s a fellow, of course, funding for his position comes through the fellowship instead of through our budget.” It enables GNIP to achieve more with less at a crucial time in its growth.

For Bander, the opportunity is also a dream come true. Prior to law school, the Woodbury, Minnesota, native worked in marketing at a private school. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 prompted Bander to read the book Just Mercy by the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson, and to volunteer with the Minnesota Freedom Fund. After taking some time off to travel and to consider what he wanted to do with his abilities, Bander decided that law school was the best way for him to make a difference.

“It’s a wild stroke of luck that in my first job out of law school, I’ll be working in the field that was the reason I wanted to go to law school in the first place,” Bander says.

The Robina Postgraduate Fellowship has been offered at Minnesota Law for more than 13 years. It recognizes the need for greater funding for recent graduates committed to public interest legal work, and the funding is meant to be responsive to the specific needs of the time.

Interested students must apply jointly for the fellowship with an organization that agrees to host them and provide benefits and additional wages if necessary. Fellows have worked at a range of organizations over the years, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, American Red Cross, Earthjustice, Brennan Center for Justice, Legal Rights Center, Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, National Immigrant Justice Center, and Volunteer Lawyers Network.

Ruth Isaacson, Minnesota Law’s assistant director of public interest, says the postgraduate fellowship is a capstone of sorts for students who have taken advantage of all the Law School has to offer in public interest work. This includes coursework, like a class on wrongful convictions taught by GNIP legal director Jim Mayer ’01. It also consists of the Robina Public Interest Scholars Program for current students, summer funding for unpaid public interest work, and several public interest-focused law clinics, including GNIP’s Innocence Clinic, along with public interest externships and other practical skills courses.

As the need for greater funding has increased at many public interest organizations, student commitment to public interest work has also gone up. Isaacson says there was a flood of students who reached out in the spring when the Law School announced that three fellows would be selected.

“It’s a challenging time to be a public interest lawyer,” Isaacson says. “And this is something concrete that we can offer.”

The two other 2025 fellows are Frank De Jong ’25, who will join Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, where he worked as a law clerk for two years during law school, and Rose Lewis ’25, who is working on consumer rights and economic justice at the Los Angeles-based organization Public Counsel.

De Jong initially came to the University of Minnesota to pursue environmental law. He quickly discovered that legal aid was better suited to his interests. While working at the Law School’s Community Lawyering Clinic, he got acquainted with Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, which hosts the clinic. As a Robina fellow, he’ll continue the work he started there and add on more duties as a staff attorney.

Lewis entered Minnesota Law knowing she wanted to pursue public interest work, but wasn’t sure what form it would take. Originally, she thought she’d end up prosecuting white-collar crime. Then she worked for the Federal Public Defender’s Office and loved it. Lewis was also the student director of the Law School’s Gun Violence Prevention Clinic. Her myriad experiences helped Lewis discover her passion for working directly with clients in low-income communities.

At Public Counsel, Lewis will assist with litigation against practices such as predatory lending and help navigate consumer debt issues. It’s all part of an effort to expand protections for low-income consumers.

“Public Counsel really allowed me to combine my interest in doing expansive, high-impact litigation with client-centered, direct representation,” Lewis says. “I always wanted to do what I can to make a meaningful difference in the world and be part of the change.”