Established in 2017, the Barbara Schatz Fellowship Fund supports PILnet’s public interest law fellowship program, which provides young lawyers the opportunity to employ innovative legal means to protect the marginalized, disenfranchised, and poor. Named after PILnet’s founding board chair Barbara Schatz, the fund provides financial support for young lawyers from around the world to work at PILnet’s offices for a year alongside a global network of skilled private and public interest lawyers. The fellowship offers recent graduates a unique experience to put the powerful tools and techniques developed by corporate lawyers to work to protect and advance the public interest in the face of globalization, climate change, inequality, and mass migration.
Barbara Schatz has been instrumental in shaping the young minds of public interest and human rights advocates. Barbara served as PILnet’s board chair from 2006 to 2017 and has been involved with PILnet from its early days as a project at Columbia University from 1998. A clinical professor of law at Columbia University Law School, she continues to serve on PILnet’s board as well as several other non-profits, including Trickle Up and the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York, as well as on the emeritus board of Human Rights First, which she co-founded. Barbara has taught and consulted with law faculties in China, Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Poland, and Hungary, among others in connection with their efforts to establish clinical legal education programs.
We are pleased to honor Barbara’s legacy and continued commitment to transforming the lives and careers of public interest advocates here.
Donate to the Fund here.
