PILnet welcomes and congratulates the new cohort of Fellows for 2018-2019. This year’s Fellows come from around the world having recently completed J.D. and LL.M. programs at distinguished universities such as Harvard University, Makerere University, UC Berkeley, University of Notre Dame, and Chinese University of Hong Kong. They will apply their interests in strategic litigation, prevention of torture, gender issues, good governance, corporate accountability, and anti-corruption law to advance PILnet’s mission to unlock law’s full potential to make it work for all.

PILnet’s Fellows Program provides an opportunity for recent law graduates to work in an emerging area of public interest lawyering that takes techniques historically used to benefit a powerful few and puts them to work for the most vulnerable. The program includes experiential learning in developing transactional lawyering approaches to public interest matters, complemented by workshops and classroom-style training carried out by leading legal academics and practitioners.

 

Introducing the 2018-2019 PILnet Fellows:

 

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Pictured: (counter clockwise from top left) Shan Helen Jiang (China), Anastassiya Miller (Kazakhstan), Eva Edline Murungi (Uganda), Sarah Yookyung Kim (South Korea), and Icarus Chan (Hong Kong)

Anastassiya Miller
Year: 2018
Home Location: Kostanay, Kazakhstan

Area of Advocacy: Accountability and transparency, strategic litigation, individual complaints to UN treaty bodies, prevention of torture and other forms of ill-treatment

Anastassiya Miller is a Kazakh human rights lawyer with more than 10 years of experience in the human rights field, focusing on strategic litigation nationally and internationally. Miller is a human rights trainer and specialist in the area of public control of closed facilities (pre-detention centers, prisons, mental hospitals, etc.). In 2015, she held an internship in Germany at the Institutfür Ostrecht, conducting research on various human rights issues in post-Soviet countries and drafting conclusions for the court. Miller graduated with an LL.M. degree in international human rights law from the University of Notre Dame in 2018.

Eva Edline Murungi
Year: 2018
Home Location: Kampala, Uganda

Area of Advocacy: Corporate accountability, responsible investment, access to credit and financial inclusion for sustainable development

Eva Edline Murungi is a Ugandan lawyer passionate about using transactional lawyering skills for the interest of the public. She is particularly interested in areas of responsible investment in project finance, corporate fraud and accountability, financial technology and its role in access to credit, and financial inclusion to achieve sustainable development. After completing her LL.B. degree (magna cum laude) at Makerere University, Uganda, and the Post Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice at the Law Development Centre, Edline practiced at commercial law firm Bowmans (A.F. Mpanga Advocates) in Uganda in 2016-2017. Edline recently graduated with an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School in May 2018. During her LL.M., she conducted research analyzing the role of litigation initiated by regulators in preventing corporate fraud in the financial sector, specifically the Crane Bank fraud case in Uganda. She has also delved into fintech and financial inclusion in Africa and its role in achieving sustainable development for people who have had challenges in accessing credit through traditional means.

Icarus Chan
Year: 2018
Home Location: Hong Kong

Area of Advocacy: Technology and space law, public and international criminal law

Icarus Chan is a graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He worked in local and international law firms, barristers’ chambers, local judiciary, and is currently an editor of Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher. His interests in law span from technology and space law to public and international criminal law, particularly historical war crimes trials. He was an avid mooter, having represented his university in several mooting competitions. He speaks fluent Chinese, Japanese and intermediate Spanish.

Sarah Yookyung Kim
Year: 2018
Home Location: Seoul, South Korea

Area of Advocacy: Employment law, good governance of nation-states and international bodies, gender issues, social enterprise, and technology

Sarah Yookyung Kim is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law with a Certificate of Specialization in International Law. At Berkeley Law, Sarah served on the Asian American Law Journal as a senior articles editor and the Women of Color Collective as a networking director. In 2017, she received Herma Hill Kay Summer Fellowship, a fellowship named after UC Berkeley’s first female law school dean, which supports students who pursue public interest work that benefits women. As a summer intern, Sarah analyzed and wrote about parental leave policies and pregnancy discrimination cases at UC Hastings’ Center for WorkLife Law.

Sarah was born and, for the most part, raised in Seoul. She has also lived in Baltimore and Hong Kong. Sarah studied English literature and international studies at Ewha Womans University.

Shan Helen Jiang
Year: 2018
Home Location: Beijing, China

Area of Advocacy: Dispute resolution, anti-corruption law, integrity in trade and investment, international law

Shan Helen Jiang is a recent graduate from Harvard Law School. She previously worked at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes of the World Bank and the Hong Kong International Arbitration Center, managing international arbitration cases. She has also worked at private law firms in London and Hong Kong. When she was pursuing her first law degree at Peking University, she co-founded the Public Interest Law Foundation in China. Prior to law school, she has worked with NGOs in both China and the US pertaining to pro bono legal services.

For more about our current and past Fellows see here and for more information about PILnet’s Fellows Program see here.