Yale Law School Fellowship

Each year, the Liman Program selects up to ten graduates of Yale Law School to spend a year working in the public interest on a project of their own design. Past fellows have worked for a wide range of host organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund and the ACLU.

The Fellowship is open to any graduate of the Law School regardless of graduation date, and the average annual stipend is $44,000. When possible, host organizations cover the cost of health benefits for the Fellow during the fellowship year. Applicants must supply a complete a full application packet, including a proposed project plan. 

Liman Fellows 2012-2013
We are delighted to announce that the Liman Program has awarded nine fellowships for 2012-2013. Working in Alaska, California, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, and New York, these fellows will deal with a range of problems, ranging from the challenges facing non-citizens, low-income tenants, and criminal defendants to how to protect the environment. Since its inception in 1997 and including the incoming group, the Liman Fellowship has awarded fellowships to 86 Yale Law School graduates, and well as to hundreds of undergraduates coming from Barnard, Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Spelman, and Yale. Below are brief descriptions of the incoming Fellows and their projects.

Chesa Boudin will spend his fellowship year at the San Francisco Public Defender's Office (SF PDO) where he will work to improve the legal services offered to non-citizen clients. Chesa's focus will be on the intersection between criminal defense work and immigration removal defense, and he will develop in-house resources for the SF PDO, provide direct representation to clients facing misdemeanor charges, and support the efforts of immigration removal counsel working with SF PDO clients. A 2011 graduate of Yale Law School, Chesa is currently clerking for the Honorable Margaret McKeown on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Before law school, Chesa was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and graduated summa cum laude from Yale College. He is the author of books and scholarly articles on topics ranging from Latin American politics to the rights of children with incarcerated parents.

Forrest Dunbar, who will complete a joint JD/MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School and Yale Law School in 2012, plans to return to his home state to join the Alaskan Office of Public Advocacy, where he will work on drug law reform. Forrest will investigate the impact to the state’s finances and society of felony sentencing for non-violent, non-distributive drug crimes. He will explore the possibilities for legislative reforms and will also represent clients facing low-level, drug-related criminal charges. Forest graduated summa cum laude from American University in Washington, DC, where he won a Truman Scholarship, and then served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan.

Romy Ganschow will work with tenant organizers and tenant associations to protect low-income tenants' rights to safe and quality affordable housing at Brooklyn Legal Services. Romy will focus on affirmative lawsuits to enforce housing code standards against private landlords whose buildings become uninhabitable. Her work will be part of broader efforts to preserve affordable housing stock and prevent displacement of low-income residents. Romy is a member of the Yale Law School Class of 2012 and graduated with High Honors from U.C. Berkeley with a B.A. in Anthropology. Prior to law school, Romy worked at the ACLU of Northern California, where she assisted attorneys seeking criminal justice reforms and an end to California's death penalty.

Edward McCarthy will join the New Haven branch of the Connecticut Office of the Public Defender to help create a program for non-citizen clients. Edward will advise public defenders regarding the immigration consequences of their clients’ plea agreements and assist clients in understanding the choices before them. Edward will also provide training programs to public defenders on the intersections between criminal and immigration law. A member of the Yale Law School class of 2011, Edward received his B.A. in History with Distinction from Yale College. Following his second year of law school, Edward took a leave of absence to work in Mexico with an organization that provides legal assistance to migrant families.

Yaman Salahi will be at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California where he will work on civil rights and liberties issues raised by the growing role for local law enforcement in national security. Yaman will investigate the nature and scope of police involvement with national enforcement related to security and will work with Middle Eastern and South Asian communities, as well as other groups impacted by those policies. He will also provide direct representation of clients in their exchanges with law enforcement. A member of the Yale Law School class of 2012, Yaman graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 2009 with a B.A. in Rhetoric. Yaman is also working on ethical investment campaigns with Students for Justice in Palestine.

Rebecca Scholtz, a 2011 graduate of Yale Law School, will work with the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis, where she will focus on immigrant youth in the child welfare system. Rebecca will provide direct legal services, including assistance in obtaining special immigration benefits available to abused, abandoned, and neglected children. In conjunction with other service providers and community groups, Rebecca will help to develop a system-wide procedure for identifying and assisting those in the child welfare system who also have immigration needs. Rebecca graduated summa cum laude from Middlebury College and then served as a Peace Corps volunteer for two years in a Costa Rican border town, where her work focused on at-risk juvenile migrants. Rebecca is currently clerking for the Honorable Diana E. Murphy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Minneapolis.

Sirine Shebaya will work with the ACLU of Maryland to address racial profiling of Latino youth in police gang prevention activities. During her fellowship year, she will investigate police practices—including “stop-and-frisk” policies and the entry of individuals into gang databases. Sirine will work with community partners on litigation, advocacy, and community education around these issues. Before coming to Yale Law School, from which she will graduate in 2012, Sirine was a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Georgetown University Kennedy Institute of Ethics. She graduated with high distinction from the American University of Beirut and received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University.

Olivia Sinaiko will join the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC) to work on preserving natural resources for local and native communities. One priority is limiting the contaminating effects of mining in the region. She will also focus on reforming resource management institutions through involving local communities that depend on natural resources such as salmon for their survival. Since Olivia graduated from Yale Law School in 2009, she has been based in Juneau, Alaska, where she clerked for the Honorable Walter L. Carpeneti, Chief Justice of the Alaska Supreme Court, and then worked for SEACC and Earthjustice. Olivia received a B.A. in Philosophy with Highest Graduation Honors from Stanford University.

Jenny Zhao will spend her fellowship year at the ACLU of Northern California, where she will provide assistance to immigrants detained in county jails during their deportation proceedings. Jenny's project will address the problems of detained immigrants, in terms of their access to courts, their rights to fair hearings, and the conditions of their confinement. A member of the Yale Law School class of 2012, Jenny graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in International Relations and, prior to coming to law school, worked at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.