Nora Freeman Engstrom, David Freeman Engstrom, and the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession are excited to offer a paid fellowship, available to current law students, beginning this fall. The Rhode Center will select six to ten new Civil Justice Fellows to contribute to original scholarship; support ongoing projects; and generate ideas for policy advocacy, public programming, and research.

2024-2025 will be the third year of the Civil Justice Fellows program. The Fellowship includes regular meetings with CLP’s co-directors, other Fellows, and staff to share progress and seek feedback; opportunities for writing and research; and, for interested students, involvement in or attendance at annual conferences and other events. This past year, Civil Justice Fellows completed wide-ranging research and writing regarding multidistrict litigation, access to justice, regulations governing the practice of law, and law and technology. Some examples of their work include the following:

• Co-authoring academic articles and book chapters
• Developing the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law, High-Volume Civil Adjudication Project
• Creating a first-of-its-kind multi-district litigation toolkit for use by judges, litigants, academics, and the broader public
• Playing a central role in a groundbreaking partnership with the Los Angeles Superior Court that aims to identify innovations to improve access to justice in the nation’s largest trial court system
• Attending conferences and project meetings at RAND in Santa Monica and The American Law Institute in Philadelphia

Fellows will be expected to sign on for at least two of the three quarters of the 2024-2025 academic year (at each Fellow’s election), including optional on-campus opportunities before classes begin in September 2024. In active quarters, the expected time commitment is between eight and ten hours per week.

To apply: please submit a brief letter of interest (no more than two pages), resume, transcript, and list of two or more references (including at least one Stanford Law School faculty member) to Brianne Holland-Stergar at bstergar@law.stanford.edu. Applications must be submitted no later than 11:59 p.m. on May 3, 2024.

Please feel free to reach out to Brianne Holland-Stergar (bstergar@law.stanford.edu) with any questions. In addition, graduating Fellows Graham Ambrose (gambrose@stanford.edu) and Aaron Schaffer-Neitz (aaronsn@stanford.edu) have agreed to field inquiries about their experience.