POST-GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS – APPLICATION PROCESS AND CRITERIA
The Berkeley Law Foundation awards public interest law grants to recent law graduates and new attorneys (less than five years from law school graduation). For detailed information about the criteria BLF uses to award its grants, see our Berkeley Law Foundation – Request for Proposals, 2012-2013. A summary of the process and BLF’s grant criteria is provided below.
Application Timeline
Applications for the 2012-2013 grants cycle will be due on January 13, 2012. Applications are reviewed through March 2012, and finalists will receive notice of the offer of an interview in late March, with interviews occurring in early April 2012, and announcement of the yearlong grantee(s) by May 1, 2012.
What BLF Will Fund
BLF seeks to fund projects that include the following components: legal advocacy, community education, and/or policy change in areas affecting groups of people who generally lack access to the legal system.
Although many of our grantees have been located in the San Francisco Bay Area, we fund projects throughout the country. Past projects have been located in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Southern California, California’s Central Valley, Florida, Washington, and Arizona, among other locales.
Because grants are for one year only, proposed projects must be designed so that they can achieve results within that time and can either demonstrate the capacity to become self-supporting or can develop other funding sources after the grant year. BLF prefers to make grants that provide seed money for new projects rather than assist established, ongoing projects. While we understand that administrative or overhead costs may be a part of a project’s expenses, BLF will not fund grants primarily or exclusively targeted toward administrative or overhead costs. Factors also considered in awarding grants include:
- need for the proposed project
- impact of the proposed project
- availability or lack of other funding sources
- level of existing legal services that address the project’s identified problem
- quality of the proposal
- applicant’s connection to the community served
- diversity of applicant
- stability of sponsoring organization
- date of graduation
- applicant’s demonstrated commitment to community service
- qualifications of the applicant
You can see a list of programs that BLF has previously funded here. BLF encourages proposals that address needs and issues not addressed by previous BLF projects.
The Applicant
BLF seeks to fund original projects developed by individual applicants, not organizations. The applicant must have a leadership role in developing, writing and submitting the grant proposal. Current 3Ls or recent law school graduates (less than five years out of law school) may apply.
Grantees may work independently, but BLF strongly favors affiliation with a preexisting public interest group. At an earlier historic moment, BLF funded individuals who established organizations that have since changed the face of legal services, e.g., the East Bay Community Law Center, the Homeless Action Center, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.
However, at this moment in time, BLF prefers funding projects that will be affiliated with an established organization. Association with a public interest group helps grantees secure supplemental funding (either financial or in-kind) to cover the full cost of the project, establish connections with the client community, and obtain supervision from more experienced attorneys. However, BLF is funding the grantee and project set forth in the application, not the regular work of the sponsoring organization.
If BLF has enough funds to offer more than one fellowship, BLF will exercise a preference for a University of California, Berkeley Law School graduate for one of the fellowships. If there is enough funding only for one fellowship, no preference will be used.
How Much BLF Will Fund
Each year, BLF expects to award one to two grants for full-time work for twelve months. For the last several funding cycles, our full-time grant has been approximately $35,000, depending on available funds.
For the full description of the application process and BLF’s selection process, see our Berkeley Law Foundation – Request for Proposals, 2012-2013.