Skadden Arps Alumni: Champions of Public Interest Law
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom is an American multinational law firm headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1948 by Marshall Skadden, John Slate, and Les Arps, the firm has grown from a small legal practice into a global powerhouse with over 1,700 attorneys across 21 offices. Skadden is recognized for its expertise in transactions, litigation/controversy, and regulatory matters. Besides its success as a law firm, Skadden is also known for its commitment to public interest law, demonstrated through the Skadden Fellowship Foundation.
The Skadden Fellowship Foundation: A "Legal Peace Corps"
Established in 1988 to commemorate Skadden's 40th anniversary, the Skadden Fellowship Foundation is a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization that provides two-year fellowships to recent law graduates. These fellowships enable individuals to pursue public interest law on a full-time basis, addressing the unmet civil legal needs of people living in poverty in the U.S. The Los Angeles Times has described the Skadden Fellowship Foundation as a "legal Peace Corps".
Fellows design their own projects and secure a host organization, a non-profit that will supervise their work. The Skadden Fellowship carries the cachet of a Supreme Court clerkship or a Rhodes Scholarship in the public interest arena. By 2025, the Foundation had funded over 1,000 fellowships.
Notable Alumni: The 2025 Skadden Fellows
Each year, the Skadden Fellowship Foundation awards 25 fellowships to graduating law students and outgoing judicial clerks. The fellows have the freedom to pursue their individual interests in public interest law. The fellowships provide a salary and benefits, and were established in recognition of the need for greater funding for graduating law students who want to devote their professional lives to helping the poor, elderly, homeless and disabled, as well as those deprived of their civil or human rights. Almost 90 percent of the fellows have remained in public interest or public sector work since the inception of the program.
Several law schools consistently produce a high number of Skadden Fellows. Over the past 15 years, the schools whose graduates have won the most Skadden Fellowships are:
Read also: Legacy of Fordham University
- Harvard - 72
- Yale - 63
- NYU - 38
- (tie) Stanford - 23
- (tie) UCLA - 23
- U. Penn. - 21
- UC Berkeley - 19
- Georgetown - 15
- Columbia - 14
- Northeastern - 12
In 2025, five of the 25 Skadden Fellows were alumni of NYU School of Law. Berkeley Law had the second-highest number of fellows in this class, coming in behind only Yale Law School.In 2025, 28 students and recent graduates joined the fellowship program.
Focus on Berkeley Law Skadden Fellows
“I am delighted that three of our students have received prestigious Skadden Fellowships,” Dean Erwin Chemerinsky says. “This reflects the deep commitment to public interest by Berkeley Law and its students. “Mariam, Mia, and Sophia’s projects reflect Berkeley Law’s commitment to public service and social justice,” Assistant Dean of Career Development Eric Stern says. The three Berkeley Law alumni selected for the 2025 Skadden Fellowship are:
- Mariam Elbakr: Elbakr will work with the Public Justice Foundation’s Debtors’ Prison Project to provide direct representation and impact litigation on behalf of indigent defendants and families harmed by the assessment of excessive public defender fees in Tennessee. Her undergraduate focus was psychology and women’s and gender studies, and she worked a variety of retail jobs to fund her studies. “As someone whose family has been in contact with the legal system at a time where we couldn’t afford to pay for counsel, I chose this project to try and even the playing field - because everyone deserves a zealous advocate, whether or not they can afford to pay,” she says. “I came to law school to improve access to justice.
- Sophia Fenn: Fenn will work with the New York Legal Assistance Group to represent underserved New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) tenants who face severe habitability issues caused by the agency’s systemic divestment and neglect. Fenn’s experience showed her there’s not much legal aid capacity for housing litigation outside eviction defense. She says this is especially true for tenants in New York City public housing, because NYCHA tenants are specifically excluded from public funding that allows legal aid organizations to provide habitability-based legal services to low-income tenants. “I am excited to be able to continue working with clients on addressing community needs,” she says.
- Mia Stange: Stange's fellowship project aims to take advantage of policy shifts to expand workplace and immigration protection. The need for expanded workplace and immigration protection is particularly acute in New York City, which has seen more than 100,000 asylum seekers arrive since spring 2022 - the vast majority of whom are not yet eligible for work authorization. “For workers without employment authorization or who are in other precarious circumstances, a job is necessary for stability but can also be an avenue for discrimination, exploitation, and countless other risks,” she says. “For those who are further entangled in the criminal, family, and immigration legal systems, the stakes are even higher. As a law student, Stange has worked with clients through two of Berkeley Law’s 40 Student-Initiated Legal Services Projects - the Berkeley Immigration Group and California Asylum Representation Clinic - and the Ninth Circuit Practicum.
Examples of 2025 Skadden Fellow Projects
The following list provides examples of the diverse range of projects undertaken by the 2025 Skadden Fellows:
- Marty Berger (Stanford Law School, ACLU of Michigan): Provide direct representation in high-volume tort lawsuits and common law conversion claims on behalf of unhoused residents of Grand Rapids, Michigan, whose property was illegally impounded or destroyed during police sweeps.
- Anthony Javier Black (Northeastern University School of Law, Southern Legal Counsel): Provide low-threshold, client-centered services addressing health-harming unmet legal needs among transgender adult patients by expanding an existing medical-legal partnership with a regional healthcare system in Florida.
- Riley Dankovich (Georgetown University Law Center, The Arc of the United States): Develop strategic impact litigation, community partnerships, and public education to dismantle the educational segregation of students of color with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
- Brittney Dorton (University of Michigan Law School, ACLU, Disability Rights Program): Advocate for the capacity, autonomy, and dignity of people with disabilities by representing low-income people under or at risk of conservatorship in California.
- Darcy Gallego (Fordham University School of Law, New York Legal Assistance Group): Empower pro se asylum seekers and expand due process rights by combining group training with individual preparation ahead of hearings in immigration court.
- Gabby Grossman (Harvard Law School, ACLU, Ruth Bader Ginsburg Center for Liberty): Prevent the lasting trauma of family separation through direct representation, strategic litigation, and community-education strategies to secure accommodations in child-welfare proceedings for parents with disabilities.
- Tiffany Jackson (Howard University School of Law, Legal Aid DC): Advocate for the preservation of families by providing legal representation, education, and outreach to low-income parents defending their parental rights against third-party custody challenges.
- Parima Kadikar (City University of New York School of Law, American Friends Service Committee): Integrate disability advocacy into deportation defense work for disabled clients by filing disability-based civil-rights complaints, submitting habeas corpus petitions, developing training materials, and tracking outcomes.
- Chisato Kimura-Kleiböhmer (Yale Law School, MacArthur Justice Center): Utilize systemic advocacy, community education, and strategic litigation to enforce state laws meant to protect immigrants against abuses by local and state police and empower immigrant communities.
- Shannon Lee (Stanford Law School, New York Legal Assistance Group): Tackle source-of-income discrimination via direct representation and impact litigation against large landlords and brokers that deny low-income New Yorkers housing by unlawfully refusing to accept housing vouchers.
- Louis Lin (Harvard Law School, Philadelphia Legal Assistance): Address displacement in Philadelphia’s low-income Asian American communities by providing comprehensive direct representation to tenants facing evictions.
- Caity Lynch (University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Swords to Plowshares): Expand access to Department of Veterans Affairs benefits for veterans with other than honorable discharges who are at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
- Nina McKay (New York University School of Law, ACLU, Voting Rights Project): Initiate Voting Rights Act litigation to ensure fair representation on local school boards in partnership with low-income Black Mississippians.
- Alice Min (University of Texas School of Law, The Legal Aid Society of New York): Challenge the NYPD’s use of illegal surveillance technology and assist individuals harmed by this surveillance by expunging their information from the NYPD’s databases.
- Marí Perales Sánchez (Yale Law School, Worker Justice Center of New York): Cultivate resilient and holistic legal empowerment alongside migrant farmworker women facing precarious health and security labor conditions in rural New York.
- Quinn Phillips (Boston University School of Law, ACLU, National Prison Project): Provide legal representation and advocacy to address rights violations in the juvenile justice system that disproportionately affect girls in foster care.
- Nathan Porceng (Columbia University School of Law, Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services): Advise on civil legal matters and build clear legal pathways to proliferate community-controlled solar-energy projects in historically marginalized Appalachian localities.
- Tal Rothstein (Yale Law School, Pine Tree Legal Assistance): Provide direct immigration representation, outreach, and education for migrant workers experiencing labor violations in Maine’s agricultural, forestry, and dairy industries.
- Madeline Sachs (Georgetown University Law Center, Legal Aid Justice Center): Advocate to advance humane immigration policy by addressing the consequences of criminal convictions in individual immigration cases.
- Malik Sammons (Columbia University School of Law, New York Civil Liberties Union): Ensure housing security exists for New Yorkers through impact representation, public education, and systemic advocacy to enforce tenants’ rights.
- Jamie Sgarro (Northeastern University School of Law, ACLU of Missouri): Enforce, strengthen, and expand existing state and federal legal protections for low-income transgender Missourians.
- Tamara Shamir (Harvard Law School, Mabel Center for Immigrant Justice): Provide direct representation to prevent wrongful deportations of asylum seekers in accelerated asylum programs.
- Emma Soglin (DePaul University College of Law, James B. Moran Center for Youth Advocacy): Expand the scope of a community-based legal clinic to provide advocacy on immigration, housing, and other civil matters to support the permanency and stability of recently arrived immigrant families.
- Joseph Strom (Chicago-Kent College of Law, Equip for Equality): Provide legal education and direct representation to disabled people facing new technological barriers to securing and keeping meaningful employment.
- Sophie Towle (University of Michigan Law School, Disability Rights Michigan): Provide direct representation to children and youth to facilitate access to community-based mental and behavioral health Medicaid services.
- Asja Towns (University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund): Engage in multidisciplinary advocacy to safeguard and lawfully expand targeted programs so that low-income students of color can access higher education and employment opportunities.
- René J. Valenzuela (Loyola University School of Law, Chicago, Equip for Equality): Partner with community organizations to provide special-education legal representation, training, and outreach to immigrant families of children with disabilities.
- Byul Yoon (New York University School of Law, ACLU, Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project): Defend grassroots advocates who are targeted with Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs).
Skadden: Beyond the Fellowship
While the Skadden Fellowship Foundation is a significant aspect of the firm's commitment to public service, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom engages in other activities. In 2025, the firm agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono legal services.
A Firm with a History
Skadden has also been involved in some controversial matters. The firm has a history of representing clients with ties to the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia and to Viktor F. Yanukovych's pro-Russian regime in Ukraine. In 2012, Skadden took as a client Viktor F. Yanukovych, who was a pro-Russian president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014. One of company's actions on Yanukovych's behalf was to produce a report justifying Yanukovych's imprisonment of former prime minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko (who was pro-European) and denying that the action had been a political prosecution, although many Western countries characterized it as such. After Yanukovych lost power in Euromaidan and fled to Russia, Skadden's work on his behalf led to several federal investigations. One Skadden attorney, Alex van der Zwaan, was convicted of lying to the FBI about his work on Yanukovych's behalf and served 30 days in jail.
Read also: Baylor's Notable Alumni
#
Read also: Columbia University Legacy
tags: #Skadden #Arps #alumni #notable
