I wanted to bring to your attention an interesting fellowship opportunity for public interest lawyers called “Lawyers for Change”. Please see below information about this fellowship provided by Satyajeet Mazumdar, Programme Anchor for the fellowship.

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Lawyers for Change is a two-year fellowship programme for leadership development designed exclusively for lawyers. The programme is an initiative of Centre for Social Justice, Ahmedabad and ECONET, Pune with support from the Ford Foundation. The programme commenced in December, 2011 with 11 Fellows and is now accepting applications for the next batch scheduled to commence from June 2012.

The objective of the programme is to work with young lawyers and help them build the identity and skills required for Social Justice Lawyering. The programme provides the support and platform which a young lawyer starting practice on social justice issues often lacks. During the two years of the programme, the Fellows will be taken through an intensive capacity building process to use law for fighting exclusion, discrimination, enabling entitlements and to establish herself/himself as a leader in the field of law. This will be done through rigorous training sessions which will be conducted once in every two months. In between training sessions, the Fellows will explore possibilities for legal interventions while working with rights based organizations in different parts of the Country and be connected with the academy electronically.

Applications for the Fellowship are invited from law graduates (LL.B. – 3yr or 5yr course) of top law schools in India and from lawyers who are practicing or intend to start a practice on social justice issues. Students in their final year expected to graduate before June 2012 may also apply. All applicants must be below 32 years of age as on 25th June, 2012. The programme is open only to citizens of India.

Selected candidates will be awarded a fellowship of upto Rs. 16,000 per month. Expenses incurred on books, travel and internet connectivity will be reimbursed upto the limit of Rs. 2500 per month.

Applications for the Fellowship may be sent via email to [email protected] on or before 29th Feburary, 2012. CV of the candidate must be attached to the email. The ‘subject’ field of the email must mention “Application for programme”.

For more information, refer to the brochure of the programme available here or visit the Facebook page here.