About the Foundation

Fellowships are awarded for two years. Skadden provides each Fellow with a salary and pays certain fringe benefits to which an employee of the sponsoring organization would be entitled. For those Fellows not covered by a law school low-income protection plan, the Foundation will pay a Fellow's law school debt service for the tuition part of the loan for the duration of the Fellowship. The 2024 class of Fellows brings to 990 the number of academically outstanding law school graduates and judicial clerks the foundation has funded to work full-time for legal and advocacy organizations.

In its 2010 "US Innovative Lawyers" report, the Financial Times ranked our firm in the top tier in the Responsible Business category in connection with the Fellowship Program, highlighting that it "ensures some of the brightest legal talent goes into public life."  The Los Angeles Times described the Fellowship Foundation as "a legal Peace Corps."

It is the Foundation's hope that, through their efforts and their example, Skadden Fellows will increase and improve the legal services available to the less fortunate in our society. Indeed, there is the expectation that the members of this cadre of new public interest lawyers will, individually and collectively over the course of their careers, have a profound effect on the quality and delivery of legal services. Our commitment does not stop when Fellowship funding ends — the Fellowship is just the beginning. We have undertaken a series of regional reunion symposia for former Fellows and extend to all Fellows a monthly newsletter and webinars.

1988

• Launch of Skadden Fellowship Foundation to mark firm's 40^th anniversary

1993

• Dubbed "legal Peace Corps" by the Los Angeles Times
• Foundation funds 100^th Fellow

1998

• Advisory Committee commemorates Foundation's 10^th anniversary with a 26^th Fellowship — the first of 52 "extra" Fellowships over the next 15 years

2007

• Foundation funds 500^th Fellow

2008

• Foundation funds record 36 Fellowships, including five by Joe Flom in honor of his late wife, Claire

2011

• Introduction of the Flom Incubator Grant, the first "fund within a fund" to solicit applications from prior Fellows

2012

• First regional reunion symposia for former Fellows

2013

• Skadden Fellowship Foundation and Susan Butler Plum awarded an "Impact Award" from New York Law Journal

2015

• Skadden increases number of Fellowships awarded to 28

2018

• In honor of Skadden's 70th anniversary, the firm extends the program for another 10 years

2019

• Foundation names Kathleen Rubenstein as new Executive Director

2020

• Foundation awards 28 COVID related Flom Incubator Grants
• Foundation funds 900^th Fellow

2022

• Introduction of the Fellows to Fellows (F2F) training program, supporting former Fellows who have been practicing in the public interest arena for at least 10 years, to deliver training sessions to our current and more recent Skadden Fellows.