Justice Catalyst Fellowship — Justice Catalyst

Justice Catalyst Fellowship ApplicatioN

Justice Catalyst administers one-year, potentially renewable, project-based fellowships for graduating law students, or graduates up to two years out of law school, to support innovative public interest work at nonprofit organizations, as well as unions, government agencies, and plaintiff-side or public interest law firms.

Webinars/Info Sessions

To learn more about our upcoming fellowship cycle process, watch the 2024 Justice Catalyst Info Session recording.

About the Fellowship Program

Justice Catalyst is looking for projects from diverse, creative, self-starting fellows who will pursue year-long fellowships, with a possibility of renewal. Justice Catalyst prioritizes groundbreaking ideas, including early-stage projects that are boundary-pushing in the pursuit of systemic solutions to major injustices, whether at an established legal organization or an organization looking to hire its first lawyer.

The Justice Catalyst Fellowship philosophy is problem-centric. Successful projects start with a problem in the world and identify the novel and potentially transformative ways to resolve it.
We get excited about proposed projects across a broad spectrum of topic areas and as you can see from our current and past fellows, each year we award fellowships focused on varied and diverse topics. Some issue areas where we would particularly welcome applications include:
- Access to medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD)
- Antitrust
- Climate & Environment
- Consumer rights
- Corporate and government accountability
- Decarceration
- Economic justice
- Labor
- Workers’ rights
Note that the Justice Catalyst Fellowship program has no subject area restrictions: we welcome projects focused on any and all issue areas. The fellowship program is primarily U.S.-focused but we occasionally support projects based outside of the country with a close nexus to the U.S.
To learn more, check out a list of some possible issue areas plus a list of current and former Justice Catalyst Fellows to see what issues they’ve tackled.
The ideal Justice Catalyst fellowship project employs litigation in a creative or strategic way to achieve impact at broad scale (aka high volume), whether through class or other systemic litigation, or by advancing a replicable legal strategy. We are especially enthusiastic about projects that apply already-existing laws to a new subject area or situation, and view the law as a tool for distributing wealth to harmed communities and holding powerful actors accountable for wrongdoing.
However, we also support projects that employ other approaches to achieving broad scale and structural change – including precedent-setting litigation, movement lawyering, policy advocacy, research, and community organizing, or a combination of approaches that aim at broad scale change.
We do not select projects that emphasize direct legal services or small-scale litigation as a primary approach, although direct individual legal representation can be a minority component of a project as long as that work is a necessary catalyst for other key elements of the project.
Your theory of change is a key element of your project. Not only does it tell us about the impact your project seeks to make on the world, it also demonstrates how you think about your work.
A theory of change is what connects your proposed approach to the problem it seeks to address. A theory of change can be simple – it can be just 1-2 sentences explaining the precise mechanism by which your proposed approach will lead to your hoped-for outcomes. For example, a litigation-focused project might seek to:
- Directly transfer resources to a harmed community
- Enforce a law in a new factual environment
- Dissuade a bad actor from continuing their practices
- Demonstrate to other lawyers that a litigation theory is viable
- Persuade a judge to articulate a favorable precedent
There are multiple “right” ways to write a theory of change. See samples from previous successful fellowship candidates.

Application Process

There is a two-part fellowship application process:

Part 1 (Optional) – Prospectus submissions are closed for this cycle. Responses rolling through early November.

Part 2 (Required) – Application submissions are closed for this cycle. Please review timeline below for upcoming deadlines.

Flexible start date

While most projects we select will begin after the applicant graduates from a U.S-based law school or LLM program, projects that can be started now (e.g. while you are still in law school, even if you are a 1L or a 2L) are extremely attractive to us. We have various options to get you jump started on your project. Indicate your interest in part time advance work in your prospectus.

Application Timeline and Details

2025-2026 Fellowship application form

In order to help candidates foster innovative ideas, the application has multiple stages (detailed below):

Steps	1. Resume & Prospectus Submission Open	2. Full Application	3. Interview	4. Final Decisions	5. Renewal
Due Date	Submissions open Sept 1 – Oct 2, approximately 11pm PST	Submissions open Oct 15 - Dec 1, approximately 11pm PST	January – February 2024	March 1, 2024	Spring 2025
Notes	Responses will be sent by Nov 3, 2023	Required	Selective	Via phone	Fellows may apply to renew for 3-12 additional months

The Process

Prospectus submissions are closed for this cycle.
In the first (optional) step of the Justice Catalyst application process, we invite you to submit a resume and a short prospectus summarizing the problem you seek to address and your idea for addressing it. The prospectus provides candidates with a low-time-investment way to know whether to submit a full application by providing feedback on whether a project is a good fit for the fellowship, and where appropriate, receive specific suggestions for the final application.
The feedback candidates will receive in response to their prospectus submission will entail:
- Recommendation that the candidate proceed with a full application
- Recommendation that the candidate proceed with a full application, with brief suggestions on revisions to make prior to submission
- Recommendation that the candidate not proceed with a full application (the goal of this is to save the candidate and their host organization time and energy when in a given year we know that the specific project being proposed will not be a fit for the fellowship)
ABOUT THE PROSPECTUS
Submit your prospectus via our form here. Your prospectus should be a concise statement of the problem you seek to address and your plan to address it. We encourage you to be succinct, and use bullet points versus full sentences where possible: simply include the basic information that will allow us to understand what you intend to do and evaluate whether it is a good fit for submission of a full Justice Catalyst Fellowship application.
We also ask that you include a list of people — lawyers and nonlawyers — that you have contacted or would like to speak with as part of developing your project, in addition to potential host organizations. A listening tour that includes a wide range of input is vital to developing your proposal and ensuring that your work is not duplicative or counterproductive, and these initial contacts may well turn into collaborations and partnerships during your fellowship.
The prospectus is intended as a work in progress, and we welcome the opportunity to work with you to turn an initial idea into a detailed plan of action. So don’t hesitate to submit even if you do not yet have a firm proposal!
Application submissions open October 15 - December 2, 2024.
Click here to see a full list of the application questions and other requirements including a Host Commitment Letter, which should be uploaded to the application form as a PDF file, for the 2025-2026 Fellowship cycle.
Click here to complete the application form.
Please note that Justice Catalyst does not accept letters of recommendation at the application stage.
If at any point during the application process you accept another fellowship or position elsewhere, please kindly notify us immediately at fellowships@justicecatalyst.org.
January – February 2025
For selected applications, Justice Catalyst will conduct a video interview, and may undertake other follow up, based on the specifics of the project.
March 1, 2025
Applicants will be notified of decisions by March 1, 2025. We sometimes maintain a short waitlist: you will be notified if your project is on the waitlist.
During the first fellowship year, fellows will have the opportunity to apply for a project extension of 3-12 additional months.

Fellowship Project Funds

Host organizations receive fellowship project funds in the form of quarterly grants. Host organizations are responsible for using the received funds to carry out the project by hiring the fellow. It is expected that all grant funds go directly to the fellow, or be used to facilitate the fellow’s presence at the host organization.

Please contact us at fellowships@justicecatalyst.org with any questions.

Who Should Apply

We believe that a variety of perspectives and backgrounds enriches and maximizes our work. We aim to assemble an applicant pool that is reflective of the world that we live in — one that is diverse in race, color, age, religion, ancestry, national origin, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, economic background, mental and physical abilities, and other traits that make us who we are. We strongly encourage anyone who is interested in this opportunity to apply, especially those who may not think of themselves as typical applicants for post-graduate fellowships. If you think this may be you, please submit a prospectus or application — we would love to talk to you.