Eight law students and two undergraduates joined NCYL for the summer, assisting attorneys with class action litigation, writing articles for NCYL’s quarterly journal, Youth Law News, and providing trainings on NCYL’s new Foster Ed Connect website, among other important work!

While NCYL does not offer a salary to its summer law clerks and interns, it does ensure that they receive grants and stipends from their law schools and other sources. NCYL also provides an interesting and comprehensive summer program, and receives about 100 applications each summer. One of the features of the summer is a brown bag seminar series with speakers from organizations throughout the Bay Area. Topics include practical career advice like securing post-graduate fellowships, clerkships, and pursuing a career in public interest law; substantive areas of the law; and in-depth discussions of key NCYL cases. There is also a Friday afternoon documentary film series.    

The kick-off to this summer’s program was an event featuring speaker Lateefah Simon, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. The event, hosted by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, was attended by law clerks, interns, and staff from legal advocacy organizations throughout the Bay Area. Appointed Executive Director of the Center for Young Women’s Development in San Francisco at age 19, Lateefah won the prestigious McArthur “Genius” Award for her work there.

The summer’s activities also included a visit to the courtroom of US District Judge Thelton Henderson, who met with students afterward. A lawyer in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in the 1960s, Judge Henderson worked with others in the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King. As a judge, he presided over high-profile environmental, affirmative action, and prison reform cases. In 2005, Judge Henderson found that substandard medical care in California prisons had violated prisoners' rights and led to needless deaths, and appointed a receiver to take over the prison health care system.

NCYL’s summer students also took a tour of the new Alameda County Juvenile Detention Center.

NCYL provides opportunities for clerks and interns, and the NCYL staff, to interact socially outside the office and meet other students working at public interest organizations in the Bay Area. Among the events this summer were a Giant’s game, bowling tournament with Bay Area Legal Aid, and a white water rafting trip.

Thanks and good luck to all our bright, young, energetic students who were a tremendous asset to our organization this summer! We will miss you!