PIJD Newsletter
Summer Service Across the Bay Area and Beyond
This summer, Public Interest J.D. (PIJD) students are putting their legal education into practice through a wide range of internships, clerkships, externships, and fellowships dedicated to serving the public good.
Members of the PIJD cohort are gaining hands-on experience with district attorney and public defender offices throughout the Bay Area, including placements with the Santa Clara County, San Francisco, and Contra Costa County District Attorney's Offices, as well as the Santa Clara County Public Defender's Office. Others are serving in judicial chambers at the Santa Clara County Superior Court, the California Court of Appeal, and the federal judiciary.
Students are also advancing access to justice through placements with organizations such as Bay Area Legal Aid's Domestic Violence Prevention Program, the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County's LIBRE Project, the International Refugee Assistance Project, Public Counsel, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Additional students are contributing to public policy, labor advocacy, environmental law, government operations, immigration services, and emerging areas of legal practice, including artificial intelligence governance.
Several PIJD students have earned highly competitive funding and fellowship opportunities in support of their summer work, including Bay Area Merit Summer Clerkships, Equal Justice America Summer Fellowships, the prestigious Peggy Browning Fund Fellowship. Our students are especially grateful to donors to the Santa Clara Law Center for Social Justice Summer Stipends which are additionally providing funding for many PIJD fellowships this summer.
These experiences provide students with meaningful opportunities to develop professional skills while serving communities and causes that align with the PIJD Program's commitment to public interest law. We are proud of the impact our students are making this summer and look forward to hearing about their experiences when they return in the fall.