Minnesota Justice Foundation

Minnesota Justice Foundation (the organization or mjf) is a nonprofit. Minnesota law students founded Minnesota Justice Foundation (mjf) in 1982 to promote and support access to Justice in Minnesota. These visionary students believed that lawyers and law students have a special professional obligation to provide quality legal services to those who cannot afford legal representation, and they aimed to call attention to the need for legal services for low-income people and for creating pro bono opportunities. Mjf's mission: "mjf creates opportunities for law students to engage in public interest and pro bono legal service. Mjf provides law students with access to professional experience and training while increasing the capacity of legal service organizations that serve the public interest. By strengthening law students' commitment to public interest and pro bono legal service, mjf builds a culture of service that students carry forward in their legal careers." Mjf provides services to students at the three Minnesota law schools and our partner organizations around the state of Minnesota to help increase access to Justice for all minnesotans. According to recent research by the statewide coalition of legal aid programs, two out of every three potential clients are turned away. These potential clients are all income-eligible and their cases have merit; there simply are not enough attorneys available to meet the needs of the community. Law students' participation helps programs serve more clients, while also giving law students valuable skills and experience. Students engage in meaningful, impactful legal work under attorney supervision, such as client intake, fact investigation, community education, legal research, document drafting, file management, and in-court appearances if they are eligible for certification under the student practice rule. This provides a Foundation for their future work in the public sector or in their pro bono practices. Major services and activities: 1)summer fellowship program (sfp), 2)law school public service program (lspsp), including street law and private attorney student service (pass), and 3)student chapters at the mitchell hamline school of law, university of Minnesota law school, and university of st. thomas school of law 1) summer fellowship program the summer fellowship program is one method by which mjf seeks to close the Justice gap experienced by many minnesotans who need access to legal services to address their basic human needs. Matching law students with opportunities to work for the summer at public interest law agencies such as legal aid offices and legal nonprofits increases the capacity of those agencies to serve more clients. Many legal service programs in Minnesota have to turn away eligible clients each year due to program and staffing limits, or lack of case priority. With the support of law student fellows, attorneys at public interest agencies are able to focus their time on more complex cases and client matters while still providing quality services to an even higher volume of clients. Summer fellows work full time for 10 weeks at legal aid offices and public interest organizations across the state. Each fellow receives a stipend of 6,250 paid by mjf. Since the program began in 1983, mjf has funded over 720 fellows. Mjf fellows provide their placement agencies with intensive help with casework, research, legal writing, client intake, interviewing, and even courtroom representation. Feedback from supervisors tells us that agencies are able to serve more clients when they have a paid summer fellow working full time. Mjf fundraises for these fellowships and manages the entire process: from selecting which agencies will receive a fellow; to receiving student applications; to setting up interview times; and managing a list of offers and acceptances. Agencies select which students they will interview and make their own hiring decisions. Participating students work under the supervision of the agencies' own lawyers, gaining valuable practical experience while building the capacity of the programs to serve more clients. The number of applicants to host the fellows always exceeds the funds available. Each year, mjf seeks to offer a variety of fellowship opportunities to law students both in terms of geography and in legal subject area. Experiential learning through programs like mjf's fellowship program shapes the career path of future lawyers, and strengthens the pool of attorneys in Minnesota who are committed to doing legal work that serves the public interest either through their primary or pro bono practice. Summer funding allows students who otherwise could not afford an unpaid internship to explore public interest work. 2) law school public service program the law school public service program (lspsp) arose out of a collaboration between the three law schools, the Minnesota state bar association and mjf. This is a unique example of a multi-law school collaboration for community engagement. Operating continuously since 1999, lspsp encourages law students to perform at least 50 hours of law-related volunteer service during their law school careers. This is sometimes referred to as the "50 hour challenge" by law students. It references rule 6.1 of the Minnesota rules of professional conduct which states that lawyers have an ethical obligation to perform pro bono work and/or provide financial support to civil legal aid programs. Students who complete at least 50 hours of volunteer service during their time in law school receive recognition from their law school and mjf. This recognition complements other awards that students are eligible to receive for their academic and extracurricular accomplishments. The law school public service program was designed to create efficiencies for our civil legal aid partner agencies by situating mjf as a central point of contact for outreach regarding law student volunteers from the three Minnesota law schools. From our offices at each of the three Minnesota law schools, mjf staff maintain connections across the legal services community in order to understand, meet, and sometimes anticipate the needs of our partner organizations. The mjf staff attorneys divide a list of statewide legal services providers. Staff attorneys contact these providers at least three-four times a year to discuss fall, spring and summer semester volunteer opportunities and winter and spring break opportunities. Staff attorneys help their contacts think creatively about ways to best engage and supervise law student volunteers, help draft job descriptions, post these on our website and then recruit students. Mjf then places law student volunteers at legal aid programs and other public interest law offices to serve minnesotans with limited means based on the students' interests and availability. Students volunteer throughout the year in a flexible manner that suits their schedules. Some volunteer positions are for one-day engagements at clinics; others are project-based, such as completing a research project for a case; and some are 4-10 hours/week for a semester. Utilizing volunteer law clerks allows the paid staff at our partner agencies to serve more clients and to devote more of their time to complex issues. Mjf works to make our offerings complementary to other resources available to the students through the law schools. Mjf is a popular source of experiential opportunities, especially for first year law students who aren't able to access curricular experiential opportunities such as clinics during their 1l year. Through volunteering with mjf, law students have a chance to explore their interests and consider which experiential courses to prioritize in later semesters. Mjf also works with upper-level students who participate in experiential learning coursework to allow them to record volunteer hours after they have completed the hours they need for course credit. This allows students to continue to build relationships and skills at their site, and is advantageous to their hosts from an efficiency standpoint because the students have already been onboarded. Mjf staff attorneys have exploratory conversations with prospective volunteers to discuss their career interests and professional development goals as part of helping the student identify which volunteer opportunities would be a good fit for them. Sometimes these conversations lead to ongoing informal mentorship relationships between the mjf staff attorneys and students. An mjf staff attorney can become a trusted advisor for a student by providing additional advice, support, and networking assistance as the student pursues their career goals, complementing the other essential advising resources available to the law students.

Participation in the law school public service program is open to all law school students, including students in the llm programs. Participation is optional and completing 50 hours of volunteer work is not a requirement to participate. Students may get involved at any point in their law school experience. Mjf staff attorneys actively work with their colleagues at the law schools (admissions, career and professional development, student affairs, externship advisors, clinical faculty, faculty teaching professional skills to first-year law students) to connect with incoming and current law students. Mjf staff attorneys are available as a resource for students who do not have the time to volunteer and need guidance on how to identify other public interest law opportunities. Our aim is to make the law school public service program (and the relationships underpinning it) accessible for all students seeking public interest law experiences. A)street law another aspect of lspsp is street law, a legal education program. Street law aims to educate youth about their legal rights and responsibilities. Law student volunteers teach in twin cities classrooms for an hour a week during spring semester. Mjf provides training to the volunteers that emphasizes accessible, engaging, and interactive instruction methods. Sessions at the schools focus on topics such as entrepreneurship and business law, juvenile law, interacting with the police, landlord/tenant law, the work of legislators and policymakers, how judges are chosen, and consumer law. Mjf modified the delivery of this program during earlier stages of the pandemic. Street law aims to be a pathway for middle and high school students toward higher education. Street law volunteers are encouraged to share about their experiences and realities of being a law school student, their reasoning for wanting to attend law school, and their plans and aspirations for how they will use their legal training in the future. Street law includes a field trip component; some classrooms visit the law schools or judges' chambers and have a chance to engage with the legal field in a positive way. B)private attorney student service another component of lspsp is the private attorney student service program (pass), which connects law students with private attorneys to work on pro bono matters. Pairing law students with private practice attorneys working on pro bono matters gives students the opportunity to observe how pro bono work can be incorporated into a busy private practice. 3) student chapters mjf was founded by law students. There is a student organization at each law school affiliated with mjf. The law students have several objectives with their student chapter activities. 1)provide information about pro bono opportunities 2)fundraise for their paid summer offerings (public interest law fellowships at mitchell hamline and st. thomas; public interest clerkships at university of Minnesota) 3)provide community for law students who want to work in public interest law by helping students connect with classmates with common interests and career goals 4)provide educational programming related to public interest law including attorney panels and various topics relevant to current events such as the census and its impact on public funding, and the needs of people in our communities who inject drugs, which included training on administering naloxone. Student chapter members act as ambassadors for mjf with their classmates; this helps mjf reach more law students. And when students participate in fundraising to pay for summer experiences in public interest law for their classmates, they realize the level of need there is at legal aid programs in the state. This knowledge can make students more likely to donate and provide pro bono services for legal aid programs after they graduate and begin using their degrees. With mjf's programming, we aim to support important access to Justice work in Minnesota and help law students develop into dedicated public interest and pro bono attorneys.