Dani Hargus (left) Karen Chicas (middle) and Kabbas Azhar (right). Photos provided courtesy of subjects.

Fellowship

Post-Graduate Fellowships Give New Lawyers a Foot in the Door and a Seat at the Table

Post-Graduate Fellowships as a Win-Win-Win for Students, the Law School, and Employers

Dani Hargus (’22) entered law school knowing she wanted to model her career on the attorneys she had met while working as an AmeriCorps Fellow with Project Citizenship, a nonprofit that helps immigrants become US citizens. “I really admired the ways these lawyers were able to put their more socially minded values into practice for their clients,” she says.

Despite her determination, Hargus feared breaking into her desired career path, public interest law, would prove challenging. Her advisor, Kate Devlin Joyce—a clinical associate professor of law at BU Law and a former public interest attorney herself—suggested exploring post-graduate fellowship opportunities. It was, Hargus says, a genius idea. She was selected for the Citrix Systems Racial and Social Justice Fellowship.

Made possible by the generosity of BU Law alum and BU Trustee Tony Gomes (’96) and his employer, Cloud Software Group, which owns Citrix, the Citrix Fellowship supports a recent BU Law graduate in a year-long placement at a nonprofit specializing in voting rights, criminal justice reform, and social justice initiatives. Gomes got his first taste of public interest law as an associate at a Boston law firm where he collaborated on pro bono cases with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It really showed me the impact of pro bono law and the marvelous attorneys these organizations have,” he says. That early experience not only opened his eyes to the power of public interest work but also inspired him to create a pathway—and fund a fellowship— for new lawyers considering a public interest law career.

During her fellowship, Hargus handled asylum, detention, and immigration matters for the Boston-based Public Asylum/Immigration Representation Project (PAIR). The position was such a good fit for her interests—and she was such a good fit for PAIR—that PAIR hired her as a detention attorney when her law-school-funded fellowship ended in 2023.

That’s an ideal outcome, says Zach Dubin, assistant vice president for school development. BU Law’s post-graduate fellowships are “a win-win-win: They are good for the school, the student, and the employer,” he says.

For more than a decade, BU Law’s post-graduate fellowship program has helped launch new lawyers in careers in public service law, non-profit legal work, and corporate counsel roles. Between 2014 and 2024, BU Law funded more than 100 fellowships internally.

Donors’ generosity pays the fellows’ modest salaries at non-profits and government agencies and what Gomes calls “career startup costs” such as relocation and bar prep expenses. Hargus was thrilled to receive that supplemental money. “Having that financial support not only made it easier for me to enter the field, but it also probably increased my chances of passing the bar because I was able to dedicate more time to studying without financial strain,” she says. “For most folks starting at law firms, the firms fund their bar expenses, but as a public-interest student, that’s not usually a privilege we have. I felt really grateful to Citrix and BU for connecting me with a program that was able to cover those costs because they are so steep during a time when you’re not really able to make any income.”

Students are not the only beneficiaries of these fellowships. They also are great for nonprofit host organizations, places like the ACLU Criminal Justice Reform Project, the National Center for Youth Law, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, where other Citrix Fellows have worked. Dubin explains, “Many of these organizations can be overstretched, so giving them additional legal talent is incredibly helpful to their mission and something the law school is very invested in, not only for the organization but also for clients from typically underserved communities, clients who otherwise might not get any legal representation at all and, critically, for our students, whose careers, like Dani’s, are frequently launched by these fellowships.”

Three BU Law alumni—all committed to public interest law—launched their careers as fellows at PAIR.  “These fellowships are so important to provide a more stable postgraduate path for public interest folks,” says Hargus. “I think they will encourage more people to stay on the public interest path and maybe inspire more folks to enter the field. There are a lot of people who feel passionately about public interest but understandably don’t go into it after graduation. A fellowship is a great way to encourage them to stay in the field if they can.” Apart from Gomes, many BU Law alumni have generously supported post-graduate fellowships. Notable examples include Irving Pickard (’66), who established the Picard Family Fund for Public Service; Herb Washer (’91), who, with his firm, Cahill Gordon & Reindel, sponsored 20 fellowships from 2015 to 2020; and Kim Lessow Crockett (’97), who established the Lessow Reproductive Health Law Fellowship with a dedicated gift to the BU Program on Reproductive Justice. BU also awards the N. Neal Pike (’37) Disability Rights Fellowship, named for the first blind person admitted to practice before the Bar of the US Supreme Court.

A Boost for In-House Counsel

In addition to supporting public interest work, some of BU Law’s post-graduate fellowships connect new graduates with in-house roles so they can hone their corporate legal skills under a mentor’s tutelage. That’s the path Karen Chicas (’19) took to land a fulfilling position at software company LivePerson. After completing her year-long post-graduate fellowship from BU Law, Chicas was hired and later promoted to senior corporate counsel, negotiating contracts and advising on compliance matters, privacy, and AI issues. “The more I learned, the more I realized that transactional and corporate work is really what I enjoy doing,” she says.

LivePerson, which has about a thousand employees, has welcomed a half-dozen fellows from BU Law in the past decade, says Monica Greenberg (’94), LivePerson’s executive vice president of legal and people. Senior attorneys guide and supervise the post-graduate fellows, who do research, help draft contracts, write summary memos, and shadow seasoned lawyers as they negotiate deals and terms. “Fellows really feel they’re building their careers here,” Greenberg says, “and there’s an opportunity to gain a lot of substantive knowledge of how to be a great in-house lawyer, how to interact with stakeholders, and how to deliver great service inside a company.”

The fellows’ presence benefits more seasoned attorneys as well. “I am a big believer that you always learn by teaching and mentoring,” Greenberg says, “even just by virtue of trying to explain why your judgment or decision leads you one way or another, or why you would organize information in a particular way.” Three of the ten people on Live Person’s legal team are BU Law alumni.

A Gift of Gratitude

The post-graduate fellowships that have supported a decade of BU Law graduates stem from deep gratitude from earlier alumni, gratitude for how BU Law helped to shape their own successful careers, along with a desire to extend such good fortunes to future generations of Terriers. Just ask BU Trustee Mike Fricklas (’84) and his wife Donna Astion (SAR’82). Together, they made a five-year commitment that began in the fall of 2024 to support an Equal Justice Works fellow from BU Law.

Their generosity stems from a life-changing gift Fricklas received more than 40 years ago as a law student. Fricklas had completed his first year of law school when he realized he could not afford to stay in Boston. When he told Dean William Schwartz (DGE’52, LAW’55, GRS’60) that he planned to return home to Colorado, the dean tapped his discretionary fund for a $2,000 scholarship. “It was still tight,” Fricklas says, “but it was enough to make a difference. I’ve been very appreciative, and it’s very important to me that other kids have similar opportunities.”

Now the chief legal officer and corporate secretary for Advance Publications, which owns and operates Condé Nast, American City Business Journals, and other companies, Fricklas has spent more than a decade on New York’s Permanent Commission on Access to Justice and is an Equal Justice Works board member. “I hope our fellowship encourages people interested in public interest law to come to BU,” he says, “and I hope the fellows change policy and help people by providing more access to justice.”

That’s a goal that Fricklas shares with Kabbas Azhar (’24), the inaugural recipient of this new EJW Fellowship. For his two years as an Equal Justice Works fellow with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Azhar is researching government surveillance of public housing residents and studying the nexus of such surveillance programs and privacy rights. Azhar has filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests to gather data from state and federal public housing authorities about their surveillance systems and the data they collect. “All of these procedural protections that the average citizen would have before their information is given away—do public housing residents have that same protection? My guess would be no, they don’t,” he says. He plans to interview public housing residents about their experiences with surveillance and collaborate with advocates to push for privacy protections. “One of my goals,” Azhar says, “is to really make a dent in this problem that has persisted for years and years and years in a way that actually helps the issue.” Without the generosity of donors like Mike and Donna, Azhar would not be able to do this important work and advocate for the real-live people who may benefit from greater legal protections as a result.