This year’s Rutgers Law School Public Interest Auctions have gone virtual.
Alumni, lawyers, family members, professors, and friends are invited to support students who want to do public interest work over the summer by attending the April 1, APIL Auction, sponsored by APIL at Rutgers Law School in Camden.
The auction in Camden has an April Fool’s theme and will include the auction, trivia, and a dance party. The April 1 auction takes place from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
You can register through this link.
Among the items available for auction are: a handmade Rutgers lap quilt, Epson printer, Wawa gift baskets, Kaplan Bar Prep Course, gym membership, and virtual classes with law professors and deans.
Donations for the APIL auction are still being accepted. To donate, reach out to Dawn Ericksen RLAW ‘22 at to Dawn Ericksen at dae77@scarletmail.rutgers.edu.
Each year the Rutgers Law School Public Interest Law Foundation (PILF) and the Public Interest Law Student Association (PILSA) in Newark, along with the Association for Public Interest Law (APIL) host fun-filled auctions to raise stipend money for law students doing unpaid public interest legal work during their summer break. Employment sites include the U.S. Dept. of Labor, the Clean Air Council, the NAACP Legal Aid and Defense Council, the NYC Justice Council, the Office of the NJ Public Defender, and the Homeless Advocacy Project.
The PILF Auction was held in February and raised enough money to fund five summer stipends, thanks to the generous support of faculty, alumni, staff, and students.
“My most memorable work involved investigating excessive force or disparate treatment on protestors from the police,” said Tue Ho RLAW ’22. “This past summer was hectic for multiple reasons, but one close to Philadelphia was the police responses to protests. At the ACLU-PA, we received many complaints and requests to investigate. I was a part of the investigation team tasked with speaking to individuals, following leads, and even observing in person in order to accurately document the truth. Many individuals who felt harmed from police actions were given referrals if they had a unique need, or a space for them to at least document their experience. The stipend attached to this opportunity was crucial for me in order to participate.”
Bryan Medina RLAW ‘22 said, “This past summer I was fortunate enough to take on a legal internship position at the New York State Division of Human Rights. As a legal intern at the Division, I learned a great deal about the dynamic relationship between state human rights laws and federal discrimination laws. My experience at the Division taught me how to balance work under numerous legal regimes--a skill-set that is necessary for any aspiring attorney. In addition to this, at the Division, I enhanced my client-attorney relationship building skills, and I learned how to condense complex legal issues into concise, digestible legal assessments. The PILF stipend allowed me to keep focused on my learning as much as possible in my internship, without the worries of financial hardship. Specifically, with the stipend, I was free to work on issues that I cared about deeply without the fear of financial instability.”
