The John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School provides a rich resource for students who are interested in exploring or already committed to advancing the public good and achieving social justice through the law.
Stanford Law School offers an array of classes and clinics that provide students with a solid foundation of theoretical knowledge and practical skills to support the pursuit of careers in public interest. It also supports students pursuing careers in the public interest and public sector, through its pro bono program, externships, mentorships, career services, speaker series, and opportunities for financial assistance.
The Center houses public service and career services programs, and coordinates events ranging from skills training to public interest symposia to career panels. It also oversees a variety of public interest funding programs that tangibly support public interest and public sector students and alumni.
The groundwork provided through classes and clinics, and the opportunities created by the Center enable our graduates to achieve the careers and advance the causes that first inspired them to earn a law degree.
Each year, a number of conferences are held at the Law School. In the fall, the student-run Shaking the Foundations: The West Coast Conference on Progressive Lawyering is held at Stanford. The conference brings together law students, practitioners, and academics from around the country who share a commitment to use the law for positive, progressive social change. Through panels, workshops and speakers, it is designed to provide a forum for advocates and law students to discuss innovative strategies and solutions to the world's most pressing social justice issues.
Among the many Stanford student organizations, the following organizations are generally regarded as invaluable resources for public interest law students.
The Public Interest Law Students Association is a group of Stanford Law Students engaged in improving public interest opportunities and promoting a culture of public service work at Stanford Law School. PILSA works to bring students together to share information, experiences and ideas about pursuing study and work in public interest law.
PILSA also works to increase communication between public interest students and the faculty and administration, and throughout the year PILSA members advocate public interest issues in meetings with the faculty and administration.
Shaking the Foundations is an annual student-organized conference convened at Stanford that brings together law students, practitioners, and academics from around the country who share a commitment to use the law for positive social change. Through panels, workshops, and speakers, the conference provides a forum for advocates and law students to discuss innovative strategies and solutions to the world's most pressing social justice issues.
Founded in 1978, the Stanford Public Interest Law Foundation (SPILF) is a non-profit organization of Stanford law students and alumni/ae. SPILF was formed to fund public interest law projects providing services to groups that traditionally have not had adequate access to legal representation. SPILF hosts an annual student-organized auction to raise funds to support Stanford law students doing public interest summer law internships and to provide direct grants to legal public interest projects.
Street Law's mission is to empower Bay Area incarcerated and at-risk youth by teaching classes about the law, focusing on criminal procedure and a juvenile's legal rights.
Street Law participants volunteer their time to team-teach youth once a week for 10 weeks.
Many other student organizations engage in activities to support public interest at the law school.
Professor Marshall joined the Stanford Law School faculty in 2005, when he became the director of our clinical program and filled the newly created position of Associate Dean for Public Interest and Clinical Education. Prior to coming to Stanford, Professor Marshall directed the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, where he became a member of the faculty in 1987, following a clerkship with US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. He currently directs Stanford’s Capital Defense Clinic and teaches first-year students Civil Procedure.
Susan Feathers is the Executive Director of the Levin Center. Prior to joining Stanford Law School, she served as the Assistant Dean for Public Interest at the University of Pennsylvania Law School where she directed the Public Service Program and oversaw a faculty mandated pro bono requirement, the Toll Public Interest Scholars Program, student-run clinical projects, public interest counseling and funding. While at Penn, the Public Service Program became the first and only law school pro bono program to receive the ABA Pro Bono Publico Award. She has also served as a Director of Public Interest Counseling and Programming at Yale and Brooklyn Law Schools; a clinical staff attorney for Hofstra's Constitutional Litgation, Criminal Defense, and Housing Rights Clinics; and Associate Appellate Counsel at the Legal Aid Society, Criminal Appeals Bureau in Manhattan. She received her B.A. and her M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a Benjamin Franklin Scholar and elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and her J.D. from Northeastern Law School in 1987.
Anna Wang is the Deputy Director of the John and Terry Levin Center for Public Service and Public Interest Law. She directs four of the Center's five programs, which support law students interested in pursuing public interest careers through mentoring, financial support, co-curricular programs, and career counseling. Wang also oversees general operations and advises law students and alumni on public interest career strategies. She joined Stanford in 2004 after three years as the first Executive Director of Vision New America, a nonprofit civic leadership development organization in Silicon Valley. In addition to guiding the organization's development, she instituted new voter outreach efforts, launched leadership training programs, and developed a highly successful public policy internship program targeting high school and college students. Wang received her BA with honors from UCLA and a JD from UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) in 2001. She is a member of the California Bar.
As the Center's Pro Bono Coordinator, Danielle Cover provides training and support to student-run pro bono projects; assists in the cultivation of new pro bono partnerships; and develops programs to promote a culture of service at the law school and in the larger legal community. Danielle joins the Levin Center with nine years of public interest legal practice experience including work as a staff attorney for the House of Ruth Domestic Violence Legal Clinic, a senior staff attorney for YWCA Legal Services, and as an associate at Weinberg and Schwartz. Most recently, she served as the Justice in Divorce Project Director for the Women’s Law Center of Maryland. As the Project Director, Danielle trained, supervised, and mobilized statewide family law attorneys, private bar attorneys, and law students to work on various pro bono matters. Cover, a 1997 graduate of Tulane Law School, has also served as an adjunct professor for the Community College of Baltimore County’s Department of Women’s Studies and a participant in the Maryland Association of Non-Profits.
Lisa Douglass is the Director of the SLS Social Security Disability Project, an in-house pro bono project that provides legal services to indigent individuals who are appealing denials of SSI benefits. Douglass acts as supervising attorney for law student volunteers, and she also trains and supports private attorneys who take pro bono cases through the project. Prior to joining Stanford Law School, Douglass represented hundreds of indigent clients as a felony trial attorney with the King County Public Defender's Office in Seattle, where she worked for four years. She also practiced at the plaintiff's firm Schroeter, Goldmark and Bender, where she represented social security disability claimants in administrative hearings and federal court appeals. Douglass received her BA and MA from Stanford and her JD with honors from the University of Michigan in 1999.