Each year, NLG students have access to different National programs beyond their individual law schools. Ranging from DisOrientation materials to paid fellowships, the benefits of being an NLG student member are expansive. If you haven’t already, please join the NLG today!
If you have any questions about NLG student programming, please contact our Director of Research and Education, Traci Yoder, at traci@nlg.org.
NLG Students are eligible to apply to our Haywood Burns Fellowship, which provides stipends to law students and legal workers doing public interest work over the summer. Applications for the Haywood Burns Fellowship typically open in November of each year.
For more information on the Haywood Burns Fellowship, to learn more about past recipients, or to read up on the history of the Fellowship, visit our Haywood Burns Fellowship page.
At the beginning of each academic year, many NLG student chapters organize “DisOrientation” events to introduce the wider student body to the NLG and “people’s lawyering” in general. Whether this event is a quick meet-up of like-minded folks or a full-day event with panel discussions and workshops, it’s a great opportunity to find allies on campus.
The NLG National Office put together a DisOrientation manual to help guide this programming. For the full PDF, visit our DisOrientation page.
Following the National Lawyers Guild Law for the People Convention in October 2015, NLG membership adopted a resolution calling for “the dismantling and abolition of all prisons and of all aspects of systems and institutions that support, condone, create, fill, or protect prisons.” In honor of this resolution, in 2016 the NLG expanded our annual Student Day Against the Death Penalty to become the Week Against Mass Incarceration (WAMI). In 2024, we are re-naming this campaign the Week of Abolition (WOA) to reflect the NLG’s evolving positions.
Each year, NLG law student chapters put together programming, volunteer initiatives, and campaigns around a central theme announced by the national organization. The 2024 theme is “Free Them All: Abolition and Political Prisoners.”
Week of Abolition 2024 will be held March 3-9. Learn more at nlg.org/woa.
The Radical Law Student Project includes a collaborative Radical Law Student Manual (RLSM) outlining organizing campaigns undertaken by NLG students as well as a growing faculty network of NLG scholars. The RLSM builds on the NLG Disorientation Manual, by presenting an extended analysis of contemporary legal education as well as concrete strategies to change the culture of law school using examples from other students who have successfully fought for improvements in their institutions.
