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Legal Aid Association of California New Attorney Pipeline

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The whole year

Legal Aid Association of California

Starting a legal aid career in California

Three people at a workshop. One reaches up to add to a hand-drawn diagram of a tree on a flip chart taped to a window; two others watch, backs to the camera, with green trees outside.

Almost every way into this work opens and closes on a date, and those dates sit on a different website for every program. Here is the whole year in one place, with what is still open today.

Nearest first

The next ten dates

Every published date on the California legal aid hiring calendar, counted from today. A date whose cycle has already gone by shows the year it was last published for, because the shape of the year repeats.

Waiting on an announcement

Every published date, in order

About thirty-five people stand and crouch together in sunlight outside a building, in front of a tall painted mural of a winged figure of Justice holding a set of scales.
Advocates outside a mural of Justice

Your year

The advice changes every year you are in school

What a first-year should do in September and what a third-year should do in September are not the same thing, and only one of them is urgent.

1L

First Year

Almost nothing is decided in your first year, and one thing is worth doing: find out what kind of legal aid work you actually want to do.

Nothing on the calendar closes for you this year. The work is finding the people.

2L

Second Year

This is the year the calendar starts mattering. Your second summer often becomes your career, and the interviews for it happen in the fall.

No dated deadline falls in your year: the Dan Bradley Fellowship is yours and LAAC has not announced its next cycle. What happens now is the interviews for the summer that turns into the job.

3L

Third Year

The two big post-graduate fellowships close in the first weeks of the fall semester. By October both windows have shut for the cycle.

1 date ahead of you

After Graduation

Graduated, Waiting on the Bar

The months between graduation and bar results are the gap the Public Interest Bar Fellowship was built for: LAAC says finding permanent legal aid work is hard for recent graduates, and this is bridge funding while you study for the bar.

No fellowship deadline is ahead of you. The route now is the organizations that hire before the bar.

Before you are licensed

Who takes people who have not passed the bar yet

Court rules allow recent graduates the ability to provide legal services while under the supervision of legal nonprofits through California Rules of Court 9.42.

58 California legal services organizations have done exactly that as Public Interest Bar Fellowship hosts. If you are graduating without an offer, these are the organizations to write to first.

How it works

You do not have to find the organization yourself

For the Public Interest Bar Fellowship, LAAC does the matching. A student who has already found a host applies with them; a student who has not applies alone and is matched.

  1. Apply, jointly or on your own

    Joint applications are for an LSO host to apply with a law student that they’ve already identified. Solo applications are for law students and potential LSO hosts to apply separately, and LAAC will do the best to quickly match to see if a connection can be made. Joint applications are prioritized and processed first.

  2. LAAC screens and proposes a match

    Solo matching and interviews ran April 7 to 25 in the 2026 cycle, with fellows notified on April 27.

  3. You interview within 72 hours

    By phone or video, and both of you report back to LAAC within 48 hours after it.

  4. Either it is a match, or you both go back in the pool

    A no is not a rejection from the program. Both sides re-enter the pools and are matched again.

LAAC describes it this way

After screening applications, LAAC will propose a match and send contact information to both the potential Fellow and potential Host LSO. After receiving this information, they will conduct a virtual (e.g. Zoom, FaceTime, Google Hangout) or phone interview within 72 hours and independently report back to us within 48hrs the outcome of the interview. If there is mutual interest, the match will be confirmed. If either the potential Fellow or the host LSO does not feel well suited for the match, both parties will reenter the applicant/host pools.

The 2026 Public Interest Bar Fellows

Twenty-two people were matched last spring

LAAC published the 2026 cohort by name, law school and host organization. This is what the far end of the calendar actually looks like.

  1. Connor Urschel Bay Area Legal Aid
  2. Keyera Mackabee California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. (CRLA)
  3. Nicole Larson California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. (CRLA)
  4. Victor Anzaldo Canal Alliance
  5. Michael Alloggiamento Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto (CLSEPA)
  6. Ashley Menguito Dependency Legal Services
  7. Jacob Lusk East Bay Sanctuary Covenant
  8. Ruth Hernandez Family Violence Law Center (FVLC)
  9. Sarah Navarro For The People
  10. Michele Chadwick Homeless Action Center (HAC)
  11. Vanessa Mendivil Justice and Diversity Center (JDC)
  12. Kiana Ghorbanzadeh Justice At Last
  13. Jennifer Moller Legal Access Alameda
  14. Priscilla Ledezma Legal Aid of Sonoma County
  15. Jaime Gochez Legal Assistance for Seniors (LAS)
  16. Vanessa Peterson Legal Assistance for Seniors (LAS)
  17. Kiriana Zavala Legal Assistance to the Elderly (LAE)
  18. John Swindle Legal Link
  19. Selin Sindel LGBT Asylum Project
  20. Brian Recinos Oasis Legal Services
  21. Emily Pedro Open Door Legal
  22. Ivan Villegas UFW Foundation

How the Public Interest Bar Fellowship works

Four people sit together in armchairs in an office lobby, wearing name pins, with a folder and printed schedule on the low table in front of them.
Legal Aid Day in Sacramento, February 26

Not a student

If your job is helping students find this work

About thirty people in a brick-walled meeting room turn toward the camera from tables and chairs, with a United States flag and a California state flag standing behind them.
Advocates gathered in a meeting room at a LAAC convening

For law school career services

The full calendar in one page, what to tell a student in each year, and the two points in the cycle where the published deadlines sit furthest from when students look for them.