Awards Reflect Overall Growth of 31 Percent in Three Years

The Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI) has announced that it will make $220,000 in grants to 26 public interest law organizations across Illinois. These grants will provide stipends for 51 PILI Law Student Interns over the 2014-15 academic year and the summer of 2015 through PILI’s Law Student Internship Program. Law students apply from law schools across the country to compete for these funded public interest internship opportunities, and recipients work 400 hours during the summer or 200 hours during the school year serving low-income and underrepresented individuals and families with legal needs.

This number of Internship allocations reflects an overall growth in PILI’s Internship Program by 31 percent in the last three years. PILI had pledged to grow its Internship Program by 25 percent as a result of a comprehensive survey of public interest law organizations in Illinois that PILI conducted in 2011, which revealed a need for significantly more Interns than PILI was then able to fund. Says PILI Executive Director Michael Bergmann, “PILI’s Law Student Internship Program plays a critical role in helping public interest law organizations meet the legal needs of their clients, and in developing and supporting future leaders in public interest law.”

PILI is pleased to provide increased support to the many public interest law organizations in Chicago and across Illinois that share its commitment to increasing access to justice, some of which PILI has been supporting since the Law Student Internship Program launched in 1977. In addition to funding its Interns for their public interest law work, PILI also provides robust educational programming and networking opportunities to its Interns. The program has an enormous impact on the law students that participate in the program, the agencies at which they work, and the low-income and underrepresented clients they serve.

About PILI: PILI's mission is to cultivate a lifelong commitment to public interest law and pro bono service within the Illinois legal community to expand the availability of legal services for people, families and communities in need. PILI envisions a legal community with a deeply rooted culture of service, where law students, lawyers and legal professionals at all stages of their careers engage in public interest law or pro bono work, and remain committed to addressing the unmet legal needs of the poor and underrepresented.