The Parole Advocacy Project collaborates with attorneys to help incarcerated clients prepare for their parole hearings. Student advocates work in teams to compile parole packets, develop reentry plans and help their clients prepare for parole interviews. The project will also organize mutual aid campaigns and facilitate other abolition-centered advocacy.
Contact: [email protected]
Organization Type
Prison Healthcare Initiative is an advocacy group working to help people who are incarcerated access healthcare while in prison. Student volunteers will review files, conduct prison advocacy, and complete research tasks as needed. For more information and to get involved, please
Contact: [email protected]
Organization Type
The Public Interest Law Foundation is an organization devoted to the public interest. It is an independent, not-for-profit corporation that raises money and uses it to support public interest pursuits at Columbia Law School and beyond. The foundation helps to enable students to pursue unpaid public interest internships through the annual PILF auction, and provides grants to nonprofit organizations around the country, donating approximately $80,000 to $100,000 each year.
Contact: [email protected]
Organization Type
Racial Literacy for Racial Justice (RLRJ) aims to foster racial literacy at CLS through curricular reform and extracurricular engagement. We believe that every law student should graduate with the racial literacy they need to effectively combat systemic injustice, deconstruct social hierarchies, and reconstruct a more just and equitable society.
Contact: [email protected]
Organization Type
The Society for Immigrant and Refugee Rights is dedicated to fostering a diverse community at Columbia focused on promoting the legal rights of refugees and immigrants. During the school year, SIRR sponsors guest panels, administers various pro bono projects, and leads trips domestically and abroad.
Contact: [email protected]
Organization Type
The Society for the Advancement of Law and Talmud (SALT) is for all Columbia Law students interested in the study of Talmud, Talmudic Law, or the intersection between Talmudic Law and US Law. It seeks to create a community for Talmud scholars of all levels and to help them excel in their academic and professional development through facilitating daily or weekly study sessions, holding monthly talks by members of the Society, conducting panel discussions, or hosting guest speakers.
Contact: [email protected]
Organization Type
Currently Inactive
The Society of Law and Ethics seeks to explore the ethical issues that arise in the practice of law. Through panels and featured guest speakers, the society’s aim is to critically examine a range of professional contexts in which law and ethics seem in tension, and to determine ways in which they can be reconciled. In these debates and discussions, the society wishes to provide a forum for students to navigate the dilemmas they may face as future legal practitioners, whether in private, public, or government practice. SLE insists on respect for well-considered points of view and takes no normative position as an organization.
Contact: [email protected]
Organization Type
The Student Animal Legal Defense Fund exists to educate the greater law school community about animal welfare issues and how the law may protect—or not go far enough in protecting—animals. The Fund also interacts with New York-based animal rights groups through pro bono assistance.
Contact: [email protected]
Organization Type
Student Public Interest Network (SPIN) strives to build a community for students interested in pursuing public interest law and provide a network for public interest collaboration at Columbia Law School through monthly social events and mentoring programs.
Contact: [email protected]
Organization Type
The Suspension Representation Project is an advocacy group whose mission is to safeguard the right to public education by training law students across New York City to represent NYC public school students in suspension hearings. Working in teams, law students develop valuable legal skills by interviewing clients, gathering evidence, conducting direct and cross-examinations, and delivering closing arguments.
Contact: [email protected]
Organization Type