Chicago Mediation

Promoting public interest law in China - post 1 « Equal Justice Works Blog
Promoting public interest law in China - post 1 March 10, 2009

As I said in this post, Equal Justice Works CEO David Stern will be blogging from China. Here is his first post.

I arrived in Beijing after a 14-hour flight from Washington, DC. Surprisingly, our flight flew over the North Pole instead of the Pacific Ocean.

I am joined here by other U.S. experts on fellowship programs - Susan Butler Plum, director of the Skadden Fellowship Program, and Ted Wang, a former Skadden Fellow. Our host is Ira Belkin of the Ford Foundation. Ira, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted white collar crime in New York and Rhode Island, is the local Ford Foundation Program Officer in China. Ira is fluent in Mandarin.

The lead organization that is facilitating the launch of a public interest fellowship program in China is the Public Interest Law Institute (PILI). PILI is an organization that has launched public interest legal programs, largely in Eastern Europe, but is now looking to launch a program here in China. Ed Rekosh, the executive director of PILI, and Rob Precht, the director of PILI’s Chinese program, are also here. Coincidentally, Rob is the former public interest advisor at Michigan, and so he was very familiar with Equal Justice Works.

Today we met with about 20 Chinese lawyers including clinical legal educators, public interest lawyers working for nongovernment organizations (NGOs), and the government-run legal aid program. The purpose of the meeting was to hear from us about various fellowship models so that the Chinese could see if any of those approaches might work in China.