The Fellowship Program
In the course of its efforts, PILI has developed fruitful partnerships with a wide range of organizations in the countries where it works. Fellows are always nominated by a local NGO, to which the Fellows return at the end of the program to implement a project developed during their fellowship period in New York and Budapest.

In this way, local civil society organizations directly benefit from the fellowships. The Fellowship program is designed to combine academic study, professional skills development, new perspectives and new contacts to enable the Fellows to return to their home countries with the background necessary to more effectively and successfully advocate for public interest law development. 

Typically, Fellows spend the first semester of the program at Columbia Law School, where they take courses in human rights and public interest law. In the spring, Fellows generally participate in an internship at a public interest law organization in New York followed by a study visit in Central Europe, based at the PILI headquarters in Budapest.  

Academic Instruction
The first semester at Columbia is a non-degree program in which Fellows audit courses at Columbia Law School and participate in an extracurricular program of skills training and networking.The Fellows' courses include a special introductory course on U.S. law in comparative perspective for foreign lawyers, as well as a workshop taught by PILI's Executive Director, Edwin Rekosh, that pairs the Fellows with Columbia JD and LLM students to work on projects designed by the Fellow.

Fellows are invited to select their remaining courses based on their specific interests. In addition to their courses, the Fellows also participate in visits to human rights and public interest law organizations in New York, guest lectures by Columbia faculty, and presentations by the Fellows themselves.

Professional Development
After the first academic semester of the program, the Fellows participate in a three-month winter internship with one or more U.S. human rights, legal services, or other public interest law organizations. These internships are tailored to the individual professional needs and interests of the Fellows and are designed to give the Fellows experience in the not-for-profit legal sector in the United States.

Comparative Experience
Subsequent to their internship in New York, the Fellows participate in a two-month study visit based at the PILI headquarters in Budapest. This gives the Fellows an opportunity to learn from the experiences that Central European public interest activists and lawyers have had over the past decade.

Impact of the Program
The Public Interest Law Fellows Program has favorably affected Fellows and benefited their work in a wide variety of significant ways. The effects are as general as expanding their intellectual and strategic horizons, as precise as introducing them to specific innovations in public interest litigation, and as powerful as helping them to appreciate how the practice of public interest law involves far more than law and lawyers.

Insights
The influence of the educational aspect of the program at Columbia Law School is strongly apparent in the Fellows' feedback. Marija Lukic (2000-01 Fellow) sees the effect going to the very way that Fellows think about the law. "In Eastern Europe, it is asked, 'What is the law? What is written?' In the U.S., it's more important to ask, 'Why is it written and why is it written in that way?'" She appreciates the law being taught from different points of view with an emphasis on its underlying reasoning. Barbora Bukovska (1998-99 Fellow) was impressed with the practical focus of her courses, finding them highly relevant to her work with Roma in the Czech Republic. "I learned that you have to listen to communities, take their preferences into account, and take cultural considerations into account."

Skills
In addition to the academic side of the program, Fellows gain a great deal from the skills development component of the program; these skills are, in turn, transferred to their organizations back home. Fellows are trained in skills such as fundraising for their organizations, presentation skills and strategic planning for program and organizational development. Romanita Iordache (1999-2000 Fellow) explains, "When I got to Columbia I had no idea how to write a grant proposal. Now I've written ten or eleven." Dana Marekova (1999-2000 Fellow) added that the value of the resources goes beyond constructing her (successful) grant proposal. They helped her to better understand public relations, to think about the strategic direction for her Slovakian NGO (Center for Public Advocacy), and to start to work on seeking endowment support for it. This takes on additional importance as international funding has diminished in many of the countries of the region.

Perspectives
The Fellows' professional development is strengthened further through their internships at public interest and human rights organizations in New York City. Not only do the internships introduce the Fellows to new methodologies and models for addressing human rights problems in their countries, but they also offer completely new perspectives to the Fellows in conceptualizing legal reform and rule of law development. Marija Lukic suggests similar benefits from her internship at the National Organization for Women's (NOW) Legal Defense Fund (currently, Legal Momentum). These include the need to combine law with other data in pursuing research, litigation and law reform. "I saw how things interact...Of course, it's important to research criminal justice, but it's also important to see the economic element, economic justice." Thus, "if [battered] women don't have money, they often can't leave their husbands."

Returning to their Community
Though the Public Interest Law Fellowship program is still young—not yet even ten years old—the societal impact of the program can already be witnessed. Upon returning to their home countries and nominating organizations, Fellows have been engaged in trailblazing litigation and advocacy in the fields of minority rights, environmental protection, mental disability advocacy, children's rights, prisoners' rights, penal reform and torture and inhuman treatment, winning important victories in the process. They have worked or are working on diverse law, regulatory and institutional reform efforts in areas as wide ranging as access to information in Hungary, police brutality in Russia, domestic violence in Serbia and Montenegro, human trafficking in Uzbekistan and children's rights legislation in China.

Staying Connected
In addition, the Fellows continue to network with each other and with contacts made during their program, both informally and through ongoing PILI activities such as an interactive mailing list, a Fellows website, and joint projects and events. As part of the public interest law community, the Fellows have ongoing access to information resources, knowledge and idea-sharing which can have huge benefits for their local NGO, and ultimately, for the wider community.