Touro Law Receives Grant for Summer Fellowship

Dean Elena B. Langan is pleased to announce that Touro Law will receive a two-year grant from New Hour for Women and Children, an agency in Touro Law’s Public Advocacy Center to support a summer student Fellow. The grant, which is being provided to Touro as part of a Legal Accelerator Grant awarded to New Hour from Further Justice, will provide a stipend for a Fellow to assist with legal work for 10 weeks each summer for two consecutive summers. The Fellow will work directly with New Hour in collaboration with Touro Law’s Director of the Public Advocacy Center and Public Interest Cate Carbonaro. 

New Hour was founded to provide meaningful support to current and formerly incarcerated women, their children and their families. The not-for-profit promotes successful re-entry and lasting reintegration, and to reform unjust criminal justice system policies. New Hour works to empower directly impacted people to utilize their lived experiences to create lasting reforms to the carceral system. The Law Fellow will work 35 hours each week to support New Hour’s newly-funded staff attorney, social workers and advocates. 

“Summer fellowships provide an opportunity for law students to gain hands-on experiences while supporting important legal work of nonprofit agencies. We are grateful to New Hour for creating this fellowship for a Touro Law student to assist an attorney in performing legal work and legal research,” stated Dean Langan. 

Since New Hour’s inception eight years ago, the agency has been in the jails supporting incarcerated women and providing group workshops to prepare them for reentry. Many formerly incarcerated women return to their communities facing incredible challenges to reunite with their children, pay unpaid child support, and pay excessive fines and fees resulting from their incarceration. Most attorneys do not possess in-depth understanding of criminalized women and their path to incarceration. The grant New Hour received will provide them with the money to hire a staff attorney, enabling them to provide full representation to clients, starting when they are still incarcerated. This attorney will receive support from a summer Fellow from Touro Law. 

Serena Martin-Liguori, New Hour Executive Director stated, “There are no organizations or legal services on Long Island that truly understand and meet the specific needs of criminalized women, especially criminalized survivors. This grant represents a unique opportunity for New Hour to establish a new program entirely focused on meeting the legal needs of our members and ensuring that they receive the representation they deserve to move beyond incarceration. Being able to incorporate a law student fellow helps us to achieve this mission effectively while helping to train lawyers in this area of the law. It’s a true success for our agency, our members and the legal community.”

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Patti Desrochers

Director of Communications

pattid@tourolaw.edu

(631) 761-7062