Ten Weeks on the Front Lines
This summer, 15 law students traded the classroom for ten weeks inside public-interest law. As the 2026 class of Bradley Summer Associate Legal Fellows, they worked inside organizations defending constitutional order, free markets, civil society, and the free exchange of ideas—the same institutions the Bradley Foundation exists to strengthen.
Their placements spanned the country and a wide range of public-interest legal work: the Becket Fund in Washington, DC; the Buckeye Institute in Columbus, Ohio; EdChoice Legal Advocates in Indianapolis, Indiana; the Fairness Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; the Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Washington; the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Virginia; the Investor Choice Advocates Network in Los Angeles, California; the Liberty Justice Center in Austin, Texas; the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation in Springfield, Virginia; the New Civil Liberties Alliance in Arlington, Virginia; the Pioneer New England Legal Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts; the Public Interest Legal Foundation in Arlington, Virginia; and the Upper Midwest Law Center in Minnetonka, Minnesota.
Individually, those placements gave students an unusually substantive introduction to public-interest practice. Taken together, they were intended to do something more: begin building a community of young lawyers who might spend their careers strengthening the institutions Bradley exists to support.
What the fellows found in those offices wasn’t simply a résumé line. It was a different way of thinking about what a legal career is for.
A Different Reason to Enter the Law
Law school can make the next credential, clerkship, or job offer feel like the measure of progress. The summer asked a different question—not what a legal career can get you, but what it can be for.
“Something amazing about public interest work, especially what IJ does, is that you’re helping others,” said Mikhal Ben-Joseph, who spent her summer at the Institute for Justice. “It’s actually not about what you’re getting out of it, but what you’re able to put in. That’s a very different orientation for when you get up in the morning.”
By the end of the summer, she had a word for it: “If you’d asked me before the summer whether I’d go into public interest, I probably would have said no. Now I feel very compelled to head in that direction. It’s the best feeling.”
