WHITE PLAINS, NY –  Five first-year Pace Law School students were awarded Minority Fellowships from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (ABCNY) for 2006. This breaks last year’s total of three student fellows from the Law School .

Since 1991, the ABCNY’s Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Lawyers has administered an annual program placing qualified minority applicants in paid summer clerkships with outstanding law firms and corporate law departments. Fellows are paid anywhere from $800 - $2400 a week.

This year’s fellows from the Law School are Kinjal Desai who was placed with Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy LLP; Jennifer Echevarria with Prudential Financial; Nazneen Malik with Epstein Becker & Green, P.C.; Megan Mellem with Smith Barney, Citigroup – Global Wealth Management Legal Department; and Soma Saha with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.

In order to be selected as a fellow, a 1L student must undergo a rigorous application process.  In addition to submitting undergraduate and law school transcripts, a one-page personal statement, and resume for consideration, a student must also submit a six-page writing sample in response to a hypothetical prepared by the ABCNY.  The finalists forwarded to the ABCNY for consideration were interviewed by a Law School Screening Committee, which this year was composed of Professor Barbara Atwell, Professor Bridget Crawford, Academic Dean Michelle Simon, Director of Academic Support Mark Padin, and Masu Haque, the Career Center’s Associate Director for Private Sector & Judicial Clerkships.  After receiving a large number of preliminary applications for the fellowship program from first year law students, the Law School Screening Committee submitted seven candidates for interviews and consideration by ABCNY member law firms and corporations. 

Fellows were also chosen from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Brooklyn Law School , Columbia University School of Law, CUNY School of Law at Queens College , Fordham University School of Law, Hofstra University School of Law, New York Law School, New York University School of Law, St. John’s University School of Law, and Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law.

Founded in 1976, Pace University School of Law has nearly 5,000 alumni/ae throughout the country. It offers full- and part-time day and evening JD programs on its White Plains, N.Y., campus. The School also offers the Master of Laws in Environmental Law and in Comparative Legal Studies. The School, which has one of the nation's top-rated environmental law programs, also offers the SJD program in that field. The School of Law is part of a comprehensive, independent and diversified University with campuses in New York City and Westchester County. www.law.pace.edu 

Pace is a comprehensive, independent university with campuses in New York City, Pleasantville and White Plains, N.Y., and a Hudson Valley Center at Stewart International Airport in New Windsor, N.Y. More than 14,000 students are enrolled in undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs in the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Lubin School of Business, School of Computer Science and Information Systems, School of Education, Lienhard School of Nursing and Pace Law School. www.pace.edu