New Skadden Fellows, First After Trump Deal, Remain Progressive

Later today, the Skadden Foundation will announce its 2026 class of Skadden fellows, the latest recipients of high-profile fellowships supporting public-interest work.

And despite a controversial agreement with the Trump administration that raised the possibility of an ideological shift at the historically left-leaning program, it appears to have kept its progressive bent. The biggest change to the program seems to be its size, with the announcement of 34 new fellows this year—an increase of more than 20%.

Skadden fellowships are highly prestigious—I’ve previously called them the public-interest world’s version of US Supreme Court clerkships or Rhodes Scholarships—and they often serve as springboards into long-term careers in public-interest law. The fellowships are awarded annually by the Skadden Foundation and funded by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. The foundation was launched in 1988 to commemorate Skadden’s 40th anniversary as a law firm, and to date it has awarded more than 1,000 fellowships.

As part of its settlement with the Trump administration in March, Skadden committed itself to “funding no fewer than five Skadden Fellows each year dedicated to the following projects: assisting veterans, ensuring fairness in our justice system, combating antisemitism, and other similar types of projects.” The firm also pledged that the fellows “will represent a wide range of political views, including conservative ideals” (which struck me as so vague as to be unenforceable, since “conservative ideals” are in the eye of the beholder).

When Skadden’s promises relating to the program became public, many former Skadden fellows reacted negatively. One expressed a fear “that the fellowship will be taken away from its core mission of providing desperately needed legal services to people who cannot otherwise afford access to those.” Another declared that Skadden had “given up on the rule of law in a fair and free society, where one can champion the issues and the causes that one cares about without fear of retribution from the government.”

Kathleen Rubenstein, a former Skadden fellow herself, resigned as executive director of the foundation. In a LinkedIn post, she wrote that this “moment in history calls on us to provide more and better support for public interest lawyers”—and opined that Skadden hadn’t yet “risen to that challenge.”

Last week, Skadden exclusively shared with me a list of the 2026 Skadden fellows. I’ve been covering Skadden fellowships for more than 15 years, dating back to 2010, so I have a good sense of the program.

Here’s my bottom line on the new class: It’s the same as the old classes, for the most part. Folks who were concerned about or critical of Skadden’s announced changes to the fellowship program should be relieved.

The projects that the 2026 fellows will work on during their fellowships focus on issues that are mainstays of the Skadden program, such as poverty, homelessness, and workers’ rights. The fellows will work with familiar client populations, including low-income communities, migrants, and individuals with disabilities.

The host organizations are also typical, including legal aid societies, immigrants’ rights groups, and projects or affiliates of the ACLU. You’ll look in vain for a libertarian group such as the Institute for Justice or the Pacific Legal Foundation—to say nothing of a socially conservative nonprofit such as the Alliance Defending Freedom.

During President Donald Trump’s second administration, large law firms have changed the type of pro bono work they’re willing to do, presumably to avoid incurring Trump’s ire. But in terms of its fellowships, Skadden appears to be staying the course. The projects of the 2026 fellows include several advancing immigrants’ rights and one protecting transgender students—not subject matters favored by the Trump administration.

Charlie Gillig, executive director of the Skadden Foundation, told me in an interview last week that the foundation didn’t change its factors for selecting fellows.

“We had an exceptional group of candidates—even larger than last year’s applicant pool—and we didn’t do anything differently this time around,” he said. “We selected the fellows based on our traditional criteria, focusing on the needs of the client populations.”

Size may be the most significant difference between the 2026 class and the last few classes of Skadden fellows, as noted above. The foundation awarded 34 new fellowships, six more than usual. Five of the new fellowships are being funded by Skadden, while a sixth is being funded by a generous bequest from Ron Tabak—a longtime leader of the firm’s pro bono program, who passed away earlier this year.

I noticed two differences that might have been prompted by the Trump deal, which requires the firm to support projects that will help veterans, promote fairness in the justice system, or fight antisemitism.

First, four of the 2026 fellows will work on projects serving veterans—a significant increase from the 2025 class and the 2024 class, which each featured only a single project targeting veterans.

Second, one 2026 fellow will work on a project targeting antisemitism. At least in the five most recent classes of Skadden fellows (2021–2025), no projects had centered on antisemitism.

So there are at least five projects that clearly satisfy the terms of Skadden’s settlement with the administration. Five is also the number of additional fellowships that Skadden funded in the new class, which I’m guessing is no coincidence.

Imagine a critic of the Skadden-Trump deal who views projects focused on veterans or antisemitism as insufficiently tied to the fellowship program’s mission of “address[ing] unmet civil legal needs of people living in poverty in the US.” Because Skadden funded five additional fellowships, the firm could respond to this critic as follows: “We funded an extra five fellowships this year. Even if you set aside or ignore the veteran- and antisemitism-oriented projects, we still funded 28 fellowships in other areas—the same number of fellowships we’ve funded in recent cycles.”

And there are some who might say the Skadden fellowship program, by providing a reputational benefit to the firm, whitewashes the work of a large corporate law firm that serves the rich and powerful (and bends the knee to Trump).

But as someone who doesn’t share this view of Big Law and sees the Skadden fellowship program as a good thing, I think Skadden handled this year’s fellowship class well. The firm seemingly found a way to comply with the Trump deal while honoring the fellowship program’s core values.

Charlie Gillig—a 2011 Skadden fellow himself, who spent his career doing public interest work—told me he’s very pleased with the first class of fellows picked during his tenure as executive director.

“Our focus was on selecting a terrific class of Skadden fellows for 2026,” he said. “And I’m proud to say that we did.”

David Lat, a lawyer turned writer, publishes Original Jurisdiction. He founded Above the Law and Underneath Their Robes, and is author of the novel “Supreme Ambitions.”