What does it mean to be a “legal fellow”? Career public interest lawyers, stuck in the pre-”3 to 5 years” experience range, often gain positions as fellows. But increasingly, the term also applies to volunteer attorneys who may only stick around until the economy rebounds.

To be anything but awkward seemed presumptuous, sometimes. What makes me good enough to be a friend, what entitles me to something beyond a professional relationship? In Waston’s (questionable) parlance, why do I get to have my own liberation, just because I’m working with you on yours?

South Asian-American women social justice lawyers are perched firmly on the cutting-edge, pursuing some of the most innovative litigation and advocacy on immigrants’ rights, counterterrorism abuses, and workers’ rights known to Man. How’d that happen?

When I see what’s happening in the world of public interest law, I feel like I’m living out the trailer to a horror film. First it was zombies, now it’s aliens, and here I am in blood-and-dirt-stained H&M biz-cas attire, running breathlessly toward an elusive exit, hoping I can defuse a student-loan bomb before [...]