Jacob Engelhardt ’24 has been selected for the 2022 Rural Summer Legal Corps Fellowship, a prestigious position in which participating Student Fellows spend eight to ten weeks in one of thirty-seven LSC-funded civil legal aid organizations across the United States and its territories, providing legal services to underserved, rural communities.
Selected from 333 applications, Englehardt is one of forty law students who will serve in the program, according to Equal Justice Works.
Every summer, Equal Justice Works partners with LSC (Legal Services Corporation) to support law students who want to give back and engage in community outreach and growth. The program is also an opportunity to explore a career in civil legal aid, since participants will be providing vital legal services and addressing challenges specific to the rural areas they are in.
Englehardt will be hosted by Land of Lincoln Legal Aid, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation serving low-income communities and senior citizens mainly in central and southern Illinois. All legal services and representation are free of charge and aim to help communities maintain their basic human needs and advocate for themselves.
With family law as the single largest category of cases in the company, Englehardt will perform community outreach and education and provide legal assistance to a growing population of domestic violence survivors in rural areas spanning sixty-five counties, which lack public transportation, accessible childcare, affordable healthcare, and sometimes even cell phone service.
In learning how to best represent this demographic of at-risk clients, Englehardt will be taught to assist them in a holistic way that often encompasses training to provide aid for several legal issues at the same time. He steps into this role in the coming weeks.