Mike Zabelin '05 Receives Prestigious Skadden Fellowship
December 8, 2010
December 8, 2010, Greencastle, Ind. — Michael J. Zabelin, a 2005 graduate of DePauw University, is the recipient of a 2011 Skadden Public Interest Fellowship. Zabelin, a student at Harvard Law School, will work at Rhode Island Legal Services in Providence, R.I., to enforce state and federal measures designed to protect low-income homeowners from foreclosure, using impact litigation, negotiation and community education.
The Skadden Fellowship Foundation, described as "a legal Peace Corps" by the Los Angeles Times, was established in 1988 by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom to commemorate the law firm's 40th anniversary. The award was created in recognition of the dire need for greater funding for graduating law students who wish to devote their professional lives to providing legal services to the poor (including the working poor), the elderly, the homeless and the disabled, as well as those deprived of their civil or human rights.
The aim of the foundation is to give Fellows the freedom to pursue public interest work; thus, the Fellows create their own projects at public interest organizations with at least two lawyers on staff before they apply.
Fellowships are awarded for two years. Skadden provides each Fellow with a salary and pays all fringe benefits to which an employee of the sponsoring organization would be entitled. For those Fellows not covered by a law school low income protection 
plan, the firm will pay a Fellow's law school debt service for the tuition part of the loan for the duration of the fellowship.
The prestigious fellowship was awarded to 29 people this year. The 2011 class of Fellows brings to 620 the number of academically outstanding law school graduates and judicial clerks the firm has funded to work full-time for legal and advocacy organizations.
Access a complete list of 2011 Skadden Fellows by clicking here.
Nicole Hallett, a 2003 DePauw graduate, received a Skadden Fellowship last year.
Learn more about Mike Zabelin -- a political science major, Honor Scholar and Management Fellow at DePauw -- in this previous story.
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