The ATJ Tech Fellows was founded to meet the needs of a rapidly changing legal environment and growing justice gap. The program was founded in 2016 by Miguel Willis, who at the time, a second year law student at Seattle University School of Law.

The pilot initially partnered with nine civil legal aid organizations to offer a wide range of innovative project-based experiential opportunities for law students.

During the summer of 2017, the pilot cohort set out to develop new skills and a range of projects that leverage technology, data, and user-centered approaches to address real-life legal service delivery problems. Through the pilot’s success, and support from the ATJ Tech Fellows advisory board.

The fellowship program was able to sustain operations, and greatly scale in capacity. Catalyzed by an instrumental partnership with the Legal Services Corporation, which placed 22 fellows within TIG grantee organizations in for the 2018 program.

Now, going into the third year of the program, the ATJ Tech Fellows network consist of 33 fellows and 28 host organization partners throughout the nation.

At ATJ Tech Fellows, we seek to inspire & equip the next generation of civil justice leaders with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to build a more responsive civil justice system. One that ensures equitable access and fair outcomes for low-income and marginalized populations.

ATJ Tech Fellows actively works to build a robust pipeline of diverse and culturally adept civil justice leaders. Agile lawyers who will drive bold change and become catalyst in developing innovative solutions that responsively address the legal needs and challenges marginalized communities face.

To catalyze the conditions and systemic change necessary to responsively address the civil justice gap. ATJ Tech Fellows promotes a culture of knowledge, attitudes, and values to prepare the next generation of civil justice leaders to reshape, reinvent, and re- engineer the delivery of legal services. Our culture is deeply embedded into the fabric of the organization.

Celebrating a Culture of Diversity, Inclusion, & Equity

We wholeheartedly celebrate the unique dimensions and intersectionality of diversity, including race, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, and persons with a disability. Our leadership, staff, and fellows are representative of the full spectrum of communities they set out to serve. Actively fostering an inclusive environment to ensure equitable access to opportunities and full participation of persons from all races and cultural backgrounds.

Cultivating a Culture of Creative Problem Solvers & Critical Thinkers

We actively promote a culture of continuous learning through ongoing skills and leadership training, and robust experiential opportunities. Recognizing the systemic role that race, class, power, identity and privilege has in creating barriers and disproportionate access in our civil justice system. We believe that advocates who are readily capable in employing a diverse range of technical and interdisciplinary skills.

Combined with a deep understanding of how online tools can change lives, systems, and communities. Fellows will be well equipped to address the most complex challenges that serve as barriers to legal access and addressing unmet legal needs. Therefore, we seek to provide a holistic learning experience. One that is grounded and informed by critical analysis to develop new legal technology solutions, uses of data, and other innovative approaches aimed to improve our civil justice system.

Fostering a Culture of Inclusive Innovation within our Civil Justice System

We actively seek to embed opportunities and experiences that facilitate meaningful inclusion and engagement with the communities we seek to serve. We believe low-income and marginalized communities’ legal needs can be better served when members of those communities have a participatory and active seat at the table. Therefore, we take an intentional to ensuring new solutions and innovations are informed by culturally responsive approaches throughout the ideation, development and implementation stage.