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Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship Program

 Organization

Historical Note

The Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellowship Program (RHS) was established in 1967 in order to attract young lawyers to the field of poverty law. Initially sponsored by the Legal Services Program within the Office of Economic Opportunity and administered by the University of Pennsylvania, the program recruited recent law school graduates, trained them in various aspects of poverty law, and placed them (for one or two years) in regional legal services projects throughout the country.

The program was named for Reginald Heber Smith, author of Justice and the Poor (1919), a work that is credited with furthering the legal aid movement in the United States; and the Program's Fellows were accordingly called Reggies. In 1969, the Program was moved from the University of Pennsylvania to Howard University where greater emphasis was placed on attracting minority Fellows. When OEO was dismantled in the mid-1970's, the Reggie Program moved to the Legal Services Corporation. From 1967 to 1985, when the program ended, there were approximately 2,000 Reggies.

Found in 1 Collection or Record:

Johnson, Earl, Jr.-- Interview by Alan Houseman, 2002 Nov 02

 Item
Identifier: NEJL-009.070
Abstract Justice Earl Johnson Jr. recounts his legal education, his studies for an L.L.M. in criminal law with Gary Bellow at Northwestern University; his move to Washington, D.C. in 1961, his work for the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section at the U.S. Department of Justice, how in 1964 he came to work as Deputy Director under Julian Dugas for Neighborhood Legal Services in Washington, D.C., the rapid expansion of the NLSP program with one of the early OEO grants, his position as deputy...
Dates: 2002 Nov 02

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