Scholarship details
The University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and Sonke Gender Justice Network present the UCLA Law – Sonke Health & Human Rights, Fellowship. Launched in 2011, the program provides specialized training to top graduates from Southern African law schools for careers as impact-oriented public interest lawyers in the areas of health, human rights, HIV prevention, and gender equality.
The University of California is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California.
The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, along with numerous research centers and academic abroad centers. The system is the state’s land-grant university.
Collectively, the colleges, institutions, and alumni of the University of California make it the most comprehensive and advanced postsecondary educational system in the world, responsible for nearly $50 billion per year of economic impact.
Major publications generally rank most UC campuses as being among the best universities in the world. Eight of the campuses, Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Santa Cruz, and Riverside, are considered Public Ivies, making California the state with the most universities in the nation to hold the title. UC campuses have large numbers of distinguished faculty in almost every academic discipline, with UC faculty and researchers have won 71 Nobel Prizes as of 2021.
Founded in 1949, UCLA School of Law is the youngest of the top-ranked law schools in the U.S. Its faculty are influential teachers and scholars, and its 18,000-plus alumni are leaders in government, industry, social justice, and the legal profession. The school offers students a strong foundation in law and practical training in a collaborative, intellectually rich environment.
In the last few years, UCLA Law also established areas of focus that would blossom into full-fledged centers of scholarship and study. With copyright legend Melville Nimmer on faculty, the school held its first entertainment law courses. Other professors developed curricula in environmental law, Indian law, and communications law, and the school launched its International and Comparative Law Program. Students, too, broke new ground. In 1973, they created a network of student-run legal clinics first known as El Centro Legal de Santa Monica.
Today, El Centro is a powerful student-run organization with 15 projects serving underrepresented communities in Los Angeles. The Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment is among the top-ranked environmental programs in the country. Alumni of the Ziffren Institute for Media, Entertainment, Technology, and Sports Law routinely are ranked among the entertainment industry’s power lawyers. And the strength of the school’s international law program has expanded with the 2017 creation of the Promise Institute for Human Rights.
Eligibility
- Applicants must be majoring in law
- Both male and female students may apply
- Applicants that are disadvantaged and South African will be preferred for this scholarship over other applicants
- Individuals from the United States can apply but their applications will not be considered a primary focus
- Students from Southern Africa will need to show that they can apply for a student visa
Requirements
LSAC requires an additional fee of $30 for each Document Assembly Service report it generates and transmits to a law school on your behalf. If you have created your LSAC account but have not yet paid the $30 fee to have your report transmitted to UCLA, please pay the fee to ensure that we will receive your application and documents.
Please note that applicants are not required to register for the LSAC CAS LL.M. International Transcript Authentication and Evaluation service, which requires an additional fee of $135. (Only the $85 fee for creating your Document Assembly Service account and the $30 fee to send your report to UCLA are required.) Nonetheless, you are welcome to register for the evaluation service. Doing so may result in faster processing of your application and a faster announcement of our program’s admission decision.
An important aspect of the application is the personal statement, in which applicants describe their objectives in pursuing graduate legal studies at UCLA School of Law. Discuss any matters relevant to the student’s best ability to succeed in law school and the practice of law, and any attributes, experiences, or interests that would enable them to make a distinctive contribution to UCLA and the legal profession.
The personal statement should be typed, double-spaced in 12-point font, and should not exceed three pages in length. When completing this online application through LSAC, follow the instructions to attach an electronic copy of another personal statement to the application.
How to Apply
To apply for admission to the UCLA Law LL.M. Program, prospective applicants must submit an application and supporting documents through the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) LL.M. Credential Assembly Service (CAS) Document Assembly Service.
Creating an account requires a one-time fee of $85. As a courtesy and to help applicants offset this cost, we have waived UCLA’s separate $85 application fee for all applicants to the LL.M. Program.
Applicants must arrange to have two to four letters of recommendation submitted to LSAC from knowledgeable persons who can tell the Graduate Studies Committee about the applicant’s academic qualifications and career interests.
Applicants must arrange to have transcripts submitted to the LSAC LL.M. CAS Document Assembly Service from all graduate and undergraduate coursework evidencing their completion of a prior degree in law, such as an LL.B. or J.D.
A standard resume/CV listing of all academic qualifications and relevant work experience is required. Students may submit a more detailed CV if they wish.
Reward – Extra Benefits
$12,000 towards tuition coverage will be granted along with a wavering the rooming fee that will take place on campus.
When a recipient wins this award they must follow through and will be asked to certify that they will return to South Africa upon completion of the degree. To commit towards public interest and career that promotes only health, human rights, and gender equality in the African region.
Deadline
The application deadline is March 1, 2022.
For this scholarship, it would be an asset for students to know what documents to have when applying for a scholarship.
Open Submission Window Time Frame
The open submission window time frame is from late November to February. So for example that would be November 2021 – February 2022.
Annual
This is an annual scholarship.
