Legal Externship/ Fellowship Summer 2026

About CFR

The Center for Family Representation Inc. (CFR) is an award-winning, innovative law and policy organization that serves primarily Black and Brown families and youth in Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island with an interdisciplinary legal defense model that serves more than 2400 clients every year. CFR was originally founded in 2002 to dramatically change the trajectory of indigent parents being prosecuted by the City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). Our goal is to defend and protect our clients’ rights, reduce the harm of family separation and prevent or minimize the time any child spends in the foster system.

CFR provides interdisciplinary family defense with a model that was unique at our founding and that is now being replicated nationally: we assign every client an attorney and a social work staff member, and teams have the support of parent advocates, who are parents with direct personal experience of being investigated and prosecuted by ACS. CFR was the first agency in the country to integrate parents with lived experience into legal teams and has parent advocates working in all four of our family defense locations. 

Practice Areas

CFR’s Community Advocacy Project represents parents during a child protective investigation (to avoid court involvement where possible) and assists parents in clearing their names from state maltreatment records.

As an agency committed to securing justice for families, we built the Youth Defense practice (YDP) to defend youth at risk of family separation through incarceration. YDP uses the same interdisciplinary model to represent youth being prosecuted in Queens, Bronx and Manhattan in Supreme Court Youth Parts, during Probation Adjustment and in Delinquency proceedings in Family Court. 

CFR’s Home for Good program provides legal and social work services to CFR clients in immigration, civil legal services and criminal defense matters, to afford clients an efficient and well-coordinated one-stop solution to a range of issues that threaten family stability. 

Recognized as experts in our fields, we annually train over 500 practitioners in the city, state and around the country on strategies to promote family preservation and interdisciplinary representation, and we provide community based “Know Your Rights” presentations to parents, youth and service providers. We advocate at the city, state and national level for policies that reduce the harm of family separation, and promote parent engagement and justice for youth and families.

About the Program

Selected candidates will work collaboratively with CFR attorneys and social work staff working in Family Defense, Criminal Defense, Youth Defense, Immigration, Policy, Civil, Appeals, and State Central Register appeals.   

Those selected will participate in comprehensive training and receive individualized supervision and mentoring.  Individuals will get direct, hands-on experience with  advocacy, client counseling, crisis intervention, negotiation and case management.  Opportunities also include the ability to pursue individual research and writing assignments, have the opportunity to work on projects related to the specific practice area to which they are assigned, appear on the record in court pursuant to student practice orders if appropriate, and more. 

CFR will consider law students with a demonstrated interest in our and/or related work.  

All applicants must be affiliated with an accredited for academic credit externship and/or paid fellowship.

Application Instructions:  

To apply, please send a cover letter, resume, writing sample and list of three references to  Attorney-In-Charge of Legal Support, Kenneth Sokol (KSokol@cfrny.org). Kindly put "Summer 2026 Legal Externship/Fellowship" in the subject line. Please list your area(s) of interest as well as borough preference.  Please note that we are accepting applications in the following practice areas: Family Defense, Criminal and Youth Defense, Immigration, Policy, Civil, Appeals, and State Central Register appeals.  You may apply to more than one practice area with a single application if you wish.  Please also include any relevant information regarding your externship or fellowship program through your law school or funding provider. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis. Anticipated start date is May 26, 2026 (subject to change). End date is based upon the candidate's individual program/funding affiliation requirements.