International Lawyers

South African Legal Fellows Program

The South African Legal Fellows Program, which is sponsored by the City Bar and the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice, places promising South African lawyers of color with law firms and corporate legal departments in New York City for one-year terms. While in New York these lawyers work on complex cross-border transactions, acquire new legal and business skills, and build their professional networks. Upon returning to South Africa, they have become leaders in the South African legal and business community. They have also formed an association, the South African Legal Fellows Network, to share what they learned in New York with others in South Africa. The Network is becoming a major force for change in the South African legal profession, which even today suffers from the lingering effects of apartheid.

If you would like to learn more, please email Alexander Papachristou, Executive Director of the Vance Center.

Women in the Profession Program

In recent years the City Bar’s Vance Center has worked with local partners to organize Women in the Profession Conferences across Latin America. At these conferences, partners and associates from large and small firms and in-house lawyers have shared ideas about ways of promoting diversity in the legal profession and ways in which they can work together to promote women’s rights across the region. The Vance Center has also supported the creation of mentoring programs for women lawyers in Mexico, Chile and Argentina and is now supporting the development of a regional mentoring program in Central America.