American Bar Foundation receives a $320K grant from Access Group Inc.

The American Bar Foundation (ABF) was awarded a $320,000 grant from Access Group, Inc., a nonprofit organization that works to promote access to legal and graduate education.

The grant comes from Access Group’s Center for Research & Policy Analysis (the “Center”) and will support the ABF’s Emerging and Visiting Scholars Fellowship Program in Legal and Higher Education.

“The Access Group Center for Research & Policy Analysis is pleased to award the American Bar Foundation a $320,000 grant to support the Emerging and Visiting Scholars Fellowship Program in Legal and Higher Education,” Christopher P. Chapman, president and CEO of Access Group, said. “Advancing scholarly research in legal education, and in higher education more broadly, is a core priority of the Center.”

The amount, from the Center’s directed grant program, will support two new programs: the Visiting Scholar Program in Legal and Higher Education and the Doctoral Fellowship Program in Legal and Higher Education.
Existing law and social science scholars interested in studying legal and higher education are invited to apply for the visiting scholar program.

Emerging scholars interested in empirical and interdisciplinary research on legal and higher education are invited to apply for the doctoral fellowship program., which is open to Ph.D. candidates whose doctoral research shows promise of a major contribution to social scientific understanding of legal and higher education.

With these two new programs, the ABF aims to assemble and coordinate a professional network of scholars who will produce innovative, objective, empirical, and interdisciplinary research in the field of legal and higher education.

“We are delighted and grateful to receive this generous grant from Access Group to support our Emerging and Visiting Scholars Fellowship Program in Legal and Higher Education,” said Ajay K. Mehrotra, director of the American Bar Foundation.“With this grant, we plan to further enhance the ABF’s long-standing tradition as an incubator for the next generation of innovative and influential scholars.”