Recognizing significant legal clerkships, fellowships, and honors
Summer 2022

Amanda Joos ’23 received Duke University’s 2022 Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award at an April 22 ceremony. She was one of three recipients of the award that recognizes outstanding commitment to service.

Joos has dedicated more than 400 pro bono hours to the Civil Justice Clinic, Veterans Assistance Project, Fair Chance Project, and the Health Care Planning Project. She has also served as the coordinator for the Civil Justice Clinic’s pop-up Eviction Advice Clinic held weekly at the Durham County Courthouse for residents facing eviction actions.

“While many students volunteer with one of roughly 13 student-led projects or a handful of independent projects, it is rare for students to even come close to Amanda’s level of volunteerism,” said Stella Boswell, assistant dean of Public Interest & Pro Bono.

Joos, who toured as an opera singer prior to entering law school, has been on the editorial staff of Law & Contemporary Problems as well as the Moot Court Board and the board of the Transactional Law Society. During her 1L summer she interned with the National Labor Relations Board in representation appeals in addition to working with the Civil Justice Clinic.

Joos also received the Duke Bar Association’s 2022 Richard Lin Service Above Self Award, which is given to a student who embodies the qualities of optimism, integrity, humility, and generosity of time and energy. One of her nominators wrote, “Her heart for service influences every aspect of her life, from her involvement in pro bono to her enthusiasm for her classmates. She believes in doing what is right, and she is a role model to all who meet her.”

Alshaymaa Alharbi LLM ’21 began a year-long fellowship with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, Netherlands, in January. Alharbi is the first LLM graduate from Duke to receive the fellowship with PCA, the world’s oldest institution for international dispute resolution. According to the PCA’s website, fellowship recipients gain experience in the operation of its International Bureau, with an emphasis on both the practical and legal aspects of international arbitration. Fellows are known as assistant legal counsel in their role.

Jabrina Robinson, director of LLM career development and outreach, said that Alharbi “is known for her dedication and giving 110% to everything she pursues. It is not a surprise that she was selected for this prestigious fellowship program.” During her LLM Alharbi worked on the Duke Law Journal and volunteered in the Community Enterprise Clinic. She also served as a teaching assistant at the Summer Institute on Law, Language, and Culture and as a private equity extern at DUMAC.

Alharbi worked as legal counsel at Dr. Mohammed Al-Muhanna and Partners in Saudi Arabia after graduating from Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University in Riyadh in 2015. During university she started a nonprofit organization, “Support Your Sibling,” to provide free legal assistance to indigent clients. The first program of its kind in Saudi Arabia, it now has nearly 500 volunteers and four advisory committees.

Aliyah Salame ’22 was the recipient, in April, of the Law School’s Keller Fellowship, which will fund her work for a year at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri in St. Louis.

Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, which serves 21 counties, offers free legal assistance to low-income clients on a range of civil matters and recently expanded its services to address the specific needs of immigrant and refugee families, veterans, community economic development, and small-business and minority entrepreneurs, according to its website.

Salame, a double Duke graduate who plans to craft a long-term public interest career, prioritized practical experience during law school. In addition to spending both her 1L and 2L summers at public interest organizations, she contributed more than 350 hours of work over three semesters in the Duke Law clinics.

In the Children’s Law Clinic, Salame successfully advocated on behalf of low-income students with various disabilities for specific assistance in their schools. In the Health Justice Clinic she worked toward proving the eligibility of two clients with mental and physical disabilities for disability benefits, helped a transgender asylum-seeking client change her gender marker and her name on her legal documents, and wrote estate-planning documents for clients who had long-term health difficulties. And in the Immigrant Rights Clinic, Salame co-wrote a Ninth Circuit brief on behalf of a client who was facing deportation and interviewed and co-wrote an asylum declaration for the transgender client she had helped in the Health Justice Clinic.

Members of the Class of 1987 created the fellowship in honor of their classmate, John Keller, who has spent his career with Legal Aid of North Carolina. It was first awarded in 2021.

Selective federal program entrants

The following recent graduates are entering or have recently entered federal government service through acceptance to highly competitive Legal Honors and similar programs, many of them after completing judicial clerkships.

» Matt Eible ’19
Department of State

» Andrew Lewis ’19
Federal Trade Commission

» Eileen Ulate ’19
Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice

» David Gardner ’20
Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice

» Logan Johnson ’20
Departmental Appeals Board, Department of Health and Human Services

» Maddy Mumma ’20
Criminal Division, Department of Justice

» Bridgette Ekland ’21
Department of Agriculture (Presidential Management Fellows Program)

» Lindsey Martin ’21
Department of Labor (Presidential Management Fellows Program)

» Christopher Meadows ’21
Federal Public Defenders Office, Miami (fellowship)

» Jordan Ryan ’21
Drug Enforcement Administration Office of Chief Counsel, Department of Justice

» Anderson Vereyken ’21
National Labor Relations Board

» Kayla Fries ’22
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice

» Will Stupski ’22
Government Accountability Office