BBS Announces 2023 Class of Business Behind the Scenes Fellows
BBS is delighted to introduce its class of fellows for the 2023 Business Behind the Scenes Fellowship, a program designed for first-generation professionals currently in law school. The pool of applicants for the fellowship’s third year was extraordinary, and we are incredibly excited about our Fellows.
Each BBS Fellow will receive training by legal professionals from a wide variety of legal backgrounds and organizations, via remote and in-person sessions during the Spring 2023 semester. This is entirely a training and mentorship opportunity for our fellows. BBS fellows are not asked to perform any work for BBS or its clients. Fellows receive training in subjects including:
● tools for succeeding in legal practice, in law firms and beyond;
● law firm economics at both the associate and partner level;
● strategic & logistical considerations in starting your own firm or legal organization;
● nonprofit economics & startup costs; and
● alternative career paths.
This year’s Fellows will also benefit from training, mentorship, and advice from BBS Fellowship alumni of our past two years of programming. BBS is thrilled to be living up to its commitment to building a robust network of current and former fellows to act as a peer network for career development, mentorship of first-generation professionals, additional training opportunities, and advocacy for diversity within the broader legal market.
Christiana Burnett is a first-year student at the University of Chicago Law School. Christiana grew up in Chicago, and was the first person in her family to graduate from college—she attended University of Massachusetts for her undergraduate degree and studied in Madrid, Spain to receive her master’s degree in Management. After a successful career in marketing and communications, Christiana decided to attend law school in her hometown, where she also has mentored both community college and high school students. Keeping in mind two phrases—”you can’t be what you can’t see,” and “you don’t know what you don’t know”—Christiana hopes that the BBS fellowship will allow her to “learn from women who are leaders in the field.”
Anna Judson is a first-year student at UC Berkeley Law School. Anna, a low-income, first-generation student who grew up in foster care, graduated from UC Berkeley with an undergraduate degree in Legal Studies. She spent her undergraduate years serving foster youth in her role with the Berkeley Hope Scholars (“BHS”), which supports UC Berkeley students who have been impacted by child-welfare, and shortly after the Covid-19 lockdown, created an outreach program which supported high school foster youth in applying to college. Anna is “eager to be a part of a fellowship community that offers me professional and personal support” and believes that the BBS Fellowship “will play a powerful role in allowing me to find community.”
Nicole Leon-Elvir is a first-year student at UC Berkeley Law School. Nicole, born in Chicago, advocated from an early age for her parents as they navigated the U.S. immigration system. As an undergraduate at Columbia University, she co-founded the Women of Color Pre-Law Society and sat on the First-Generation Advisory Board. After graduating from Columbia, Nicole used her personal experiences with the legal system to work as an immigration paralegal before attending law school. As a first-generation Latina professional hoping to begin her practice in the private sector and then potentially open her own immigration firm, Nicole is confident that the BBS fellowship “will prove invaluable as I begin my career and will improve my confidence as an advocate.”
Alphonse Simon is a second-year student at Yale Law School. Growing up in Oakland, Alphonse and his sister were raised by their single mother after his father was wrongfully incarcerated. Before graduating from UC Berkeley, Alphonse attended community college at the City College of San Francisco. Alphonse hopes to jump between public and private sector roles as a litigator, all while giving back to the community that raised him. As a BBS Fellow, “this fellowship will afford me the business and client relation skills needed to be a successful law firm partner and the fundraising and management skills required to be a successful social entrepreneur.”
About BBS and the Business Behind the Scenes Fellowship
We founded Bradley Bernstein Sands LLP (“BBS”) in July 2020 after each practicing law for nearly 15 years at some of the biggest law firms and most forward-looking city governments in the country. We are a majority woman-owned firm that represents private and public clients in complex litigation on the West Coast. For over a decade before founding BBS, Heidi Bradley was a leading litigator in Seattle and Los Angeles, and was co-chair of her prior firm’s litigation team. Erin Bernstein has been a national leader in the government affirmative litigation space. And Darin Sands is a first-generation professional who has gone on to become a go-to commercial litigator in Portland. The three of us are longtime friends and are also the parents of young children. As we have built our own law firm, we’ve spent time distilling the important lessons we’ve learned in our prior positions—not just about the dollars and cents of how law firms run, but also about the value of leadership training, building professional networks, project management skills, and integrating a true balance between family life and career ambition into a larger office culture.
Each of our founders is a highly experienced and successful litigator in our own field. But when we set out to start a law firm, we realized that our legal education and career training had not included any information about the economics of big law, government, and nonprofits, or alternative career paths available to lawyers in and outside of the law. We hope to help fill that gap for first generation law students and help demystify the opaque world of law firm economics and non-traditional legal career paths—focusing especially on students who don’t have attorneys or other professionals in their family networks. As we built BBS, we wondered—given the grim statistics of female litigators in BigLaw’s partnership ranks—why there weren’t more women-owned firms like ours, and why there are so few law firms founded by people of color. Systemic inequality and racism certainly play a role in this disparity. But so too does the lack of guidance for diverse lawyers on how to successfully navigate those realities and find a career path that provides autonomy and control over your future. We want to see more firms like ours out there, and we want to empower and help train, mentor, and fund the next generation of founders.
In addition to training on many substantive topics, BBS Fellows will receive focused career coaching from the outstanding coaches at Glassman Coaching + Consulting. Dina Glassman and Jill Long are both former big-law lawyers-turned professional development and diversity professionals at law firms. They now serve as certified coaches who are passionate about supporting professionals in reaching their career goals while deriving greater meaning and satisfaction from their work and life. “We are thrilled to be part of the BBS Fellowship. It’s inspiring to watch our friends at BBS [lead] this meaningful and innovative fellowship and it’s an honor to work with the incredibly talented group of law students in this year’s class.” – Jill Long. BBS is incredibly grateful for the extraordinary contributions of Glassman Coaching + Consulting to our Fellows.
For press inquiries please contact Erin Bernstein (ebernstein@bradleybernsteinllp.com).