Meet The 2025 BBS Fellows

2025 BBS Fellows, L-R are: Justin Lutz, Christian Ali, Khiari Neal and Jacqueline Rodriguez

BBS is excited to begin its fifth year of the Business Behind the Scenes Fellowship. We’ve been so lucky to have had four years of incredibly talented first-gen law student fellows—and this fifth year promises to continue our winning streak!

Each BBS Fellow receives training by legal professionals from a wide variety of legal backgrounds and organizations, via remote and in-person sessions during the Spring 2024 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 a firm;

● 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 four 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.

Christian Ali attends UCLA Law, where he is a first-year student and recipient of the Achievement Fellowship. After graduating from UCLA undergrad, Christian focused on his interest in education and public policy. He worked for an inner-city school in South Los Angeles as an AmeriCorps member, served as a policy advisor for an elected official in the Orleans Parish School Board, and participated in the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs. As Christian explores the legal landscape, he hopes to “help pave the way for the next generation of Black leaders and be equipped with the tools to shape a more equitable world.” As Christian journeys toward this goal, he believes the BBS Fellowship “would be invaluable to [his] journey, offering mentorship and insights into public service and advocacy for attorneys navigating underrepresented spaces, learning new perspectives, and gaining exposure to legal sectors I have not experienced.”

Justin Wayne Lutz is a 2L attending Yale Law School. He is the first in his family to graduate high school. After completing his undergraduate education at Sarah Lawrence College and his master’s degree at McGill University, Justin returned to his hometown in rural Alabama, where he worked for over a decade in nonprofits dedicated to voting rights and prison reform. Justin believes in the power of education to transform families and communities, and mentors current law students through his work as President of Yale Law School’s First-Generation Professionals group.  Justin hopes to start his own firm in the future and is “eager to learn under the mentorship of lawyers at BBS.”

Khiari Neal is a first year law student at UC Berkeley.  After graduating high school as the first African-American valedictorian in her high school’s history, she studied sociology at UCLA.  She continues to give back to the Center for Youth Development Through Law, an institution she credits with helping her “discover[] that collaborative learning, mentorship, and community-impact aligned with [her] personal values.”  Khiari hopes that “cultivating connections through the BBS Fellowship will further sharpen [her] transferable skills and set me up for a seamless transition into business law.”

Jacqueline Rodriguez attends Stanford Law School as a second-year student.  Jaqueline’s path to law school began after her significant childhood challenges, which included incarceration as a preteen, a pivotal experience that “exposed [her] to the profound consequences of inadequate legal representation.”  She graduated from UCLA with an undergraduate degree in English Literature, after transferring there after working her way through community college as a waitress.  As a BBS fellow, Jaqueline “bring[s] her resilience, advocacy skills, and lived experiences to the fellowship community, enriching discussions on diversity and inclusion.”

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. “We are thrilled to continue our work with the BBS Fellows. 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@bradleybernstein.com).