The People’s Law Office is pleased to announce the launch of its Civil Rights Litigation and Movement Lawyering Fellowship, with two inaugural fellows, Hakeem Muhammad and Nora Snyder.
We welcome them to PLO and look forward to working with them throughout their two-year fellowship.
Mr. Muhammad’s upbringing in the “Black belt of Chicago” inspired him to become an attorney that focuses on protecting the human rights of communities that have been historically marginalized. He has spoken and written extensively on the criminogenic impact of structural racism on Chicago’s African American communities. Prior to law school, Mr. Muhammad lectured in African American political thought at Michigan State, U.C Berkeley, and Harvard Debate Counsel. Subsequently, Hakeem Muhammad became a Public Interest Law Scholar at Northeastern University School of Law. During his time at Northeastern School of Law, Mr. Muhammad was a recipient of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Fellowship and would also be awarded the Oliver Wendel Holmes Scholarship by the Massachusetts Bar Association. Upon graduation from law school, Mr. Muhammad worked as a trial attorney for the Committee for Public Counsel Services where he worked extensively in the racial justice litigation unit working to innovate motions to challenge the impact of racism in criminal trials.
Nora Snyder (she/her) joined the People’s Law Office as a Civil Rights Litigation and Movement Lawyering Fellow in 2022. As a law student at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, she worked in the MacArthur Justice Center civil rights litigation clinic, focusing on cases on behalf of transgender women imprisoned in Illinois. She also interned at Beyond Legal Aid, Uptown People’s Law Center, and the National Immigrant Justice Center, and volunteered with the Transformative Justice Law Project. Prior to joining the office, Nora spent two years clerking in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals staff attorney’s office, working largely on pro se cases. Nora is a trained restorative justice Circle Keeper and is active in the mutual aid network in her neighborhood, Edgewater.
