Roosevelt Institute Launches Legal Leadership Pipeline to Shape Law, Policy, and Economic Power

NEW YORK, NY—The Roosevelt Institute and the People’s Parity Project (PPP) announced today that PPP’s staff, network, programming, and assets will be integrated into the Roosevelt Institute this fall and winter. Founded by law students in 2018 to build a legal system that works for working people, PPP will now carry its mission forward inside the Roosevelt Society.

Roosevelt will connect PPP’s law school chapters and national lawyer network with the broader community of lawyers already engaged across the Roosevelt Society’s leadership programs, from mid-career attorneys to current, former, and aspiring senior government lawyers. In partnership with others in the field, some of the Roosevelt Society’s programming is specifically focused on developing the next generation of general counsels and other senior lawyers who can navigate an increasingly complex legal environment, work effectively with policymakers, and help the government deliver for the public while upholding the rule of law. The result will be a broader pipeline of legal leaders prepared to help reshape the rules that govern our economy and democracy.

Together, these programs create a continuum of engagement and leadership development from law school through the most senior roles in the profession, building a community of lawyers equipped to shape institutions, interpret and implement policy, and put reform into practice. PPP’s network will also help Roosevelt identify emerging legal fights and inform its policy work on court reform, democratic institutions, worker power, and other areas where law and policy intersect.

This move reflects a view Roosevelt has long held: Lawyers, like economists before them, increasingly act as gatekeepers of what is possible in public policy. Lawyers and judges interpret statutes, advise agencies and companies, and decide whether ambitious policy survives legal challenge. Roosevelt has spent a decade working to change who serves as an economic policy gatekeeper and is now applying that approach to the legal profession.

“Roosevelt has spent a lot of time thinking about what it takes to move from good ideas to actually delivering on a different life for people,” said Elizabeth Wilkins, president and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute. “Bringing this legal network into the Roosevelt Society allows us to build that capacity in a profession that has enormous influence over how rules shape people’s lives and what government can do to serve the public. Together, we hope to develop a generation of lawyers who understand how we can reshape law to work for the many rather than the few. That is a critical part of preparing for the next pro-democracy governing moment.”

Over its eight-year history, PPP grew to as many as 25 law school chapters at its peak and currently has hundreds of alumni serving in positions dedicated to ensuring that the law works for working people across the legal profession. It ran campaigns against forced arbitration clauses and other coercive contract provisions and for student loan repayment reform; shaped the debate on judicial nominees and court reform, including pushing the Biden administration to appoint economic justice champions to the bench and advancing the conversation around the proper role of the courts in a democracy; and worked to change the culture of the legal profession to one that values people over corporate interests.

“We founded PPP on a simple belief: Practicing law is never neutral. Every lawyer and judge is making choices about whose interests the system serves, and they should answer for those choices to the public, not just to each other,” said Molly Coleman, PPP’s cofounder and executive director. “We also recognized litigation alone would never get us the legal system or democracy we deserve. It takes organizing the people who join this profession, so that choosing to stand with working people becomes an expectation rather than an exception. Bringing that mission to Roosevelt allows us to deepen our impact and reach at a critical moment for our country.”

“Law has been a central tool through which powerful actors have rigged our economy and broken our democracy,” said K. Sabeel Rahman, Roosevelt Institute board member and professor of law at Cornell Law School. “If we want an economic and political system that works for all of us, we will need to change the legal rules that shape our economic system—and the pipelines leading to key roles across the profession, from government to enforcement to litigation, advocacy, and the courts. That means forging new pathways for current and future lawyers dedicated to serving the public interest, and to rebalancing power in our economy and democracy.” 

The Roosevelt Society is an intergenerational community of more than 2,000 members, from undergraduates and early-career professionals to fellows, academic economists, political staffers, and philanthropic allies. Through fellowships, professional cohorts, policy summits, and networking across sectors, it builds the leadership pipeline needed to change the culture of policymaking. Like the Roosevelt Society cohorts before it, PPP’s legal network will be connected to the ideas, relationships, and opportunities they need to lead in the public interest.

About the Roosevelt Institute
The Roosevelt Institute is a policy and leadership institute that develops the ideas that reorient our economy and democracy toward the common good, cultivates the leaders who carry those ideas into consequence, and helps design the institutions that hold progress in place. We believe America has always been an argument about power—who holds it, who it serves, and whether it can be made to answer to everyone—and that concentrated wealth, left unchecked, becomes concentrated power that rewrites the rules in its own image. Drawing on the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, we’re working toward an America defined by broadly shared prosperity: one where everyone has the security to take risks, the freedom to shape their own life, and a real say in the decisions that affect them. Learn more at rooseveltinstitute.org.