The Sept. 19 luncheon featuring a keynote from LANC CEO Ashley Campbell gave the program’s second cohort the opportunity to connect and reflect on their experiences.
NC IOLTA Hosts 2025 Public Interest Interns at State Bar
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On Friday, Sept. 19, NC IOLTA hosted a celebration for the Summer 2025 participants in the Public Interest Internship Program. The luncheon gave interns the opportunity to join NC IOLTA staff, law school officials and other members of the access to justice community in reflecting on their experiences.
As the second cohort of this program, these 35 rising second- and third-year law students from the state’s six accredited law schools received funding to work with legal aid providers, district attorneys, public defenders and judges in North Carolina counties classified as legal deserts.
Defined as areas that have less than one lawyer per 1,000 residents, legal deserts — which can occur anywhere but are often rural areas — see a significant portion of needs in both civil and criminal matters go unmet. This program works to address the dearth of lawyers practicing in such communities by providing interns the opportunity to live and work there while serving in critical public interest roles.
As Executive Director Mary Irvine explained, “The internship experiences can have a really significant impact on students’ future career paths. Those early experiences in the law result in long-term relationships, community connections, interest in particular areas of practice and commitment to supporting underserved individuals. NC IOLTA is proud to partner with the law schools to offer support for students seeking public interest internships in rural communities — students who will soon become lawyers and continue to serve rural communities as they enter the profession.”
NC IOLTA’s Board of Trustees allocated up to $50,000 to each law school to fund the program.
The luncheon was also attended by participants in the Summer 2025 Legal Oasis Fellowship, a program of the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism that places law students in underrepresented communities across the state.
North Carolina law students who participated in the 2025 Summer Interest Internship Program and the Legal Oasis Fellowship at the Sept. 19 celebration at the State Bar
The commission’s executive director, attorney James “Jimbo” Perry — a tireless advocate of strategies to address the attorney shortages in many North Carolina counties — urged attendees from both programs to remember why they decided to enter the field. As part of his remarks, he shared a 2024 video featuring PIIP participant Sully Bangura reflecting on his motivations to study law. Bangura, a rising third-year law student at NC Central University who was interning with the National Conference of Black Lawyers in Wayne County as part of this summer’s PIIP cohort, was killed in a vehicular accident on July 8.
“My call to these students was this: Remember your ‘why,’” Perry said. “Do not settle for success in your career; aim for significance. Do not complain about our problems, but ask, ‘What can I do about them?’ As a lawyer, you will be equipped to help your clients with their cases, your neighbors with their lives and your communities with their struggles. Get past the notion of ‘my four and no more’ — i.e., looking out for only yourself and family — and, as Jeremiah 29:7 says, ‘seek the welfare of the city … and in its welfare you will find your welfare.’”
Clockwise from top left: Legal Aid of NC CEO Ashley Campbell delivers the event’s keynote; interns Emma Schueren and Brian Horvick visit with guests including Jimbo Perry, executive director of the Chief Justice’s Commission on Professionalism, and Judge Tom Langan (with backs to camera) and NCCU School of Law Director of Recruitment and Employer Development Lon’Cherie’ Billingsley; interns and guests enjoy chatting and networking over lunch.
Further inspiration came from keynote speaker Ashley Campbell, CEO of Legal Aid of North Carolina, a 2025 NC IOLTA grantee. Campbell spoke about the vital role of public interest lawyers in rural communities, calling it “work that changes lives directly, daily.”
She closed by noting that, regardless of what sector of law these students choose, whether “judiciary, private practice, government, nonprofit, you can help ensure that our neighbors in North Carolina can access justice.
“Justice is not something distant or abstract. It is in allowing someone to have their day in court, to have someone explain their rights, to have someone care enough to serve,” she said. “Our profession demands not only that we protect justice on paper but that we make it real in every county, every town, every person.”
Read the full text of Campbell’s keynote here.