Vatsala Kumar, ’23, has been awarded a Skadden Fellowship to work with the MacArthur Justice Center (MJC) on enforcing and advancing the impact of Illinois’s Pretrial Fairness Act—the first law in the United States to eliminate cash bond.

Kumar, who is currently completing her service as a Staff Law Clerk for the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, will lead a two-year project focused on strengthening statewide compliance with the Act’s data-collection requirements and increasing public understanding of pretrial outcomes.

The Act mandates that counties collect and report data on pretrial release decisions to a statewide Data Oversight Board. Kumar’s project will use litigation, FOIA requests, and targeted advocacy to ensure that this information is gathered and made publicly accessible. Once the data is obtained, she will analyze it to identify patterns in pretrial release decisions and share the findings with policymakers, advocates, and the public.

“Data collection is essential to the Act’s success in the long term,” Kumar said. “It allows the state to ensure that its officers are comporting with the Act, helps us understand collateral impacts, and bolsters public awareness and evaluation of the law’s effectiveness.”

The Skadden program, one of the most prestigious public interest fellowships in the country, provides recent law graduates with the opportunity to pursue the practice of public interest law on a full-time basis for two years. Skadden Fellows address unmet civil legal needs of people living in poverty in the United States.

Sue Pak, director of public service and pro bono at the Law School, said, "Skadden Fellows not only have the great privilege of providing crucial legal services in areas of law they are already passionate about, but the Fellowship Program also opens doors to additional resources, programming, and continued support from a vast network of current and former Skadden Fellows who are doing amazing work worldwide."

Kumar shared that she was “overjoyed and honored” when she learned she had been selected for the fellowship. “I think I blacked out for a little bit of the phone call,” she said. “I was—and still am—so grateful that Skadden believes in this project and in the work MJC is doing.”

A Commitment to Public Interest Work

Throughout law school and since graduation, Kumar has been committed to public interest and civil rights advocacy. At UChicago Law, she worked in the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic, where she analyzed data on arrestees’ access to phone calls—work that ultimately supported litigation and informed an expert report. She also completed civil rights internships at the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, gaining experience in Title VI and Title IX enforcement.

Those experiences, combined with the quantitative training she received from her Master of Public Policy from the Harris School, which she earned in 2023, helped shape her Skadden project.

“I think the data-analysis skills I developed through the MPP program, in combination with my JD, make me uniquely well-suited to work on this component of the Act,” she said.

Building on Lessons from UChicago Law

Kumar credits her clinical training with deepening her understanding of community-informed lawyering. In the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic, she said, Clinical Professor Craig Futterman “showed me the importance of listening to impacted individuals and following their lead”—a principle that continues to guide her work.

The project she will be pursuing during her fellowship was borne out of listening to the frustrations of community members, she observed.

As with the phone-call project she worked on at the clinic, data analysis will also a key component of Kumar’s fellowship project on Illinois’s Pretrial Fairness Act. “The data collection provisions of the Act are central to ensuring that its broader aims are realized,” she explained.

Futterman said he can’t imagine anyone better suited to lead this “historic project" than Kumar.

“As gifted as she is with data analysis, what makes Vatsala special is her understanding that each piece of data represents the experience of real people,” Futterman explained.  “I know that Vatsala will use her supreme talents and brilliance in this project and throughout her career to improve our justice system, especially alongside people who have been traditionally marginalized by that system.”

Kumar envisions a career in criminal justice reform or civil rights law, ideally in a role that bridges law and policy. She sees the fellowship—and her partnership with MJC—as an ideal foundation.