If I were to be granted the humbling opportunity to steward a substantial philanthropic gift, I would not direct it toward the building of institutions or the endowment of my name. Instead, I would place those resources at the feet of a far more urgent moral imperative: the human right to competent, compassionate legal representation, regardless of economic circumstance.

Specifically, I would establish a foundation devoted to financially supporting skilled attorneys in pursuing full-time pro bono work, enabling them to serve marginalized populations without the burden of economic sacrifice. In doing so, I would aim not only to address the immediate injustices faced by underserved communities, but to redefine the cultural architecture of the legal profession itself.

This vision is not theoretical for me. It crystallized in the quiet, often overlooked spaces of a law firm where I interned—an experience that profoundly altered my assumptions about the nature of justice and the people charged with upholding it. I am relentlessly determined,desperate to study law because I cannot accept a world where justice is reserved for those who can afford it. This isn’t just a career path for me—it’s the only way I know to fight for the equity that so many are still waiting for.

I have this urge to pursue law not out of ambition, but out of necessity: rooted in the quiet, aching understanding that so many people are punished not for their actions, but for their powerlessness. I have seen what it means to be ignored because you speak with an accent, dismissed because you cannot afford a lawyer, or broken by systems that treat you as a problem to manage rather than a person to protect. These are not abstractions to me; they are people I know. I have felt the helplessness of watching someone I love try to explain their truth and be met with indifference, simply because they didn’t know how to navigate a legal form or speak the language of the courtroom. That helplessness hardened into resolve. I pursue law because I cannot look away. Because I believe the law can be more than a weapon of the powerful. It can be a voice for those who have been denied one. And I want to spend my life making that true; not just in principle, but in practice.

Before that internship, my understanding of the legal profession was shaped, like many others’, by the distant iconography of prestige: courtroom theatrics, leather-bound books, imposing office towers, and salaries with too many zeroes to count. The lawyer, in my imagination, was a figure of authority and ambition—an architect of contracts, a wielder of power, a gatekeeper of privilege. But the law firm where I found myself as an intern complicated that picture in ways I had not expected.

There, I witnessed something far more nuanced, and infinitely more humane. In windowless conference rooms and hushed phone calls, I observed attorneys who labored tirelessly over cases they would never profit from—clients they would never meet again, whose names would never grace any headlines. A tenant facing eviction after a landlord’s negligence led to the collapse of a ceiling. Women desperate for divorce, yet lacking the financial means to do so without ripping their family apart and stripping away their assets.

These were not just cases. They were lives balanced precariously on the edge of the legal abyss. And the lawyers who stepped into that abyss to offer guidance were not acting out of saviorism or self-congratulation. They were doing what the legal system claims to promise, but so rarely delivers: affirming the basic dignity of individuals by standing beside them when the state, the market, and the silence of society had turned away.I came to understand something more difficult but more vital: that the law is, above all, a contested space. Fragile, fallible, and susceptible to the inequalities it claims to mitigate. Access to justice is not evenly distributed. It is rationed. And it is often denied outright to those who need it most, not because they lack a claim, but because they lack the currency to assert it.

Pro bono work, as it currently exists, is often treated as a professional obligation—a noble footnote in an otherwise lucrative career. But what if we refused to relegate this work to the margins? What if we restructured the profession so that serving the public good was not the exception, but the foundation?

My philanthropic model would challenge the prevailing calculus of success in law. It would provide competitive, dignified compensation for lawyers who commit themselves fully to representing low-income individuals, grassroots movements, and communities criminalized or abandoned by the system. It would cover legal costs, fund long-term litigation strategies, and partner with local organizations already embedded in the struggle for equity. And it would do something else—something less measurable but no less urgent: it would elevate moral courage as a professional standard.

There is a dangerous myth that the law is neutral- that it does not see race, class, citizenship, or disability. But neutrality, in a world of structural imbalance, often serves as a mask for complicity. The law, when unchallenged, defaults toward the powerful. And if we fail to fund its interrogation: if we fail to support the people who fight to reclaim its promise for those most at risk, we permit that default to calcify into a permanent injustice.

To be clear, I do not imagine that philanthropy alone can rectify centuries of systemic inequality. But I believe it can disrupt the complacency of elite institutions, and illuminate alternative models of professional life. It can offer resources where there has only been scarcity, and hope where there has only been silence. More importantly, it can validate the humanity of those who are too often treated as disposable in the eyes of the law.

If I were to become a philanthropic leader, I would not invest in prestige. I would invest in people- lawyers who choose to stand between the voiceless and the machinery that would erase them. I would invest in justice that is slow, imperfect, unglamorous, and yet, utterly essential.

In the end, this vision is not about charity. It is about reclaiming the law as a moral undertaking, not a commercial enterprise. It is about insisting that justice is not a privilege to be bought, but a right to be honored and that those who defend it deserve our deepest respect, and our unwavering support.