NCLC Awards Hobbs Fellowship to Washington and Lee University Law Student

December 8, 2022 — Press Release

Hobbs Fellowship awarded annually to law student committed to consumer advocacy and the pursuit of a public interest career

BOSTON – The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) has awarded its annual Hobbs Fellowship to Sydney Brun-Ozuna, a second year law student at Washington and Lee University School of Law. 

“An experienced activist and leader, Sydney exemplifies the spirit of the Hobbs Fellowship,” said Richard Dubois, executive director of NCLC. “We were impressed by her demonstrated commitment to public interest law and policy and her outstanding advocacy skills, and we look forward to welcoming her to NCLC this summer.”

At Washington and Lee University School of Law, she is president of the Pro Bono Board, an editor of The Law News, and active in the Women Law Students Organization and Latin American Law Students Association. She was recently a finalist in the John W. Davis Appellate Advocacy Competition, Washington and Lee’s moot court competition. Last summer, she was a policy intern at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. 

Brun-Ozuna graduated with High Distinction and Honors from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, where she studied Journalism and German and founded a Title IX reform advocacy group called DearUNL, for which she received the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s Visionary Voice Award.

Launched in 2014, the NCLC fellowship is named in honor of Robert “Bob” Hobbs, an expert in fair debt collection law, who worked at NCLC for 42 years, as an advocate and deputy director. NCLC awards the fellowship annually to a student who has demonstrated a passion for, and commitment to, consumer advocacy and the pursuit of a public interest career. In addition to providing for a paid summer internship, the fellowship recipient also receives travel expenses and registration for NCLC’s national Consumer Rights Litigation Conference, which will be held next fall in Chicago.

NCLC legal interns are assigned to teams of four-to-five attorneys, which focus on litigation, non-mortgage lending (credit cards, auto student loans, and various forms of predatory loan products), mortgage lending, bankruptcy, access to utilities, and racial justice and equal economic opportunities issues. Assignments range from researching and drafting litigation memos and briefs, work on NCLC’s manuals, investigative reports, training materials, policy analyses, and articles.

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