Gene Hamilton, vice president and general counsel of America First Legal (AFL), explained why the Next Generation (NextGen) Fellowship Program through AFL is a critical tool for young conservative lawyers who seek to “advance the conservative movement in a way we haven’t seen before.”
The mission of AFL’s NextGen Fellowship Program, according to the organization’s website, is to “train and build a bench of lawyers equipped with the legal skills needed to save our nation and to effectively push forward an America First agenda in government, including in future conservative presidential administrations.”
The program, open to second-year and third-year law students and attorneys with less than 10 years of practice experience, consists of monthly events, both in-person and virtual, “featuring high-level conservative attorneys who served in the Trump Administration, administrative and constitutional law experts, and Members of Congress, speaking on a variety of topics to help educate attendees.”
Hamilton (pictured above) further explained the program’s importance on Wednesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, noting how the skills offered through the program can be utilized in many different career pathways in the legal field.
“You’ll be able to use these skills that you learn whether you go on to work at a soul crushing law firm, whether you go to work for a state attorney general, whether you come work for us at America First Legal, you go to serve in a future conservative presidential administration. The sets of skills you need and the thought processes that we hope that we are teaching people are things that will equip you to be a fighter and to be a warrior and to be able to adapt and succeed and advance the conservative movement in a way that we haven’t seen before,” Hamilton said.
Regarding the conservative movement among the next generation, Hamilton added that the program is “really and truly the kind of thing that has been sorely needed on the Right.”
“One of the great failures of any movement, of any organization, of anything across the spectrum is a failure to train up the next generation and a failure to foster the kinds of leaders and fighters that you need to carry on a movement,” Hamilton said.
“So this NextGen Fellows Program is precisely our attempt to do so. What we want young lawyers and law students to do is we want to teach them how to learn, how to think, how to act, the types of thought processes you need to go through the types of intellectual exercises, the grounding in the law and in the constitution, that it’s going to take for you to make a real difference as a young conservative lawyer,” Hamilton added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Gene Hamilton” by America First Legal.
