Legal Fellow (Spring 2026)

Fellowship Details

• Duration: 18 weeks
• Hours per Week: 40 hours
• Start Date: January 2026

Summary

If you’re a current law student or recent law school graduate passionate about free knowledge and open source issues, applying to our legal fellowship program can provide an immersive in-house experience with specific education and training in the areas of Internet law and free knowledge organizations.

Description

The Foundation faces a myriad of legal issues ranging from complex copyright questions to international freedom of expression to mobile development to internal corporate compliance. Because of the wide array of legal issues, legal fellows will be assigned challenging projects based on their particular interests and strengths. These projects range from researching various legal questions to drafting licensing agreements to developing internal and external policies.

Each fellow will receive individualized projects that they will be expected to spearhead under the supervision and guidance of an attorney from the Legal Department.

Fellows will work closely with their supervising attorney - attending and participating in internal and external meetings, collaborating on projects, receiving feedback and support, and generally learning about the practical dimensions of practicing law in-house at a web-based company.

When the opportunity exists, the Legal Department will work with a fellow's university to facilitate earning academic credits and/or receiving funding for the fellow's time at the Wikimedia Foundation.

Requirements

• High energy for and commitment to the Wikimedia Foundation's free knowledge mission, including an interest in free culture issues, digital rights, open source software, Creative Commons licensing, etc.
• A good sense of humor and the ability to excel in a fast-paced, multitasking environment that demands fast turn-arounds.
• Intellectual curiosity and flexibility that makes them enjoy tackling difficult and ambiguous problems in creative ways. Candidates with strong research backgrounds are preferred.
• Experience working with large online user communities (or at least the desire to). Candidates with experience with wikis or Wikimedia projects are preferred.
• The ability to flourish in a highly transparent and collaborative environment and work on a team with diverse demographic and cultural characteristics. Multilingual candidates are a plus!
• Excellent writing skills that can be adapted to communicate complex legal concepts to a large audience with varying (or no) backgrounds in law. Candidates with experience and/or coursework in drafting agreements and/or policies are preferred.
• Completed coursework in some or all of the following areas of law: internet law, freedom of expression (domestic and international), intellectual property, contract drafting, international law, privacy, data security, and/or licensing. While coursework in these areas is not required, students who have experience in these areas are heavily preferred.

Pluses

• Being a Wikimedian! (Please share your username in your cover letter.)

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. Our vision is a world in which every single human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. We believe that everyone has the potential to contribute something to our shared knowledge, and that everyone should be able to access that knowledge freely. We host Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects, build software experiences for reading, contributing, and sharing Wikimedia content, support the volunteer communities and partners who make Wikimedia possible, and advocate for policies that enable Wikimedia and free knowledge to thrive.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a charitable, not-for-profit organization that relies on donations. We receive donations from millions of individuals around the world, with an average donation of about $15.