While pursuing his master’s degree at Stanford University, Felipe Neves, 2018 POY Fellow, created Civics Educação, a platform for practical legal courses (at low cost), which are sold to finance scholarships for low-income public-school students.
The lawyers who teach these courses represent the most well-known law offices in Brazil, including Pinheiro Neto, Machado Meyer, Demarest, Lobo de Rizzo, Baptista Luz, and Trench Rossi & Watanabe, among others.
In addition, Civics offers free courses for public school teachers and students, such as Constitutional Law in the Classroom, Access to Justice, and Curriculum Preparation, to prepare young professionals for job opportunities.
Civics works like this: by purchasing one of the courses, the client contributes directly to financing scholarships for low-income public-school students and to the production of new courses. These new courses are then sold to finance new scholarships and new courses, creating one of the largest legal education platforms in Brazil and helping low-income public-school students who want and need to study.
The democratization of law and education is not something new to Felipe. He is Founder of the NGO Project Constitutional Law in School (Projeto Constituição na Escola) (www.constituicaonasescolas.com.br), the largest civic education NGO in Brazil, which promotes face-to-face classes on Constitutional Law for thousands public-school students.
Felipe was elected as one of the most influential people by Forbes 30 Under 30 (2018), selected as a Person of the Year Fellow by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce (2018), chosen as one of the 11 young Brazilian leaders by the Obama Foundation (2017), and named Young Leader of America by the United States Government (2016). He is still the youngest lawyer to have received the Innovare Award from the Brazilian Ministry of Justice (2017).
Given his experience with Projeto Constituição na Escola, Felipe was inspired to democratize other areas of law and make quality legal education accessible and affordable.
Civics already has 20 courses available online, including Business Law, Civil Procedure, Digital Law, Law and Startups, Arbitration, Contract Law, Real Estate Law, Mergers and Acquisitions, Sports Law, and Constitutional Law – while dozens of other courses are being produced.
Learn more here.