More than a few 11th-graders at an inner-city Philadelphia high school looked skeptical when University of Pennsylvania law student Mae Stiles announced she would be teaching them a course in constitutional criminal procedures. “Half the class had had brushes with the law,” says Stiles, who volunteered to teach the course last year with classmate Annie Cho. “They seemed to have very negative impressions of law enforcement.”
Things picked up once Stiles began explaining legalities like reasonable
searches and seizures against the backdrop of the teens’ real-life
experiences with police. “It illuminated for me my textbook experience
of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments,” she says of the 15-week course
on Street Law, an introductory law curriculum for high school students
replicated by law schools across the country.
In addition to giving Stiles some unconventional insights into her law studies, her instruction gave the teenagers a practical understanding of how the legal system is set up to protect its citizens. And, in a small way, she helped the organized bar achieve something it desperately wants: a more racially and ethnically diverse population of lawyers. At the end of the semester, two students approached Stiles for advice on how best to prepare for law school. “It was very cool,” she says. “I think it clearly had an effect."
Along with Street Law, the University of Pennsylvania Law School offers several mentoring programs for high school students. Spearheaded by law schools, civic organizations, and the legal community, such programs are part of a nationwide effort known as pipeline initiatives. The term refers allegorically to the various pipelines that—through educational opportunities, role models, and other life factors—feed people from an early age into various professions. The hope is that a strong pipeline network will funnel more minority students into law schools to create a more diverse legal profession.
Census reports confirm that the U.S. legal profession is severely lagging in the racial and ethnic diversity of its makeup. Although minority groups comprised more than 30 percent of the total U.S. population in 2000 (and are expected to increase to 50 percent by 2050), lawyers of color make up less than 15 percent of the legal profession.
This disproportion, diversity advocates argue, has multiple repercussions. Law students, they say, are denied the rich learning experience that comes from having a wide variety of backgrounds and viewpoints in the classroom. Law firms, they add, cannot adequately serve a diverse population with such a small pool of minority law graduates. And, they conclude, even the legal system itself is undermined.
“Maybe if the judges up there looked like me, they might reach a different conclusion,” says Evett Simmons, an African-American and chair of the ABA Presidential Advisory Council on Diversity in the Profession, explaining how a more racially balanced legal and judicial system will galvanize greater public confidence in it. “We need a profession that looks like America,” says Simmons, a partner at Ruden McClosky in Port Saint Lucie, Fla. “Until we have a [legal] system with people who look like what we look like, it keeps us from progressing as a society.”
Law students can serve both the legal profession and society by volunteering for Street Law and other pipeline programs, says Susan Feathers, an assistant dean at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Speaking of the programs’ young audiences, she says, “Instead of feeling like outsiders, they think, ‘Wow, this is exciting. I can be part of the system.’”
An especially popular program among law schools involves inviting K-12 students and college students onto their campuses for a day or longer to give them a taste of the law school experience. At the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, alumnus Jeff Adachi, San Francisco’s elected public defender, has appeared during such a program for the last several years to talk about his modest start as the son of a Japanese-American mechanic. Law students talk about how they got on the legal education track, and they help the young visitors partly complete their college and law school applications. “And we challenge them to fill in the blanks one day,” says Desiree Almendral, a second-year Hastings law student who organized the program last year.
“A lot of law students, especially minority students, want to help students have more knowledge of how the law can empower them,” says J.B. Kim, coordinator of a weeklong summer law camp sponsored by the Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore. Taught by faculty and law students, the program targets high school students who would be the first in their family to attend college and shows them how they can affect the legal system rather than just be on the receiving end of it.
At St. John’s University School of Law in the New York borough of Queens, the annual University Service Day offers a playful opportunity for children to begin imagining themselves as legal professionals. Last year, the event involved fourth-graders who portrayed witnesses, lawyers, the judge, and the bailiff in a fictional courtroom case developed by the ABA Division for Public Education and based on “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
St. John’s third-year law student Kate McGauley helped prepare the students for their role-playing by visiting the elementary school on three occasions. “It was just amazing,” she says. McGauley describes how the group, which included Hispanic, African-American, and Asian-American students, quickly picked up important cues, such as where the lawyers should stand in the courtroom and how to read their lines with understanding and intent.
During the training, the children also peppered McGauley with questions like, “Is law school really hard?” and “Do you get a lot of work?” The questions gave her a golden opportunity to talk about how law school is an attainable goal.
When the big day arrived, she recalls, the youngsters’ eyes lit up as they walked into the imposing mock courtroom. Their equally excited parents confided that, leading up to the event, their children could talk of nothing else.
“I think some of them might want to go to law school down the road,” McGauley says. “They seemed to really like it.”
While such programs individually are designed to feed the pipeline of minorities into the legal profession, the organized bar is working to define the issue on a broader level and develop solutions. In November 2005, the ABA Presidential Advisory Council on Diversity in the Profession convened a seminal conference on pipeline initiatives. It included more than 200 multidisciplinary experts who produced a laundry list of so-called pipeline leaks. Some start even before kindergarten for children who grow up, for instance, in poor households with few books and fewer academic role models. Test gaps between minorities and whites begin as early as the fourth grade and continue all the way through to the LSATs, which are a major determining factor in who gets into law school.
For minority students who get accepted into law school, racial and socioeconomic factors continue to hamper many of them, causing higher attrition rates for students of color.
“When students get here, we do everything to make sure they don’t fall through the cracks,” says Debbie Brooks, assistant dean for admissions and multicultural affairs at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law. As part of a pipeline mentoring program, she advises students on such practical matters as how to manage their loans effectively to keep debt at a minimum. “A lot of minority students don’t necessarily have role models who know how to effectively handle a credit card,” Brooks says.
Statistics show that law students of color have higher first-year dropout rates than white (non-Hispanic) students. Further, Census figures indicate that the pool of minorities entering law schools has been decreasing in some instances. The numbers of African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Puerto Ricans who matriculated to law schools in fall 2005 was the lowest in five years, creating even more of a sense of urgency by those who say action is necessary to expand the number of lawyers of color in the bar and in the classroom.
“More diversity would be beneficial,” says St. John’s law student McGauley, who is white, and whose college classmates were more varied than those in her law school. “I think when you have people coming from different backgrounds, they bring more to it,” she says. “Just the different points of view are something you don’t get when you don’t have a good mix of people.”
Jerry Polinard, who directs a law school preparation course for undergraduates at the University of Texas-Pan American, says a classroom that more accurately reflects the true racial and ethnic makeup of America better prepares today’s law students, who will be practicing in an increasingly multicultural and interconnected world. He adds that law firms also benefit from a more diverse crop of graduates, who can attract different clientele and be sensitive to their needs. And especially with Hispanics being the fastest-growing minority group, he says, “It’s good to have lawyers who are bilingual.”
University of Kansas School of Law professor Stacy Leeds agrees. “Everybody likes someone sitting across the table who understands them,” says Leeds, a member of the Cherokee Indian nation who directs the school’s Tribal Law and Government Center. “There is a comfort level and trust level when an attorney has ties to the community.”
Leeds also suspects that lawyers may be more zealous in their representation of Native Americans if they have a personal stake in the culture. But she adds there are not enough Native American lawyers and judges to handle the complex legal needs of the different sovereign Indian nations in the U.S.—a job that requires a firm grasp of both tribal law and the U.S. federal laws that affect Indian nations.
In 2005, fewer than 400 Native Americans enrolled in law school. But Leeds says that’s a huge improvement over previous years when enrollment was much lower. She credits pipeline programs like the Pre-Law Summer Institute, a two-month academic boot camp for American Indians and Alaska Natives at the University of Mexico, for making the difference. “There is a direct correlation between that program and the number of Native American attorneys on the street today,” she says.
Joining such prelaw programs for minority undergraduates is the Council on Legal Education Opportunity, which was founded in 1968 as a project of the ABA Fund for Justice and Education. CLEO extends the pipeline to the legal profession for people of color by providing training and workshops to minority college students who are interested in attending law school and pursuing a legal career. CLEO alumni include U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson and three members of Congress.
Recognizing that the pipeline to the legal profession continues into law school itself, CLEO offers placement assistance, academic support and counseling, financial assistance, bar prep orientation, online tutoring programs, and weekend seminars and workshops. The seminars and workshops describe the need for legal services to low-income communities and urge law students to provide them as lawyers.
Some individual law schools offer pipeline-related assistance for their students. For example, to foster a more supportive environment for African-American students at the New England School of Law, clinical professor Caryn Mitchell oversees the Charles Hamilton Houston Enrichment Program, a forum for first-year students to discuss discrimination issues and learn more about the civil rights movement and its legacy. “I don’t think people are aware of the tremendous contribution made by people of color on the bench,” she says.
Mitchell, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago and was the first in her family to go to college, participated in the same program when she attended and graduated from the New England School of Law in 1998.
“I don’t know if I would have done as well without it,” she says, recalling instances when she overheard racist comments on campus but was afraid to speak up. “I didn’t want to be labeled the angry black woman.” Through the help of the facilitators and participants in the program, she eventually found her voice. “One thing I learned,” she says, “is that despite where I come from, I had a right to claim my place in law school. I worked hard for it.”
While pipeline programs like New England’s serve current law students who are minorities, others focus on stages much earlier in the pipeline and involve minority and non-minority law students as mentors. Many law school administrators have found that one of the most effective tactics for recruiting a more diverse law student population is to bring K-12 and college-age students of color face to face with law students of the same race or ethnicity. “To see someone similar to yourself in a law program is a big motivator,” says Cathy Alexander, director of admissions at Pace University School of Law in White Plains, N.Y. “The students think, ‘Hey, I can do that, too.’”
When Pace presents its annual Law Day, which is co-sponsored by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Hispanic Bar Association, it includes a panel discussion hosted by Latino law students who describe their experiences in law school. “Without them, it wouldn’t be successful,” says Alexander, who has seen an increase in Latino enrollment since the program began nine years ago. “It definitely provides a feeder.”
Cherie Ackerman, an education law fellow at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, Calif., often finds commonalities like similar hobbies and interests when creating successful matches between law students and high school students in a mentoring-recruitment program she oversees.
“We offer an aspirational and personal development style of mentoring,” she says. Ackerman describes how a law student and high school student will spend an hour together every week doing whatever activity they prefer, whether that’s playing basketball or studying a language. “We want them to relate to each other,” she says, explaining that the program aims to provide the teenagers quality time with someone who has succeeded in reaching a professional level of education.
Ackerman also serves as a mentor. Aside from the general joy and satisfaction her volunteering gives her, it also provides relief from the unyielding demands of law school, which she says can drain students of their usual interest and concern for the outside world. “But for this brief moment of time, you can go back to what brought you [to law school] in the first place,” she says. “And you can make such an impact.”
Ann Farmer is a freelance writer in New York City.
