For Kourtni Mason, a student at the Southern University Law Center, a historically Black law school in Baton Rouge, La., two years of hard work, hands-on experience and coaching from hard-charging professors were put to the test last summer during an internship at a mid-sized New Orleans law firm.
At the firm, Mason worked alongside interns from big-name law schools such as Louisiana State University, Vanderbilt and Tulane. She got to combine her classroom knowledge and the practical tips she’d received from her professors about work ethic and expectations in the practice of law with the experience she received in clinics where she and her classmates worked with real clients.
Her hard work — and experience — paid off. She was offered a job as an associate at the firm upon graduation in May. The other interns got a pat on the back.
As graduating law students go, Mason is one of the fortunate ones.
These are tough times for the law profession. Employment prospects are the weakest they have been in decades. Wages have stagnated. Many blue chip law firms have laid off lawyers or are hiring fewer lawyers. Lately, law schools have been accused of luring students with false promises of cushy, high-paying jobs. There have been accusations of law schools doctoring employment statistics of their recent graduates, many of them saddled with debt that in some cases exceeds $150,000. Some people are re-examining the value of a law education, and some schools are already seeing a dip in enrollment.
But for the nation’s six historically Black law schools these bleak times are an opportunity to highlight their individual niches and strengths. While several deans say the economic downturn has had some impact on their graduates, they say they have continued to reshape their curriculum and graduation requirements in order to make their students more competitive in the marketplace.
They say they continue to adhere to their historical missions, which vary from school to school but many of which include: having a social justice mission, attracting more people of color to the legal profession, preparing students for careers in public agencies or public interest law and ensuring that their students are ready to practice law upon graduation. The public HBCU law schools tout their low tuition rates, which in turn lead to low debt loads upon graduation.
