In an effort to introduce undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds to the legal profession, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) this month awarded $1.5 million to five new law schools through its Diversity Initiatives grant program.
LSAC will grant $300,000 each to the University of Akron School of Law, The University of Alabama School of Law, Duke University School of Law, University of Houston Law Center and St. John’s University School of Law to continue the LSAC’s Prelaw Undergraduate Scholars (PLUS) Program at the institutions. The PLUS program will introduce interested first- and second-year undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds to the “rigor and rewards” of a law career.
“We are seeing very positive results from introducing students to the opportunities in the legal profession and the demands of studying law at an earlier stage in their college career,” said Kent D. Lollis, executive director for diversity initiatives at LSAC. “The students find out that they can do the work and they get very excited about the prospects.”
Since 2002, roughly 2,342 students have participated in the PLUS program at 23 LSAC-member law schools. According to LSAC, the PLUS scholars who completed the programs were admitted to more law schools and were accepted at a rate of 79 percent compared to 72 percent for non-participants. PLUS alumni also improved their undergraduate GPA by an average of 2.7 percent between their freshman year and time of application to law school, compared to a GPA drop of -0.5 percent for non-participants, the corporation said.
Kent adds that the program is especially important for diverse populations because these students are more likely than other groups to not have lawyers in their families. Throughout the program, students “are exposed to all kinds of areas and practices from prosecutors, to corporate law, to judges, to public interest law. So they get a good idea of what lawyers do,” he said.
The five schools will receive the LSAC Diversity Initiatives funding in three $100,000 installments, allowing them to bring 20 to 30 underrepresented students to their campus for about four weeks for three summers. Each PLUS student participant will receive a $1,000 stipend.
LSAC’s efforts to bring more students into the profession are not superfluous as statistics show that law is one of the least racially diverse professions in the country. In 2015, the American Bar Association and the Bureau of Labor reported that 88 percent of lawyers were White.
