Improving diversity through pipeline programs

Cook County Circuit Judge Furmin D. Sessoms and U.S. District Judge David H. Coar listen to the students present their case during the final mock trial competition. (Photos by David Durochik)

By Olivia Clarke

Before 18-year-old Clayton Wilson started participating in mock trial competitions, his perception of lawyers was what he saw on television.

But by interacting face-to-face with members of the legal community, Wilson said, ”We are able to have a feeling of where these guys are from. In some cases their stories are replicas of where we are. It gives you a picture of what’s down the road. You are able to see that you can be a lawyer.”

Wilson was one of about 150 black male teens who participated in The Chicago Bar Association’s First Annual Donald Hubert Scholars Mock Trial Competition. Dressed in white shirts and red-and-yellow ties provided by the CBA, the teens spent the day in law firms and legal departments learning how to work up a case.

Members of the legal profession rated the students’ ability to represent the plaintiff or the defendant or to be a witness. The students with the highest ratings participated in the final mock trial later that afternoon in a federal courtroom.

While waiting for the results, judges and lawyers pointed out the judges’ photos decorating the walls and told the students that they too could have legal careers. Many of these professionals also shared their stories of how their economic backgrounds growing up mirrored the students’ lives.

”Kids need this in their lives. They need options,” said John Coleman, a sophomore at the Academy of Communications and Technology Charter School who participated in the competition. ”Events like this help them by encouraging them. They get to see older black men and they can think they can be like them, instead of those selling drugs on the street.”

Many lawyers and judges recognize that to create a more diverse legal community they must get involved in these types of pipeline programs because they widen the path for more minority and female students to attend college and law school.

Reaching young people before they graduate from high school, and teaching them early on about college may be the best way to improve the pipeline because waiting until law school may be too late.

And without improving the pipeline, the legal community will continue to lack the diversity it needs.

According to Chicago Lawyer’s 2008 diversity survey, 5 percent of the partners in the 92 firms that provided data are minorities, and 15.5 percent of all associates are minorities — numbers that essentially mirror last year’s statistics.

Victor P. Henderson, a partner at Holland & Knight and president of the CBA, said the mock trial program encourages teens to think down the road, and consider what they want their lives to be like.

”Black male students, in particular, are disproportionately underrepresented in law schools,” Henderson said. ”When they see a significant number of black men, in this case, who look like them and have gone through [law school], all of a sudden it opens up a world of possibilities.

”In a grand sense, the law and legal profession won’t be able to maximize their usefulness to society until man and woman, blacks and whites and Latinos are equitably represented in the profession, because all of these folks bring different viewpoints of the law.”

The issue at hand
Venu Gupta, executive director of the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms, said the Chicago Tribune reported in 2006 that six out of 100 Chicago public school freshmen will earn a bachelor’s degree by their mid-20s.

For African-American and Latino male freshmen, three out of 100 will earn a degree by age 25, she said.

According to Chicago Lawyer’s diversity survey, 21.7 percent of the law students attending the nine local law schools surveyed are minority students.

”If we don’t work to increase the number of [diverse] students who go to college, we won’t change what law firms look like,” Gupta said. ”In the past, the law firm community has been hesitant to get involved prior to law school because it was difficult to measure their return. But thankfully that has changed.”

Law firms and corporate legal departments will make real progress when they work together, Gupta said. If the trend doesn’t get reversed or the pool doesn’t get increased, then diversity in law firms will not improve. She said reaching young people before college may have a greater impact.

The committee is partnering with Scholarship Chicago, an organization that works to empower talented, academically ambitious, and broadly diverse students with college and career options.

They’ve created a joint initiative, Chicago LegalTrek, that they hope will bring together different legal organizations that already work on expanding the pipeline. The plan is to assist students every step of the way, and provide them with the substantive knowledge they need to understand the legal profession and consider law as a career, Gupta said.

Karen G. Foley, president of Scholarship Chicago, said two main tasks affect whether teens attend college.

First, the navigation process, such as completing financial aid forms and college applications, can be challenging to students, Foley said.

Secondly, students face difficulty in finding the right colleges for their skills and aspirations.

”If you can reach them early enough and let them know what it is that is required — give them the opportunity to match their course work with their career aspirations; give them an opportunity to have access to professionals in their field; and as they mature give them internships — they will step up and they will be great candidates for law school,” she said.

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