LAWYERS FOR ONE AMERICA

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Albany Law School
Albany Law School has committed itself to promoting diversity in the profession and access to justice for people of color with the following measures:

In 1995, the Faculty adopted a Policy and Implementation Plan for equal opportunity and affirmative action
The faculty established a standing Committee on Diversity composed of faculty, students and staff. This committee is charged with the duty to "listen, study, analyze and respond sensitively to concerns that there is a negative environment based on race, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability at Albany Law School."

The Diversity Committee has:

Sponsored welcoming activities, career panels, dialogues on diversity, and panel discussions on relevant issues of race and justice.
Responded to specific concerns raised by students and staff
Introduced the issue of diversity at first year Orientation
Sponsored a film series on identity issues
Sponsored a diversity listserv®
Reviewed procedures for filing complaints
Suggested and facilitated a community "Facebook."

Albany Law School's Student Bar Association (SBA) has a strong commitment to strengthening the relationships among the student body, school administration, the local legal profession, and the community. Our SBA is unique because it is fully funded by a student activity fee that is independent of tuition and is enacted by a vote of the student body. This fee has significantly increased over the past few years, which has enabled law students to sponsor events that celebrate the diversity of our student body, and allow for students of color to address identity and legal issues that are of particular concern to them.

The Albany Law School Clinic provides legal services to those unable to afford representation in cases involving people with disabilities, AIDS, HIV, domestic violence issues and/or unemployment matters. Our Career Planning Office addresses diversity issues in many ways, including requiring prospective employers to sign a non-discrimination statement prior to conducting interviews, and providing them with a guide, Interviewing: Lawful Standards and Principles.

Albany Law School will continue to work on issues of diversity by:

Reviewing faculty and staff hiring processes
Working to develop a Statement of Professional and Civil Responsibility to address inappropriate behavior and discourse concerning identity issues
Continuing to fund the work of our Diversity Committee, and
Exploring teaching workshops on issues concerning diversity

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Association of American Law Schools
The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) will continue ongoing efforts and initiate new efforts in furtherance of the goals of diversity and equal justice adopted by Lawyers For One America. These include:

On Diversity: A taskforce on diversity that will produce a specific action plan to further implement the AALS' long-standing commitment to diversity, and provide a response to attacks that recently have been made on affirmative action plans at law schools. The action plan will contain both short-range plans, such as encouraging revision of admissions procedures to increase the likelihood of diversity; and long-range plans, such as developing outreach programs to secondary and elementary schools.

The AALS will continue its practice of submitting amici briefs in litigation challenging affirmative action efforts by law schools. Briefs were recently filed in cases involving the University of Michigan and the University of Texas. A brief will also be submitted in the litigation against the University of Washington.
The AALS will complete its survey of law professors concerning the effect of diversity in law school classrooms. The results of this survey are expected to be useful in shaping future discussion about the merits of diversity in legal education and perhaps in future litigation over the effects of diversity in the classroom
The AALS will continue work through its Standing Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Minority Law Teachers to increase the numbers of minority group candidates for law teaching positions, to encourage the hiring of diverse law teachers, and to promote the retention of diverse faculty. The AALS will conduct educational programs and distribute materials to law schools to further these goals.

On Equal Justice: The AALS is calling upon law schools and individual faculty members to strengthen their commitment to the professional ethic of community service. The central recommendation is that law schools provide to all law students at least once during their law school careers a well-supervised law-related pro bono opportunity and either require the students' participation or find ways to attract the great majority of students to volunteer. This recommendation, and others, are set forth in the recent AALS report entitled, Learning to Serve.

To assist law schools in achieving its recommendations, the AALS has hired a Director and an Assistant Director to run its Pro Bono Project. They are consulting with law schools to help them develop and expand pro bono programs in their schools and in their communities. The Project is committed to providing law schools with ideas and models for pro bono and public service projects, including those most needed in minority communities. Funding for the staff positions expires in July 2001.
The AALS has also created a new Section on Pro Bono and Public Service Opportunities, to encourage law schools and faculty to expand their pro bono work.

To learn more about the AALS programs, including the Pro Bono Project and Report, or to receive copies of our publications, including Perspectives on Diversity, Statistical Report on Law School Faculty, and Learning to Serve, please contact us.

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Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law unites thinkers and advocates in pursuit of a vision of inclusive and effective democracy. Our mission is to develop and implement an innovative, nonpartisan agenda of scholarship, public education, and legal action that promotes equality and human dignity, while safeguarding fundamental freedoms. We use scholarship, public education, and legal action to find innovative and practical solutions to intractable problems in the areas of democracy and poverty, and in future years will introduce First Amendment and criminal justice programs. The Center takes its cue not from Brennan opinions written for a past era, but from the singular Brennan spirit of asking the hard questions, transcending conventional wisdom, keeping faith in the power of open and honest discourse, and building unlikely coalitions around practical solutions.

The Brennan Center has an agenda of four programs: Democracy, Poverty, Civil Liberties, and Criminal Justice. Today, the Center's staff is litigating cases across the nation, filing amicus briefs, drafting legislation, counseling reform groups, producing books, monographs, and articles, and educating the public about issues of profound national importance. We operate two important and far-reaching Programs. The Democracy Program has a Campaign Finance Reform Project that has quickly become a leading voice in reform efforts at the national and local levels; a Judicial Independence Project that is standing up to the right wing attacks on the judiciary and the judicial process; and a Voter Choice Project that is fighting for the rights of third parties and other political outsiders. The Poverty Program's Legal Services Project is leading a national effort to ensure that poor citizens have access to legal assistance in civil cases.

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California Western School of Law
Scholarships Recognizing Diversity

Dean's Scholarship for Ethnic and Cultural Diversity: Offered to incoming students who will enhance the diversity of the law school. Awards range from full to partial tuition and are based on undergraduate performance, work experience, community service, and volunteer activities.
Tammie R. Harris Scholarship: Awarded annually to the student who best demonstrates academic achievement, leadership, community service and commitment to ethnic diversity in the legal profession.
M. Eugenia Lopez Scholarship: Recognizes a second year student who best demonstrates dedication to public service, dedication to community, educational achievements, leadership, and commitment to the legal profession.
Lourine Womack Twyman Scholarship: Recognizes upper division students who demonstrate professional, ethical, moral and spiritual leadership, have a commitment to providing services to under-represented groups and have financial need.

The Pro Bono Honors Program provides an opportunity for Cal Western students to gain legal experience while providing service to underserved people and communities in San Diego through relationships with selected public interest organizations. Approximately one-third of our students complete the program, which requires a minimum of fifty hours of documented service within two trimesters. In recognition of this program, a local law firm has established the Alex Cory Award, a $2,500 prize awarded annually to a third-year student who has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to pro bono work. We also have a strong Public Interest Law Foundation, which funds student fellowships in public interest agencies or firms throughout the country.

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City University of New York School of Law at Queens College
Declaration of Actions in Diversity: Diversity has been a cornerstone of the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law since the day it opened in August 1983 with the motto, "Law in the Service of Human Needs." The public interest law school, founded by practitioners and prominent members of the community, interpreted "human needs" from the outset to mean the vast numbers of ordinary people in the United States seeking access to legal services and to justice. This dedication to diversity can be seen in the student body, the faculty, the Law School curriculum, the School's relationships and services to the community, and in its outreach programs to graduates and to various racial and ethnic communities. Two outstanding features of our commitment are:

The Haywood Burns Chair In Civil Rights, which brings the most accomplished scholars and practitioners in the field of civil rights to the Law School, providing students with their insights and experiences in the struggle to achieve full civil rights for all people of color in the United States; and
The annual CUNY Mississippi Project, which sends a delegation of law students to Mississippi each winter break, to work with various civil rights organizations, including the Voting Rights Project of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi. Initially founded to provide additional legal support to lawyers investigating the large number of deaths of incarcerated African American men in Mississippi jails, the project now focuses on a broad range of civil rights violations.

Declaration of Actions for Access to Legal Resources includes the Community Legal Resource Network (CLRN), a four-school consortium to develop pilot programs to support graduates in solo or small firm practices who are determined to provide access to justice in underserved communities. The CLRN model was designed to serve as a practical means by which CUNY School of Law graduates can deepen their commitment to meeting the needs of communities of color and other underserved communities, while strengthening their own abilities to survive financially in a traditionally under-compensated area of the law. Now in its second year, CLRN has organized 28 practitioners, all CUNY law graduates, into three "practice" groups-in family law, general practice, and immigration-which share experiences, technology, and various services in order to increase their abilities to provide access to the legal system. A fourth, in the field of employment discrimination law, is planned. In addition, the program is developing a highly structured mentoring system so that practitioners need not reinvent the wheel when serving clients who have common problems of immigration issues, wills, trusts and estates, real estate, bankruptcy, employment discrimination, criminal issues, landlord/tenant, elder law, small business/not-for-profit corporations, personal injury, labor and benefits, collections, and Social Security, and Disability/SSI. Of the 28 CLRN members, nine are people of color; seven languages are spoken among them; and ten serve communities of color primarily, but not exclusively, in Queens, New York, now the largest center of immigrants in the United States.

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Hofstra University School of Law
From Students of Color: A Different Perspective
Hofstra Law School is a special place at which to obtain a legal education. Our commitment to diversity in legal scholarship and in the legal profession is deep and longstanding. It is generated by an awareness that African Americans, Latinos and Latinas, Asians, and Native Americans are traditionally underrepresented in the legal profession. It is enhanced by an appreciation of the fact that a well-rounded education includes exposure to multi- ethnic perspectives. We welcome students of color and respect the contributions that they make to Hofstra.

A truly rich educational experience includes exposure to a variety of viewpoints. We not only understand that people from differing backgrounds view the world in different ways, but that an intellectual community must expose all of its students to a full range of ideas and experiences. Hofstra's dedication to diversity is reflected in our programs and resources. The law School offers a law Day for minority applicants, a program for admitted minority students, an orientation for incoming minority students, a first-year reception and other programs throughout the year. In response to the recommendations of the Committee for the Recruitment and Retention of Minority Students, the law School created a full-time administrative position responsible for minority recruitment and admissions, minority student affairs, and the coordination of our Enhancement Program. As the late Professor Dwight L. Greene wrote," At Hofstra, we are committed to being a law school in the best of American traditions. Including you is an integral part of what Hofstra is about. Ours is a dream of greatness without bias; come help us build that dream."

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Howard University School of Law
Our Community Outreach Project advances Howard University School of Law's commitment of service to the Washington, D.C. community. The project coordinates law student involvement in the Eastern High School Pre-Law Program, the Wilson High School After-School Program, and Street Law, Inc. Howard is proud to establish meaningful partnerships among its students, students attending District high schools, and court-involves juveniles.

At the schools, Howard students serve as mentors, tutors and speakers, and expose the youth to the Howard law environment through shadowing and participation in special law school events. At Street Law, Inc., Howard students assist the teaching of the "Save Our Streets" curriculum to pre-adjudicated and probationary youth, and the "Parents and the Law" curriculum to teen parents. Community Outreach has also established a partnership with New Heights-a joint effort of the D.C. public schools and Department of Human Services, whereby Howard Law School provides an environment where 16-20 year old trainees shadow productive workplace activity.

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St. Mary's University School of Law
Actions in Diversity: St. Mary's Law School has an extensive history of commitment to the advancement of diversity in the legal profession. Great care has been taken since the 1940's to ensure recruitment and admission of a diverse student body. St. Mary's also makes a substantial commitment to the retention and success of its minority law students. This year alone, the School committed over $100,000 to St. Mary's minority student organizations. With these funds, minority student groups have sponsored panels and events on issues important to minority populations, participated in state and national minority organizations, and reached out to minority communities. The School also developed and funded the "Academic Excellence Program" to assist "at risk" students, including minority students. St. Mary's Law School possesses one of the most racially diverse law faculties in the United States. We fully expect to continue the rich tradition of advancing diversity in the legal profession by recruiting, supporting and graduating large numbers of ... minority students in the years to come.

Access to Legal Resources: St. Mary's Law School undertakes many activities each academic year to increase access to legal resources for people of color. The three largest programs now in place are our Clinical Program, the People's Legal Assistance Network (PLAN), and our Pro Bono Program.

In the mid-l990s St. Mary's acquired a new facility, the Center for Legal and Social Justice (CLSJ), in which to house the Clinical Program. Each year, St. Mary's Law School devotes nearly $1 million to support five distinct clinics: the Civil Justice Clinic, Criminal Justice Clinic, Immigration Clinic, Human Rights Clinic, and Community Development Clinic. Students and faculty in each area serve hundreds of clients annually, providing critically needed services that the private bar does not provide.

The People's Legal Assistance Network (PLAN) is an innovative program funded by the Soros Foundation for the purpose of providing legal services to poor and minority communities in rural South Texas. Now in its third year, PLAN brings together St. Mary's law faculty, St. Mary's law alumni working in very small or solo practices, and community organizations.

Finally, for many years St. Mary's Law School has sponsored an internal Pro Bono Program designed to facilitate pro bono contributions by students, alumni and other members of the local bar. This year, the Program's most significant undertaking has been the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Project, which serves minority residents in the colonias (desperately poor neighborhoods along the United States-Mexico border). Working together, faculty and students assist the poor in obtaining funds to which they are entitled under federal law. During the past five years, the EITC Project has channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars into these communities.

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"As the legal profession confronts the uncertainties of the next millennium, it is lawyers' energy to work for institutional change that holds the best hope for charting a new path that connects the profession's future to the best of its past."

Professor David Wilkins
Harvard University

University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law
In 1997-98, after the passage of Proposition 209 in California, the UCLA School of Law developed a program designed to encourage adversely affected applicants and pre-applicants to consider careers in law and increase their academic competitiveness for admission to law school. The School of Law has hired a full-time director of outreach, and has admitted undergraduate students from UCLA and six other local universities to the program. Fellows participate in six Saturday Academies at the Law School, during which they receive workshops on legal reasoning, case analysis and legal writing. Each session culminates in a moot court competition. Law school students, alumni, staff, and members of the legal community provide panel discussions, exercises and other informative Academy segments designed to demystify the law school experience and the legal profession. The School of Law also makes a financial commitment to provide program participants with LSAT preparation course scholarships.

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University of Colorado School of Law
Declaration of Action Lawyers For One America
Although over thirty years ago the Law School created a minority program, for twenty years the Law School has had instead a diversity program. Many minorities, as well as others, contribute to the diversity of views and experience. Thus, we have had students with extensive experience and distinguished records in business, government and the military. We have had students who have been on welfare as children or with their children. We have had students challenged in seeing, hearing, mobility, or learning. In admissions and in hiring, in addition to seeking diversity, we are seeking those most able to contribute to the School and to society. In measuring that ability we look not only to where the candidate is now, but also to how far the candidate has come. A history of accomplishment and overcoming past obstacles predicts a potential for future triumph. We are committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse faculty, staff, and student body. In addition, the Law School has added several courses to its curriculum to explore issues of race, gender, and diversity in general. The Law School also has a Legal Aid Clinic and an Indian Law Clinic, representing low-income, and Native Americans, respectively.

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University of Michigan Law School
Three years ago, the Northwest Detroit Neighborhood Development (NDND), a community-based nonprofit organization committed to improving the impoverished Detroit neighborhood of Brightmoor, approached the Legal Assistance to Urban Communities Clinic (LAUC) at the University of Michigan Law School. With the counsel of the LAUC students, who receive academic credit for their clinic work, NDND facilitated construction of fifty units of new scattered-site housing. LAUC students helped the group acquire 100 lots of property, structure a construction limited partnership, acquire the first Michigan low-income housing tax credits for scattered-site development, and negotiate and monitor construction contracts. This project typifies students' work in the LAUC, an eight-year-old program at the University of Michigan Law School. Jointly funded by the Law School, the State of Michigan, the Fannie Mae Foundation and others, its faculty and professional staff supervise twenty-four students a year, working on behalf of thirty clients.

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University of Pittsburgh School of Law
At the University of Pittsburgh School of Law (Pitt), our Declaration of Action regarding our commitment to promote diversity in the legal profession manifests itself in our Strategic Plan for Equal Educational Opportunity. Our goal is to make Pitt a leader in implementing and maintaining an inclusive and supportive educational environment for African Americans, and all students from groups traditionally under-represented in American legal education. In the Plan, we have sought to assess more comprehensively all current activity undertaken in pursuit of that end, as well as to identify additional proactive strategies towards its accomplishment. (The) plan will help lead us to the affirmative goals stated above, but will also respond to sometimes-articulated perceptions regarding areas of difficulty the School needs to address, including an insufficient "critical mass" of students of color enrolled in the School of Law, insufficient financial aid resources to attract otherwise qualified minority students, and perceived cultural barriers among students, faculty, and staff.

One important aspect of the Strategic Plan is the creation of an Affirmative Action Committee, which is responsible for its development and implementation. Each year, the Committee, comprised of law school deans and faculty chairpersons of law school committees reviews what progress has been made in regard to meeting the goals set for the following areas: Student Services diversity training, recruitment, retention, staff development, faculty development and faculty recruitment.

The Law School adheres to five distinct, but interrelated rationales that support our commitment to affirmative action:

Ensuring full and equal access to legal education and law as a profession is essential to the law's social justice mission;
Failure to diversify the legal profession can only deprive legal institutions of the full range of available talent;
Diversification of the bar helps insure that all potential client groups have equal access to adequate representation;
A diverse educational community-including faculty, staff, and students-provides the optimal educational experience for professionals who are most effective if they are comfortable interacting with and representing the interests of people of widely varying backgrounds, beliefs, aspirations, and experience; and
The sorts of institutional vigilance that count as "affirmative action" in fact improve an institution for all its members.

Because virtually all members of the Pitt law faculty subscribe to one or another of the above propositions, a consensus exists in favor of a vigorous and thoughtful approach to affirmative action. Strengthening the representation among students, staff and faculty of (a) men and women from historically under-represented racial groups and (b) women of all racial groups, are critical goals.

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University of San Diego School of Law
Lawyers For One America Declaration of Action:
The University of San Diego School of Law strongly supports the goals of the Declaration: To ensure both that the legal profession reflects the diversity of our society and that it provides service to communities of color. Both goals can be appropriately advanced by an educational institution such as ours.

Law schools are the gateways that produce the attorneys who, motivated by their personal histories or learned commitment, will seek to provide representation for under-represented groups. Just as important to us, diversity of viewpoint and experience enriches the classroom and our community, intellectually and culturally. Recognizing the value of diversity to the future of our profession as well as to the fabric of our educational experience, our law school goals state that our faculty will "maintain our commitment to increased racial...diversity," and that our school will strive to "(d)raw talented students...from different ethnic and social backgrounds."

We are continually adapting our programs to better meet these goals. We are proud of some existing programs: from the very first recruitment efforts, the Law School seeks to attract minority students to the profession through its annual Multicultural Law Day, and in a wide range of recruitment efforts. Upon matriculation, we offer an orientation and luncheon with faculty and administration for entering law students of color. A mentoring program in which upper class minority students are matched with local minority attorneys aids in the transition from school to professional life. In addition, low income clients, in many cases members of minority groups-find representation in our legal clinics. Some of our students work in the community to mentor minority high school students, while student groups raise funds and develop projects to advance public interest law.

To coordinate many of these efforts and to spark the development even better programs, USD is creating a new administrative position: Diversity Services Coordinator (DSC). Among other things, we envision the DSC spearheading our minority recruitment efforts; providing coordination and direction to the student affinity groups; reaching out to provide connections with minority bar associations; and serving as a contact person and advisor for law students of color. We look forward to seeing the results of your survey, and we hope to be able to incorporate the good ideas developed at other law schools into our own evolving programs.

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University of Tennessee College of Law
The University of Tennessee College of Law is committed to diversity among our student body. Our Admissions office has a multi-step communications plan to encourage well- qualified African American candidates to apply and then, if applicable, to accept our offers of admission. The Admissions Office also coordinates our Mentoring Program, in which local African American law alumni serve as mentors to our African American students during their first year in law school. In addition, the UT College of Law co-sponsors Tennessee Minority Pre-Law Day, which provides an opportunity for minority undergraduates to meet with representatives and students of law schools across the state and attend workshops on the admissions process, LSAT preparation and financial aid.

The University of Tennessee College of Law is also committed to diversity among our faculty and staff. In searches to fill regular, full-time faculty positions, the UT College of Law utilizes Faculty Recruitment Services of the Association of American Law Schools, and posts job vacancy notices in traditional media, with professional and bar associations, at colleges and law schools, and on diverse websites.

The University of Tennessee College of Law has a long-standing commitment to public service. For many years, it was one of two law schools in the country that functioned as the local Legal Services Corporation grantee, rendering legal services in civil and criminal cases in four counties. Our public service programs include:

The UT Legal Clinic, founded in 1947, is the oldest continuously running law school clinic in the country. Nearly one-half of the students in each graduating class enroll in the clinic, which serves exclusively members of traditionally under-represented groups. Under a special rule of the Tennessee Supreme Court, students work in pairs under the supervision of a faculty member to represent clients in both civil and criminal cases to broaden their range of lawyering experience. The Clinic handles approximately 400 cases each year.
The UT Mediation Clinic is an academic program in which students help members of the community to resolve disputes by consensual agreement, rather than going through the traditional court system. The Mediation Clinic handles several civil, criminal and human rights cases, referred by the Knox County General Sessions Court and agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Veterans Administration, and Fair Housing Commission, each semester.
The UT Pro Bono Project is a student-created and directed public interest organization, which focuses on providing legal assistance to those who otherwise could not afford representation. Over the past two years, the program has significantly expanded, adding a program of service to local homeless shelters in Knoxville, as well as a domestic violence program.
The UT Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program (VITA) provides free income tax assistance to low-income families in the local community. Without VITA, these individuals would have to pay fees of anywhere from $25 to 10% of their refund to professional tax services.

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University of Tulsa School of Law
The University of Tulsa College of Law is committed to recruit and retain qualified students belonging to racial and ethnic minorities. To this end, the Office of Admissions sends faculty, staff, alumni, and student recruiters to traditionally minority undergraduate schools (including Native American community colleges) throughout the country, as well as to traditionally minority schools within the region. Every spring the College sponsors a Diversity Pre-law Day, and each year a faculty recruiter is sent to special summer programs for minority students, such as the Indian Law Summer Program at UNM and CLEO programs. Financial aid resources are committed to and special consideration is given to minority students for need-based and merit- based scholarships. A special scholarship, sponsored by the N.E. Oklahoma Black Lawyer's Association and a local law firm, is awarded annually to one or more outstanding African American students at the College of Law. The College also takes every opportunity to advertise in publications geared toward minority undergraduate students.

Additionally, the College offers an Academic Support Program. The program enables a small group of "at risk" students get a head start on the first year by attending an eight-week summer program designed to teach students how to succeed in law school. Participants also complete a course in Contracts, a first year doctrinal course, and earn five credits hours towards their J.D. degree. Through our Office of Career Services, the College is proactive in seeking employment opportunities for graduates belonging to racial and ethnic minorities. In addition to providing opportunities for students to network with minority alumni, the College sponsors an alumni mentoring program, making minority alum pairings possible for students who prefer them.

In accordance with the College's actions in furtherance of diversity, the College is committed to bringing access to Legal Resources to persons from all types of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The College's two legal clinics, the Older American Law Project and the Health Law Project, provide older clients and low-income clients representation in estate planning, foreclosures and evictions, real estate transactions, credit and consumer law, guardianships, social security disability, nursing home advocacy, and a variety of other issues.

Each year more than 1, 000 cases are handled for the community by students and TU law professors who are also practicing attorneys. Because of the increase in demand for clinical services to impoverished members in the community, new projects are now under consideration and a new clinic building is under construction. Our new legal clinic will not only be more physically accessible to persons of diversity, but will also provide greater access to legal resources.

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