Increasing Diversity Through Mentoring Programs for Minority Law Students
This is the fifth of six articles that will be written this year as a continuation of the “Mentoring Across Differences” column, which will highlight mentoring issues and spotlight how lawyers of different racial, gender, and cultural backgrounds can build successful mentoring relationships.
Ida O. Abbott, Esq. is the principal of Ida Abbott Consulting (www.IdaAbbott.com), which helps clients create systems and environments where professionals flourish, excel, and advance. She specializes in mentoring and lawyers’ professional development. Additional information about mentoring and diversity can be found in MCCA’s Mentoring Across Differences: A Guide to Cross-Gender and Cross-Race Mentoring.
Minority representation is significantly lower in the legal profession than in almost all other professions. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, minorities make up only 9.7 percent of lawyers, compared to 24.6 percent of doctors, 23.1 percent of computer scientists, 20.8 percent of accountants and auditors, 18.2 percent of college professors, and 16.7 percent of civil engineers.1
While many voices in the legal profession have long called for greater diversity as a top priority, and the legal community is taking increasing action, the outlook is dire as the pipeline of new minority lawyers is actually shrinking. Law school applications, enrollment, and graduation rates for minority students are down. The Law School Admission Council reports that the last few years have seen a slow but steady drop in minority law school applicants, especially African Americans. There has also been a decline in the number of African American, Mexican American, and Puerto Rican law students.2 To make matters worse, minority students experience higher attrition rates in law school and lower bar passage rates after they graduate.3 To reverse these trends, immediate, across-the-board action is needed to fill the pipeline with minority lawyers and keep them flowing into the legal profession.
Increasing the number of minority lawyers is a long-term process that will require substantial investment in education at every level. Inspiring young minority students to go to college and law school is one of the first steps, and many efforts are now under way to do this. Even after minority students decide on legal careers, they continue to need support and assistance. To offer minority students emotional, academic, and career support, many programs pair them with mentors in the legal community.
Through these programs, lawyers around the country serve as mentors to minority law students. By dedicating time and effort to an individual law student, these mentors have enormous influence on the student's future. Mentors help minority law students in countless ways, but most importantly, mentors show students that they care about them and want to help them succeed in school and in the legal profession. At the same time, mentors learn from these gifted students.
Many minority mentoring programs are run by minority bar associations for law students who fit into the association's membership. Association lawyers who volunteer as mentors are sensitive to the issues and challenges of being a minority in the legal profession and the legal workplace because they have been there. They are passionate about increasing the diversity of the profession. They understand the value of having a mentor who shares the same minority status, and the importance of reaching out to minority students, encouraging them, and welcoming them into the profession.
Holly Fujie, a Japanese American partner at Buchalter Nemer in Los Angeles, is a mentor in programs sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Bar Association, the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, and California Women Lawyers, and also mentors associates in her firm. Fujie does this because she is committed to increasing and keeping women, particularly Asian women, in the legal profession. For minority law students, her mentoring activities take many forms, from conducting mock job interviews to acting as a sounding board and role model for women concerned about juggling their legal careers and families.
Many other minority lawyers share Fujie's commitment, but there are too few minority lawyers to be mentors to all minority law students. However, there are many non-minority lawyers and judges eager to mentor minority law students. Most of them are driven by a commitment to increase the legal profession's diversity and to develop talented individuals within underrepresented groups. Some want to give back to a profession that has rewarded them handsomely, or simply enjoy watching talented young men and women advance and succeed. Majority mentors also derive personal benefit from what they learn in mentoring relationships with minority students. Whatever their motivation, they are important, valuable, and dedicated mentors.
Mentoring Programs for Minority Law Students
Both minority and non-minority lawyers are uniting to promote diversity and fill the pipeline by serving as mentors in programs that reach out to minority law students. Minority mentoring programs are sponsored by the entire spectrum of the legal profession: private law firms, corporate law departments, bar associations, law school student associations, alumni associations, associations of lawyers formed specifically to provide mentoring services, and even individual lawyers. Four examples of such programs are listed in the sidebar and discussed below.
John W. Kozyak Minority Mentor Program
One remarkable program that exemplifies the power of a single lawyer to make a difference is the John W. Kozyak Minority Mentor Program (http://kttlaw.com/flash/mainpage.htm). About 15 years ago, John Kozyak, a white lawyer in the Miami firm of Kozyak, Tropin & Throckmorton, was concerned about the small number of black lawyers in the profession and the legacy of discrimination that placed obstacles in their way. To help remedy the situation, he approached the University of Miami Law School and offered to find mentors in the legal community for every black law student who wanted one. The Minority Mentor Program that he started (and which was later named after him) now operates in almost all the law schools in Florida and Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, Kozyak's alma mater.
Kozyak personally solicits student applications, reviews all submissions, and matches students with lawyers and judges who serve as mentors. Last year, he matched 200 black law students throughout Florida, and he still has a waiting list of mentors who want to serve. One of the highlights of this program is an annual Minority Mentoring Picnic for program participants and supporters. The 2005 picnic, which was open to all minority students, attracted 1,000 people, including Janet Reno and Florida Supreme Court Justice Peggy Quince. This year's picnic is on Oct. 21 at Amelia Earhart Park in Miami. Kozyak's personal dedication, and the widespread public support for this program, sends a clear message that minority law students are welcome in the legal profession. For more information about the mentoring program and other events, contact John Kozyak at jk@kttlaw.com.
Practicing Attorneys for Law Students (PALS) Program
Another noteworthy minority mentoring program is the PALS Program in New York City (http://palsprogram.org). This program was begun 20 years ago by Patricia L. Irvin, an African American lawyer, with the support of her law firm, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. She recruited friends and colleagues to be mentors for law students at New York University Law School in an "Adopt-a-Law-Student Program," which later became the "Practicing Attorneys for Law Students" or PALS program. Today, PALS provides mentoring and career guidance for minority law students from 13 New York City law schools, and last year, 123 students were matched in the program. Mentors include lawyers from all practice areas and work environments. In addition to mentoring, the PALS program presents tutorials and classes to help students get through law school, the bar exam, and job searches, as well as networking events where they can meet other students, lawyers, and informal mentors. The PALS Program web site, http://palsprogram.org, offers additional information about program activities and has online forms for joining PALS as a student or mentor.
MasterCard and Pace Minority Law Student Mentoring Program
A more recently initiated mentoring program matches in-house counsel at MasterCard International with minority law students at nearby Pace University School of Law in White Plains, New York. This unique corporate program, which reflects the company's longstanding commitment to diversity, provides academic and career guidance to minority law students. The MasterCard Law Department has 25 lawyers, and in the program's first year (2005-2006), they matched five attorneys with law students. They have received 10 student applications for next year. For more information, contact Maja Hazell at mhazell@law.pace.edu.
American Bar Association Commission on Mental and Physical Disabilities Mentor Program
Diversity is not limited to race and ethnicity, and neither are minority mentoring programs. For example, law students with mental or physical disabilities face numerous challenges in law school and obstacles to fully participate in the profession after they graduate. Since 2001, the American Bar Association Commission on Mental and Physical Disabilities has sponsored a mentoring program for law students with mental and physical disabilities (including learning disabilities) to provide the kind of information, guidance, and personal support they need to feel comfortable, confident, and included in the legal community (http://www.abanet.org/disability/subcommittee/mentor.shtml). Many, but not all, mentors also have disabilities. When possible, and if the student requests, students are matched with mentors who have similar disabilities. About 110 students across the country are currently matched in this program. Because the program is nationwide, and the participant numbers are relatively small, students are often matched with mentors in different communities, and mentoring sometimes takes place by telephone and email. For additional information and to get involved in this ABA program, contact Jonathan Simeone at simeonej@staff.abanet.org.
Minority Mentoring Programs: Keys to Success
Successful minority mentoring programs require strong leadership and committed volunteers. Leaders supply vision, inspiration, and persistence. They tend to be deeply involved in program operations and provide much of the oversight that keeps the programs going.
Lawyers who volunteer to participate in mentoring programs are usually motivated to make mentoring relationships work. They personally invest time and effort in the future of minority students, and try to show students how to invest in themselves and their careers. They assist students in myriad ways: explaining the ins and outs of law school; advising them about law school classes; guiding them through the process of writing resumes, going through interviews and finding clerkships and jobs; being available for questions and emotional support; taking an ongoing interest in their progress through school; introducing them to others in the profession; or serving as role models. By reaching out to minority law students and taking a personal interest in helping them succeed, mentors in these programs offer valuable lessons-and often relationships-that last a lifetime.
Students in these programs are likewise highly motivated. But since the first priority of law students is to focus on their studies and excel in law school, mentoring programs have to show them why and how mentors are also important to their career success. So these programs work hard to inspire and persuade minority law students to join the program, match them with committed and interesting mentors, and keep them engaged in their mentoring relationships. For example, some programs:
- Hold informational sessions or distribute written materials about the dynamics of mentoring and the benefits of having a mentor.
- Teach students how to utilize the opportunities mentors and mentoring programs present.
- Invite students to hear from former student "graduates" of the program about how they benefited from having a mentor.
- Send students encouraging notes and telephone calls reminding them to contact and stay in touch with their mentors.
- Hold social activities for mentors and students to attend together.
Diversifying the legal profession is a challenge that must be met. Mentoring programs can help meet that challenge. By serving as a mentor to a minority law student, every lawyer committed to diversity can move the profession toward that goal. A supporter of the University of Miami program stated it well in a note to John Kozyak: "Nothing is easy and it takes the perseverance of a lifetime and beyond to build a better world. You are doing it one student at a time!"
NOTES
1. See Elizabeth Chambliss, "Miles to Go: Progress of Minorities in the Legal Profession," ABA Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession, 2005, Table 2, at http://www.abanet.org/abastore/products/books/abstracts/4520014%20_selected%20 tables.pdf.
2. See ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, Legal Education Statistics, available at http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/stats.html.
3. See "The Critical Need to Further Diversify the Legal Academy and the Legal Profession," ABA Presidential Advisory Council on Diversity in the Profession, Oct. 2005 (Rev. Dec. 2005), p. 6, at http://www.abanet.org/op/councilondiversity/about.html.
From the September/October 2006 issue of Diversity & The Bar®