Month: September 2020

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Make an Impact – Mentor with Legal Outreach

About Legal Outreach:

Legal Outreach prepares youth from underserved communities in New York City to compete at high academic levels by using intensive legal and educational programs as tools for fostering vision, developing skills, enhancing confidence, and facilitating the pursuit of higher education. We use law to attract rising high school students to academic programs that inspire and motivate them to strive for academic success.

About the Mentoring Program:

Legal Outreach’s Mentoring Program allows attorneys and law school graduates to directly impact high school students from traditionally under-represented backgrounds by guiding them through high school and modeling what it means to be an attorney and to engage with the law – and allows attorneys to consider these questions, too!

Attorneys meet with their students once a month to hang out and talk about the issues and obstacles students are facing. Mentors, with materials provided by Legal Outreach, also help students through the Constitutional Law Debate Program. In Debate, students learn and apply Supreme Court precedent to issues directly affecting the country, such as qualified immunity, which weapons are protected under the Second Amendment, education rights for undocumented students, gerrymandering and voting rights, discrimination in housing developments, and more. 

Legal Outreach’s Mentoring Program is an integral tool for helping our students achieve academic success, and is a low cost, high reward volunteer activity. Mentoring a Legal Outreach student only takes around 4-6 hours per month and is a 3 year commitment (mentors work with students from their Sophomore year through Senior year). Mentors help students with their Constitutional Law Debates, guide them academically, and inspire them by providing one-on-one support throughout their high school careers and even after mentees matriculate to college. JD is required. Mentors can also receive 3 CLE Credits per reporting cycle.

“My mentor is very supportive of my accomplishments and hard work. He’s always willing to talk about any problems and to teach me anything new.” Legal Outreach Student

“I have recommended the program to numerous friends, I think Legal Outreach is a fantastic program and I am happy to be involved.” Legal Outreach Mentor

Apply Now at www.legaloutreach.org/mentor

Due to the ongoing impact of COVID-19, the Mentoring Program will be implemented virtually during the 2020-21 academic year.

Mentor/Mentee Events Hosted by Legal Outreach

Sept. 29, 2020 6pm-8pm New Mentor Orientation
Oct. 8, 2020 6pm-8pm Meet mentees at Octoberfeast!
Nov. 13, 2020 6pm-9pm Debate 1
March 12, 2021 6pm-9pm Debate 2
End of March/early April 2021 Debate 3 (qualifying students)

Questions? Contact Marla Trinidad, Law-Related Education Coordinator, at [email protected].

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2020 NAPABA Virtual Experience November 4-7, 2020 NAPABA Scholarship Program

We recognize that our members may be facing financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In partnership with Prudential, NAPABA will offer scholarships to waive the registration fee for the 2020 NAPABA Virtual Experience for our members who have been financially impacted by COVID-19.

Assistance: Scholarships will be awarded in the form of a discount code equal to the amount of your NAPABA Virtual Experience registration fee at the early bird rate.

Eligibility: You must be a NAPABA member and demonstrate financial need due to COVID-19 to receive an award. Become a member today to apply for the scholarship!

Scholarship Deadline: Submit an application by 5 pm ET, Monday, October 12.

For more information and to apply, click the button below:

APPLY NOW

The NAPABA Scholarship Program is generously supported by:

Prudential

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NAPABA Statement on the Yale Affirmative Action Case

For Immediate Release: August 18, 2020

Contact: Priya Purandare, Executive Director
Email: [email protected]

WASHINGTON—Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice asserted that Yale University had violated federal civil rights law against Asian American and white applicants by using race as a determinative factor in its undergraduate admissions process. NAPABA strongly disapproves of any form of racial discrimination, including in college admissions. The organization understands the importance of diversity in education, and that race is one of the many factors in a holistic admissions process as established by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“While we continue to review information on the Department of Justice’s findings to fully evaluate the Yale University case, diversity remains a critical and compelling interest for universities to achieve,” said Bonnie Lee Wolf, president of NAPABA. “NAPABA is in support of race-conscious standards as a part of a holistic admissions process. We also support continuing efforts by colleges and universities to improve their admissions processes, including their work to recognize and address implicit bias. Our support of these principles has included filing of amicus briefs in the seminal cases of Grutter v. Bollinger and Fisher v. University of Texas in support of the universities and the importance of diversity. NAPABA will closely monitor the alleged claims against Yale University.”

Two years ago, NAPABA supported the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts’ ruling that upheld the use of race conscious admissions in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard. In 2015, NAPABA issued an organizational statement in support of Affirmative Action and that the policy is necessary to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in education.

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NAPABA Organizational Statement: Coalition of Bar Associations of Color Urges State Bars to Enact Alternative Licensing Measures Amid COVID-19

For Immediate Release:
Date: August 19, 2020

Contact: Priya Purandare, Executive Director

WASHINGTON, DC — The Coalition of Bar Associations of Color (CBAC) issued the following statement in response to several proposals calling for alternatives to the traditional in-person bar examination used to license new attorneys as a direct response to the ongoing challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic:

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented extraordinary challenges to just about every aspect of how we conduct our lives. As lawyers, it is our duty to meet these extraordinary circumstances with grace and swiftness, and to adapt as necessary to ensure continued access to justice and protection of the rule of law. In this spirit, the Coalition of Bar Associations of Color supports ABA Resolution 10G strongly urging all state bars to cancel in-person or potentially vulnerable online administrations of the bar exam and consider adopting alternative methods of licensing new attorneys until a safe and secure method of administering a bar exam is available. This will protect the future of the legal profession and ultimately, our society.

Protection of the public in the administration of justice should remain the top priority of state bars. However, during the ongoing pandemic, traditional methods of testing, like large in-person exams, pose tremendous health risks to test takers and those around them and in many instances would violate government-issued restrictions to large gatherings.

Although we commend the states that opted to cancel in-person examinations in favor of online proctored exams, this method has met significant challenges in its administration. These challenges have included fairness, privacy, and technology concerns with the most recent example being the Florida bar. In Florida, bar examinees were informed of the cancellation of the online exam two days before its scheduled date due to numerous issues with the online proctoring system. No official new date or method of testing has been offered. The Michigan online bar exam system crashed during the examination. The State of Indiana encountered similar technology issues when the program was being tested, and they changed to an open book exam allowing answers to be emailed. The current infrastructure for online testing, which presents significant security concerns and glitches, is simply not workable for an exam of this magnitude and import.

As leaders of the Bar Associations of Color we are particularly concerned with the disparate impact that COVID-19 has had on communities of color and more specifically bar examinees of color. As noted in the report accompanying ABA Resolution 10G on this issue, a recent survey showed “a majority of bar applicants do not believe they have reliable internet access, and that white applicants are about 71 percent more likely to have such access when compared to black applicants.” The same survey noted that the majority of bar examinees “do not have access to a quiet space to take a remote bar examination, with white applicants again being substantially more likely to have access to a quiet place than an applicant of color.” People of color and non-traditional students, who have already faced and conquered institutional challenges to complete their legal education, will face additional barriers in the event of additional delays.

Further delays in licensing attorneys are unfair, placing the careers of thousands of attorneys in limbo. Instead, flexibility from state bars is of paramount importance. Adopting alternatives like open book examinations, extended CLE, a diploma privilege, or a Certified Legal Intern program that leads to a provisional license and then to full licensing within 3-6 months, is the most efficient way to adequately safeguard the futures of all bar examinees and the legal profession as a whole.

Additionally, the delays in testing have further exacerbated the stressful circumstances experienced by bar examinees. Graduates have been preparing since May for one of the most important examinations of their careers. To do so, they have sacrificed their income and time for an extended period. Many are facing severe financial difficulties, have no health insurance, and they are competing for jobs in one of toughest job markets in years. Further delays in licensing will disrupt employment plans and leave thousands of graduates with no way of supporting themselves or their families in a moment of global crisis.

Bar examinees have demonstrated their ardent commitment to the legal profession through their resiliency in the last months. The protection of the public in the administration of justice should be extended to bar examinees by decisive action from the state bars that they will serve in their long and successful careers. We call on state bars to consider the options set forth in ABA Resolution 10G that are most protective of bar examinees, their careers, their families, and the legal profession. Options include but are not limited to allowing diploma privileges, administration of remote open book examinations, and creation or expansion of certified legal intern programs leading directly to licensure, a form of diploma privilege.

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The Coalition of Bar Associations of Color (CBAC) was established in 1992 and is comprised of the Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA), the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA), the National Bar Association (NBA), and the National Native American Bar Association (NNABA).

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