Mentors Needed for Legal Outreach
Thanks to Board member Will Ng for sharing this call for mentors from Legal Outreach. Please read and respond to the call if you are available to help out.
At Legal Outreach, we focus on helping underserved students matriculate to top colleges and universities. We have been very successful in our efforts, as every one of our students graduates from high school, 85% complete college within four years, and 14% go on to become lawyers themselves.
We achieve these results through comprehensive programming that includes internships for the students at law firms and public interest organizations, SAT prep, after-school tutoring, and academic counseling. We also run a Constitutional Law Debate Program where students read fact patterns, analyze case-law, prepare briefs, and perfect oral arguments for constitutional law debates.
All students in our program are assigned an Attorney Mentor. These mentors are lawyers from major legal services firms, non-profit organizations, and government agencies throughout New York City. We are currently recruiting 50 attorneys to be mentors to our rising-sophomores. Attorney Mentors play an integral role in the success of our program and, based on surveys, students have credited much of their academic, personal, and professional accomplishments to the guidance and support they have received from their mentors.
Mentoring is a low-commitment, high reward volunteer activity. Although we do ask that our mentors commit to mentoring a student from their sophomore through senior years of high school, mentoring is only a 4 hour per month commitment. Mentors help students with their constitutional law debate preparation and provide academic and personal counseling to our students. Mentors also receive 3 CLE credits each reporting cycle for participating in our Attorney Mentoring Program.
Our online mentoring application is found at: www.legaloutreach.org/mentor. The application takes only 10-15 minutes to complete. More information about the mentoring program can be found at http://www.legaloutreach.org/ and on Legal Outreach’s mentoring program page. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to Ari Joseph, Director of Legal Education at Legal Outreach, at 718.752.0222, ext. 208.
From the Historical Society of the New York Courts: Garfinkel Essay Contest Poll
From the Historical Society of the New York Courts: Garfinkel Essay Contest Poll
What should the topic be for our 2014 contest?
With the generous support of Gloria and Barry Garfinkel, the Society has offered annually since 2008 The David A. Garfinkel Essay Contest established in memory of the Garfinkel’s son David. This contest targets students from community colleges across New York State, offering them the opportunity to submit essays on topics of New York legal history. The competition seeks to draw students with a wide range of interests in law, history, social science and general research writing. The grand prize is $1,500, and the CUNY & SUNY Community College Prizes are $1,000 each. The winners of the competition are honored on Law Day each year held in the magnificent courtroom of the New York Court of Appeals. Their families and professors are invited for a memorable day at the courthouse for the awards ceremony followed by a luncheon where they are graciously and warmly greeted by the Court of Appeals Judges.
Legal Outreach Volunteering Opportunity
Sheila Bautista, AABANY member and prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s office, shares the following volunteer opportunity with us:
Since 1983, Legal Outreach has provided underserved minority students in New York City with the academic support and mentorship they deserve. As rising ninth graders, students begin the program by participating in the Summer Law Institute, a five-week program that concludes with a mock trial in front of a real judge in a real courtroom. In high school, students participate in Legal Outreach’s College Bound program, a rigorous college preparatory track of after-school tutoring, Saturday writing classes, SAT preparation, mock trials and debates, life skills courses, internships, and mentoring from staff, law students, and professional attorneys.
Legal Outreach is currently seeking to recruit volunteer attorneys to serve as mentors to students participating in its Constitutional Law Debate program, one of the key components of the College Bound Program. This is an excellent opportunity to participate in a rewarding program with proven results—100% of Legal Outreach students graduate high school in four years, compared to 59% of New York City students. Over 99% of Legal Outreach graduates have matriculated at four-year colleges and 68% percent matriculate at highly selective colleges, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, University of Michigan, Smith, and Wesleyan.
One of Legal Outreach’s defining goals is to increase diversity within the legal profession. According to the American Lawyer Diversity Scorecard 2010, the percentage of minority lawyers at large firms dropped for the first time in recent memory this past year, now standing at only 13.4%. The raw number of Asian-American lawyers dropped the most, by 556 attorneys. While the proportion of minorities enrolled in law school and employed in the legal profession has always been low compared to minority representation in the overall population, this negative trend needs to be combated. By providing minority students with an early-intervention program to bolster academic preparation and vision, Legal Outreach is working to raise these numbers. Legal Outreach has been recognized by the American Bar Association as an outstanding pipeline diversity program and by American Lawyer as “arguably the legal profession’s best example of an early-intervention pipeline program—and one of the few with a long-term track record.” In fact, nearly 15% of our College Bound students go on to become practicing attorneys.
To learn more and apply to volunteer with Legal Outreach, please visit our website at www.legaloutreach.org or e-mail Ariel Joseph, Esq. at ajoseph@legaloutreach.org.