Enhancing the pipeline of diverse K-12 and college students to law school: The HNBA multi-tier mentoring program

Journal of Legal Education

Volumn 58, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 327-340

  Calleros, Charles R ^a  

^a ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 63149180895     PISSN: 00222208     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. In 2004, for example, American Lawyer reported that "[m]inority attorneys make up 14.2 percent of U.S. lawyers," and "only 4.4 percent of U.S. partners," even though members of minority groups made up 37.3 percent of the U.S. general population in the 2000 census).
2. "Slow rise to the top: despite formal efforts to recruit and retain minority lawyers, large firms continue to be overwhelmingly white, a new study finds." Am. Law., June 2004, at 103.
3. Table of percentages of lawyers and the general populations by ethnicity, from the 2000 census can be found online at ABA Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession, "Statistics about Minorities in the Profession from the Census," available at 〈http://www.abanet.org/ minorities/links/2000census.html〉 (last visited Dec. 8, 2008).
4. Diversity Pipeline Task Force Courts Working Group Final Report and Recommendations, Feb. 15, 2007, at 1, available at 〈http://calbar.ca.gov/ calbar/pdfs/reports/2007-Courts-Working-Report.pdf〉 (last visited Dec. 8, 2008).
5. Links to information about and reports from this conference and follow-up conferences can be found at the home page for the ABA Presidential Advisory Council on Diversity in the Profession, available at 〈http://www.abanet. org/op/councilondiversity/home.html〉 (last visited Dec. 8, 2008).
6. This theme is underscored in the Post-Conference Report, Embracing the Opportunities for Increasing Diversity into the Legal Profession: Collaborating to Expand the Pipeline (Let's Get Real) at 12 (Executive Summary), 24-26 (2006), available at 〈http://www.abanet. org/op/pipelineconf/PipelinePostReport. pdf〉 (last visited Dec. 8, 2008).
7. The legal method exercises are set in familiar, non-legal settings that are accessible to the students and that engage them in legal reasoning by analogy. For a full description, see Charles Calleros, Law School Exams: Preparing and Writing to Win 37-41, 49-52, 121-22 (New York, 2007).
8. The program is described in the bar association's application for an ABA award, available at 〈http://www.abanet.org/barserv/partnernominees2007/ local/bcba.pdf〉 (last visited Dec. 8, 2008).
9. For its efforts, this bar association earned an ABA 2007 Partnership Award. The awards are announced online at 〈http://www.abanet.org/barserv/ partnership/〉 (last visited Dec. 11, 2008).
10. John Rogers et al., Univ. Cal. All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity and UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access ("UC/ACCORD and UCLA/IDEA"), California Educational Opportunity Report 2006: Roadblocks to College at 1, available under the "publications" tab at 〈http://www.edopp.org〉 (last visited Dec. 8, 2008).
11. The 2007 report once again highlighted greater shortages of highly qualified teachers, especially among those teaching college preparatory courses, in schools with high concentrations of African-American, Latino, and Native-American students. UC/ACCORD and UCLA/ IDEA, California Educational Opportunity Report 2007, at 2, 5-11, available at 〈http://www.edopp. org〉 (last visited Dec. 8, 2008).
12. I joined the committee just prior to the program's launch and have knowledge of many of these events. The history in the accompanying text, however, is set forth in the HNBA's application for the American Bar Association's 2007 Partnership Award, available at 〈http://www. abanet.org/barserv/partnernominees2007/national/hnba.pdf〉 (last visited Dec. 8, 2008).
13. In 2008, the foundation of the HNBA, the Hispanic National Bar Foundation ("HNBF"), received a substantial grant from the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) to help organize new mentoring programs in Los Angeles and Chicago from its offices in Washington, D.C. The program is now commonly called the HNBA/HNBF National Mentoring Program. For simplicity, however, this article refers more generally to HNBA as the founder and sponsor for the program implemented in Phoenix.
14. An Arizona statute provides in part that: Noncertificated personnel and personnel who are not paid employees of the school district and who are not either the parent or the guardian of a pupil who attends school in the school district but who are required or allowed to provide services directly to pupils without the supervision of a certificated employee and who are initially hired by a school district after January 1, 1990 shall be fingerprinted as a condition of employment. . . . Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 15-512(A) (2002).
15. This section appears to apply only to those seeking "employment, " but that term likely applies broadly to anyone who provides services, volunteer or otherwise, because the first line of the statute distinguishes those who are "paid employees of the school district" and because another subsection refers to paying the cost of finger-printing for "personnel of the school district who are not paid employees." Moreover, the primary purpose of the statute is to screen out those who would represent a criminal or moral threat to children. See Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 15-512 (D) (2002) (requiring disclosure of conviction or open-court admission of various kinds of crimes, most of them relating to sexual abuse of minors or other risks to minors).
16. Those risks, of course, apply to volunteers who work with children through a school program such as the Law Magnet Program at South Mountain High School. See also Ariz. Rev. Stat. §§ 36-425.03(A & (K)(2)), 36-883.02(A & H), 36-897.03(A) (fingerprinting requirements for child care personnel and child behavioral health care personnel apply to "volunteers"). In one way, the school district's policy may have exceeded the state law requirements. The school district required fingerprinting even though the mentoring would occur offcampus pursuant to a program for which parents of high school students had given written consent through forms I drafted and that were administered by the director of the high school law magnet program.
17. The statute appears to provide an exception to the fingerprinting requirement in such circumstances: Subsection A of this section does not apply to a person who provides instruction or other education services to a pupil, with the written consent of the parent or guardian of the pupil, under a work release program, advance placement course or other education program that occurs off school property. Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 15-512(1) (2008).
18. The statute contemplates, however, that school districts may impose fingerprinting requirements that go beyond the minimum required by the statute: "A school district may fingerprint any other employee of the district, whether paid or not," so long as the district does not charge the cost of the fingerprinting to the "nonpaid employee." Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 15-512(G) (2002). As illustrated by an even more demanding district policy implemented in the 2007-08 school year - requiring a certified teacher to be present at all mentoring team meetings - the school district erred on the side of providing maximum protection to its students.
19. See, e.g., Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 1583(C)(4) (2002) (in charter schools, excepting from fingerprinting requirements a "volunteer or guest speaker who is accompanied in the classroom by a person with a valid fingerprint clearance card").
20. This policy does not appear to represent an implementation of state statutory requirements, because a state statute excludes from fingerprinting requirements "a person who provides instruction or other education services to a pupil, with the written consent of the parent or guardian of the pupil, under. . .[an] education program that occurs off school property." Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 15-512(1) (2008)
21. see supra note 10.
22. These requirements were discussed in several phone conversations and e-mails between Lorrie Drobny, Assistant Superintendent for Business and Operations at Phoenix Union High School District, and K Royal, who attempted to analogize the mentoring program to other community partnerships to which the district policy had not been applied. E-mail from K Royal, former Director of Pro Bono Programs, to Professor Charles Calleros, June 26, 2008. The Director of the Law Magnet Program at South Mountain High School also made numerous attempts to persuade the district office to modify its requirements. E-mail from K Royal to Charles Calleros, June 27, 2008.
23. A short videotape description of the Phoenix and Las Vegas programs can be seen at 〈http://media.law.asu.edu/Law/HNBAweb.wmv〉 (last visited Dec. 8, 2008).
24. Richard D. Torpy, Am. Bar Ass'n, Mock Trial, A Script and How-To Guide for the Case: Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Kindergarten-6th Grade (Chicago, 1998).
25. The HNBA mentoring program in New York has in the past formed up to thirty mentoring teams with students from a single high school but with college and law students from Barnard College, Cornell University, CUNY Honors College, Hunter College, John Jay College, Albany Law School, Brooklyn Law School, Cardozo Law School, Cornell Law School, Fordham Law School, New York University School of Law, St. John's University School of Law, and Touro Law Center.
26. If you advise or teach a law-related program in high school, college, or law school and would like to start a four-tier mentoring program in your community, contact the HNBA for information about which law schools and lawyers might be available to help you organize a program. You can start by going to the HNBA website at hnba.com, roll your cursor to the right side of the block labeled "About HNBA" and then click on "Board of Governors." Look for the Regional President in your region, or look for the National Mentoring Committee Co-Chairs, and ask for guidance in linking up with attorney or student organizations that can collaborate with you in starting a mentoring program.