Legal Outreach is Model for Diversity Pipeline Success

Kenneth G. Standard of New York, left, a member of the ABA Council for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline, presented the 2010 Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Award to James O’Neal, who founded Legal Outreach in New York in 1983 with the goal of increasing diversity in the legal profession.

James O’Neal, executive director of Legal Outreach, founded his program in 1983 to increase diversity in the legal profession by supporting urban youth through high school. 

Today Legal Outreach boasts a comprehensive pipeline diversity program, recruiting, supporting and encouraging students starting in eighth grade and carrying them through law school, with a track record of solid success. 

O’Neal accepted the 2010 Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Award Friday evening during the ABA Midyear Meeting in Orlando.  He urged lawyers and law schools across the country to work together to replicate his program in cities across the land, as a roadmap to achieving diversity in his lifetime.  The award was conferred by the ABA Council for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Educational Pipeline, and presented by Kenneth G. Standard of New York, a council member.

After Legal Outreach started working with high school students, O’Neal said it quickly became apparent that they had not developed the skill sets to succeed in academics.  To help them acquire those skills before they got to high school, Legal Outreach sought out middle-school students to encourage them to take their education more seriously, he said.  Legal Outreach then expanded to include college support, and three years ago launched a college-to-law-school program. 

“We now consider ourselves a full-fledged pipeline diversity program,” he said.

Starting the summer after eighth grade, Legal Outreach immerses students in five‑week programs run in cooperation with five law schools in New York City.  During their high school years, the students participate in after-school academic support programs, writing classes, study and life skills workshops, college preparation courses, weekend experiences, field trips, meetings with professionals and other mentoring activities.

“They put in literally over four years 2,500 extra hours with our program outside of school,” said O’Neal.

The results:

• 70 percent of the eighth graders stay in the program the entire four years
• 302 out of 304 students have gone on to college, 68 percent of them to schools considered the most competitive and prestigious colleges
• 85 percent of those who went to college have graduated within four years, and 70 percent maintained grade point averages of 3.0 or higher over the four years
• 35 percent have obtained or are pursuing graduate degrees
• 14 percent have obtained or are pursuing law degrees