Legal Opportunity Scholarship Fund
The ABA Legal Opportunity Scholarship
Fund offers a solution that complements internal diversity, equity, and
inclusion goals while empowering students of color as they embark on their
rigorous academic journey to becoming an attorney. Ensuring a diverse legal profession is more than
a business imperative. It results in a
more just and productive profession because diversity, both cognitive and
cultural, leads to better questions, analyses, solutions, and processes. A significant aspect of ensuring a diverse
pipeline to the profession lies in financially supporting more law students so
they can focus and excel in their studies.
In its 25th Anniversary
Year, the ABA Legal Opportunity Scholarship Fund has increased the number of
incoming (1L) recipients from 20 to 25 to receive a $15,000 award each, payable
over their three years of law school. In
addition, there are 20 2L and 20 3L continuing recipients who also receive
$5,000 each so the fundraising need is $325,000. These exceptionally talented and deeply
committed recipients often have a passion for public service and continue to
champion justice long after law school.
Students graduating with less
financial burden will be better positioned to pursue careers in public service
or in private practice in the community of their choosing. Learn more at: ABA Legal Opportunity Scholarship Fund
Your Gift Matters
This is a vitally crucial time for the ABA to enlarge its imprint on greater diversity, inclusion, and equity in America’s universities. Our nation’s law schools face great challenges as they seek to enroll the next generation of highly qualified and deeply committed Juris Doctor candidates from marginalized and underrepresented communities. The ABA Scholarship Fund is imperative to a legal profession that more closely mirrors the public that we serve.
Akilah Maya Deernose, a 2006 ABA Scholarship Fund recipient of Gullah descent, exemplifies the impact of donations on the legal profession and the rule of law.
Now the Executive Director of ACLU Montana, Akilah grew up in a single parent household at the intersection of poverty and race. Her disabled brother and learning-disabled sister with mental illness were funneled out of mainstream schools and into the criminal justice system. Thus, Akilah saw firsthand the many barriers to justice faced by a substantial portion of the population. These experiences shaped her view of the world and grew within her a dedication to ensuring meaningful access to opportunity and equal rights under the law for all. As a student at Santa Clara University School of Law, the ABA Scholarship Fund’s financial support helped Akilah to intern at the San Jose Public Defenders Office in both the juvenile justice division and on a felony trial calendar assignment, and at the Mental Health Advocacy Project of the Silicon Valley Law Foundation.
Our Impact
For 25 years, the ABA Legal Opportunity Scholarship Fund has
empowered over 400 people of color to pursue a legal education with $15,000
each over three years of law school.
Your donation uplifts current Scholarship Fund awardees like:
Daniel Webster (Class of 2022): “As an attorney, I want to improve the criminal justice system, because I know first-hand the shadow of an oppressive institution, and how impossibly dark it feels when those in need cannot see themselves in the identities of those representing them.
This is how I became a leader on my college campus, and that is how I plan
to continue learning and growing as a community leader: by moving forward in my
work to reform the criminal justice system and serving underrepresented communities.”
Alejandra Zamora (Class of 2023): “As a law
student, I will bring diversity to my class because my story puts a face to the
nameless individuals discussed in law classes as hypothetical immigration
cases. As a Berkeley Law student and ABA Legal Opportunity scholarship
recipient, I will continue growing my leadership, passion, determination, and
experience working to protect our most vulnerable. I will become an attorney
because my community and my family are far too important for me to ever leave
their fate in the hands of a system that seeks to suppress their voices.”
Trinh Truong (Class of 2024): “Twenty-three years
after arriving in America, my Vietnamese origins linger in the threats of
shifting political tides, the continued struggles of our family, and my
longtime role as family navigator and economic safety net. My experiences as a
refugee, new American, and first-generation student remind me of the fragility
of safety and success and will keep me grounded as I use my legal education to
foster outcomes that minimize the hardship that other refugees and immigrants must
endure.”
Help Celebrate the Fund's 25th Anniversary!
Calling all ABA Legal Opportunity Scholarship Fund donors and past recipients to tell their stories in our 25th Anniversary Yearbook. Please respond to the LOSF Survey by October 24, 2024!