diversity
Pipeline
MTO has also taken steps to increase the “pipeline” of students from diverse backgrounds who will be applying to law school and subsequently entering the legal profession. These initiatives are focused on high school students and college undergraduates. We highlight a few of these efforts below.
For high school students, we are proud to be partners with For People of Color, Inc. in conducting an annual workshop devoted to empowering people of color who desire to enter the legal profession. At the workshop held each spring, our lawyers share their insights into the law school application process as well as their own experiences as law school students. Past student participants at FPOC workshops have subsequently attended some of the nation’s best law schools and have become associates at major law firms.
We are also proud to be a sponsor of the Los Angeles Urban Debate League, which is affiliated with the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues, an organization devoted to promoting debate programs in urban public schools across the country. Debate has been shown to have meaningful results in enhancing literacy and graduation rates in high schools. Sandra Seville-Jones and Bart Williams, the current and former managing partner of the firm, co-chair the Los Angeles Advisory Board which has partnered with the Los Angeles Unified School District in bringing urban debate league programs to a number of the city’s secondary schools.
With respect to pre-high school students, we have partnered with Southern California Edison on a pipeline project in the Los Angeles Unified School District directed at educating junior high school students about the law and good citizenship, and exposing them to careers in the law.
For college students we created, in 2007, a new program called the MTO Fellows Program. This program offers up to four full-time positions in the firm’s Los Angeles office to students of diverse backgrounds who have recently graduated from college and plan to attend law school. It is designed to expose them to the practice of law at the highest level. MTO Fellows work closely with attorneys and paralegals, participate in a wide range of educational activities outside the firm, and receive a stipend to take an LSAT preparation course.
In 2006, we became a sponsor of the UCLA Law Fellows Program, an innovative outreach program aimed at encouraging and preparing minority undergraduates and recent graduates to attend law school.
The firm is also a proud sponsor of the American Bar Association’s Judicial Intern Opportunity Program. The program, sponsored by the ABA’s Section of Litigation, provides minority and financially disadvantaged law school students an internship with federal and state judges throughout the country. MTO partner Lisa Demsky is the attorney coordinator for the Los Angeles JIOP program.
