Natalie Bui saw statistics that made law schools seem like exclusive boys’ clubs that would be inaccessible to her no matter how hard she tried in her applications.
“As I began my research, one of the first things I came across was ‘100 reasons not to go to law school for a person of color,’ and as a person of color it was incredibly demotivating,” said Bui, a UC San Diego alumna who is currently applying to law schools.
About 100 students, including Bui, attended the For People of Color Conference Saturday in Dodd Hall. La Raza Law Students Association, UCLA School of Law and For People of Color Inc. hosted the conference, which provided prospective law students with information about the law school admission s process, as well as help with writing personal statements and tours of the school.
Iricel Payano, a board member of the La Raza Law Students Association and a UCLA law student, said the conference aimed to increase diversity at law schools.
In 2014, the UCLA School of Law described about 34 percent of students it accepted as students of color. Of the nearly 60,000 students who applied to law schools across the country in fall 2013, 41 percent were students of color, according to the Law School Admission Council.
To recruit a more diverse class of students from a variety of different groups, the UCLA School of Law has expanded its recruitment staff, expanded attendance at recruitment events and increased individual school visits, said Robert Schwartz, assistant dean of admissions at the School of Law, in an email statement in August.
Schwartz added in the statement that admitted students are invited to a diversity welcome weekend, and the Office of Admissions works with student groups to assist in recruitment and retention.
Six law school alumni who are currently working as attorneys in various private law firms and in the government shared their experiences at the conference. Eric Barba, an alumnus of the UCLA School of Law, said in a workshop that he thinks students of color are often discouraged from applying to a law school by a “stereotype threat.”
Barba said the threat is when students of color wrongly doubt themselves, thinking they will not be able to achieve the same success as individuals from other races because of seemingly insurmountable social barriers.
Bui said she thinks information available online about applying to law school is vague and often unhelpful, and that the conference helped her gain insight into the specifics of some applications.
She said she learned more about how to navigate the admissions process and about the Law Fellows Program at the UCLA School of Law, which assigns a mentor to potential law students.
Attendees had the opportunity to have their personal statement and other application materials reviewed by a UCLA law student. They were also able to participate in a raffle during the conference to win a Law School Admission Test preparation course.
For Payano, one of the hardest parts of applying to law school was taking the LSAT, she said.
“I came from a not-so-great high school in the Bronx, and standardized testing has always been a struggle for me,” she said. “Another factor that makes the LSAT even more difficult for students of color is that English is often their second language.”
Nathalia Cisneros, a UC Berkeley alumna who is applying to law schools this year and attended the event, said she thinks conferences are a good place to meet people who are going through the same struggles.
“Applying to law school is a really grueling process and seeing people who have gone through the same thing and done it successfully just motivates you further to keep going,” she said.
Contributing reports by Jeong Park, Bruin senior staff.