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Fifty undergraduate students are having a taste of law school during the Summer Law and Leadership Academy at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law June 16-22.

The Summer Law and Leadership Academy is designed to introduce undergraduate students from historically underrepresented backgrounds to law school and the career opportunities available with a law degree.

The program is a wonderful opportunity to help students better understand the process of learning to “think like a lawyer” and gain more knowledge about life in law school and beyond, according to Assistant Dean Chasity Thompson, ’02, of the law school’s Office of Student Affairs, in the photo, left, with Niaa Asim, a Ball State student and participant in the 2019 Summer Law and Leadership Academy, and IU McKinney Professor Shawn Boyne.

Dean Thompson is one of the program’s organizers, along with Professor Boyne, who said that, in its fifth year, the Summer Law and Leadership Program has become a critical feeder program to the law school.

This year, students have come from 15 different undergraduate institutions and eight states to attend the summer academy.

“I’m excited to welcome students from across the country to our summer program,” Professor Boyne said. “We have a highly talented and engaged group of students here this week.”

“This year's students are an exceptionally strong and talented group,” Assistant Dean Thompson said. “This program and our ongoing recruitment efforts play a critically important role in helping our admissions team build a racially and culturally diverse student body.”

Summer Law and Leadership Academy participants engage in:

• Learning legal skills and writing, an introduction to criminal process and hot topics in the legal field
• Networking opportunities, including lunches with current law school faculty, law students and alumni, and a visit to the Indianapolis offices of Taft Stettinius & Hollister law firm
• Discovering career options in the law
• A mock trial

IU McKinney alumni Esperanza Alonzo, ’05, Joseph Delamater, ’07, Mellisica Flippen, ’03, Rakuya Trice, ’89, Doneaka Brooks, ’01, and Jana Matthews, ’00, spoke to students about their own experiences in law school and their careers, and IU McKinney Professors Aila Hoss, Lahny Silva, Robert Katz, along with Dean Andrew Klein and other attorneys in the community presented at sessions on health law, intellectual property, criminal law, mock trial and U.S. courts.

Academy participant Yanni Decastro-Filipe-Gray, a student from CUNY-John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said that he liked what he had seen at McKinney. “I can see that McKinney has a passionate faculty,” he said. “That’s important.”

For Symone Simmons, a student at the University of Indianapolis, the Summer Law and Leadership Academy was an important step in her goal toward becoming a lawyer. “I wanted to be absolutely sure that this is the path I want to take,” before applying to law schools, she said.

Current IU McKinney law students Victoria Swanson and Malorie Palmor, as well as 2019 graduates Eden Strange and Trevor Oakerson are assisting with the Summer Law and Leadership Academy.

Applications for the program are due in the spring prior to the summer program. For more information, visit the IU McKinney website, https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/admissions/jd/diversity/summer-program.