Although efforts to diversify the legal profession across racial and ethnic axes have been stubbornly slow in producing results, the Law School Admission Council reports that law schools recently admitted the largest cohort of first-generation students in history
—24.2 percent of the nationwide entering class. First-generation (first-gen) students are defined as those without at least one parent who graduated from a four-year college.
Many of these students are multiply minoritized not only as first-gen but also as students of color, LGBTQ+, immigrants, veterans, and other “minorities within minorities.” The Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) reports that “students of color from every racial group are more likely than White students to be first-gen.” Fifty-three percent of Hispanic/Latinx students and 40 percent of Native law students who completed LSSSE’s survey were first-gen, compared to 21 percent of white respondents.
These new first-gen students enrich our classrooms with important perspectives and experiences. Seattle University School of Law Professor Jeffrey Minneti says: “They tend to think outside the box because they have not come from the box. They offer fresh, new ways of approaching problems and set an example for other students.”
Today’s first-gen law students also come to us with an unprecedented array of challenges that require the attention of legal educators and practitioners alike.
First-gen students are celebrated for their resilience and tenacity. Many overcame significant obstacles—including severe poverty, immigration challenges, and difficult childhoods. Their tenacity, courage, and adaptability will serve them well as attorneys. But the harshness of some of their backgrounds makes it unsurprising that many first-gen students come to us with a high prevalence of stress-related disorders and mental illnesses.
First-gen students tend to engage in more outside work while enrolled in law school. They usually must balance more demands on their time, with fewer hours to devote to their studies, not to mention exercise and rest.
These students assume much more debt in order to finance their studies and are much more susceptible to financial distress. Some first-gen students must financially support and physically care for family members. Often the pride of their parents as embodiments of the American dream, first-gen students are loathe to share academic struggles with their parents—who may be ill-equipped to help anyway. Many, then, are left without a safe space to turn for refuge. They face alienation and marginalization at school and a lack of support at home.
First-gen law students can suffer from social obstacles as well, including feelings of isolation and marginalization. These emotions magnify the imposter syndrome that often befalls first-gen and minoritized students. Many first-gen students also encounter bias, not only because of their first-gen status but also due to their interlocking minoritized statuses.
We are fortunate to live in a nation where upward class mobility—especially in the form of elevation through education—is possible. But the upward trajectory of first-gen students is often so turbulent that a disorienting vertigo weighs them down as they continue to climb.
First-gen attorneys often reflect on how, while in law school, we did not know certain things that had long been inculcated into our non–first-gen peers, who entered law school with the wherewithal and situational awareness passed down to them by college- or law school–educated relatives.
Growing up with college-educated parents can come with countless academic advantages—from home libraries to broadening recreational travel, from summer camps to paid tutors. First-gen students may have been deprived of rich dinner table conversations that prepare young minds for academic excellence. Seattle University Law alumna Jenny Goak characterizes another first-gen disadvantage as “observational:” “Many of us did not have the opportunity to learn corporate or professional etiquette by observation of our parents as we grew up.”
College-educated households tend to have a higher prevalence of family members who are attorneys, able to advise law students about the importance of early and effective 1L course outlining, the value of law review and clerkships, and professional networking. First-gen students ordinarily do not have these “built-in” mentors. In a twist on the old Spanish refrain “El que no tiene padrino no se bautiza” (one without a godparent will not get baptized), this lack of mentors can be vexing in an academic and professional environment.
Much of the time, first-gen students learn about the importance of certain law school activities or practices too late—well after such knowledge would have been helpful. I did not become fully aware of the value of moot court and law review, for example, until well after I graduated. Although I was a working-class, immigrant, first-gen student who had to work through much of law school (sometimes with two part-time jobs at once), I likely would have made different choices if I had key information at the time. This information gap continues to be problematic for many first-gen students.
Given their psychosocial and informational challenges, it is no wonder that first-gen law students can take longer to acclimate to the unique demands of law school, especially during the unreasonably impactful 1L year. LSSSE reports that first-gen students have law school admission test (LSAT) scores on average three points lower than their peers. Although imperfect, lower LSAT scores correlate with academic struggles in law school. That, combined with the fact that they tend to engage in more outside work than their peers, results in lower average law school grades for first-gen students.
Once graduated, first-gen students tend to have a harder time passing the bar exam—which itself is a serious obstacle for students already prone to high rates of testing anxiety and similar stressors that impede academic performance. Bar exam failures, in turn, can lead to difficulties in securing post-law school employment.
What’s more, many of today’s first-gen students are international and intercultural and tend to struggle with language barriers despite serving as translators for parents and relatives with less English proficiency. Non-native English students often need extra time with individual assignments and may be more reticent than others to raise their hand in class. Law itself is a new language for all students. To many first-gen students, law is a foreign language within a foreign language.
First-gen students comprise a woefully understudied cohort. LSSSE became one of the only entities to collect and analyze data on first-gen law students scarcely a decade ago. To better serve the complex needs of first-gen students, we need to know more about who they are, the challenges they face, and how they themselves find the law school experience to be lacking.
On a March 2023 Harvard Law School webinar entitled “Teaching First Generation Students,” Dean John Manning spoke of the importance of professors doing all we can “to make sure that we provide for all of our students a baseline, the fundamentals of what it means to be a law student and to study law.” Our pedagogy should not only welcome first-gen students but also emphasize to them that their presence in our classrooms enriches the academic experience for all and that their service as attorneys will elevate our profession and its effectiveness in serving a diversity of clients.
We need to reduce the financial burden on first-gen law students. We must provide mental health and academic support services, responsive to the special challenges our first-gen students face.
Comprehensive prelaw pipelining initiatives, immersive 1L orientation programs, and innovative yearlong cross-curricular community-building programs help provide the informational “baseline” for first-gen law students suggested by Dean Manning. First-gen student organizations, which pair first-gen 1Ls with upper-class and alumni mentors, can also help.
How we welcome first-gen students into our classrooms and in-class discussions can make a big difference. Random rigorous but supportive cold-calling can help better integrate students who may initially be reticent to volunteer and may not at first feel that they belong in class. Positive cold-calling experiences boost the confidence and engagement of these students and encourage them to volunteer in subsequent class discussions.
Prof. Minneti notes that “[a]n additional step law faculty can take is to make no assumption that the students in front of them have any experience with the law or lawyering. . . . Professors should explicitly model/speak aloud the thought process they employ when they engage in legal skills such as synthesis, analysis, and argument,” in order to ensure that all students are reached.
The visibility and transparency of those of us who are first-gen professors and practitioners also can encourage first-gen students to feel more at home in law. Finding ways to welcome these students to open office hours and student events in our homes can be very helpful.
Finally, bar licensure reform efforts like those in Washington and Oregon, which allow for rigorous alternative pathways to licensure, can help first-gen students prone to test anxiety demonstrate their competency in actual practice settings instead of through high-stakes tests of long-doubted validity.
Many of our first-gen law students will help address the access to justice crisis across the nation and will strengthen our profession as a bulwark of our republic. First-gen students are an important part of the future of our profession and the law itself, and it behooves us to welcome them into our law schools and profession thoughtfully, helpfully, and fully.
