First Generation Mentorship Kickoff Reception
This reception hosted at Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP provides first-generation law students the opportunity to meet the attorneys and judges who serve as their mentors through the Diversity Scholarship Foundation’s mentor program. Over 125 law students and their mentors are invited to attend the reception either in-person or virtually. This mentorship program is open to all law students in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missourir and Iowa and has served almost 300 law students in the past two years alone.
The Diversity Scholarship Foundation, NFP (“Foundation”) is a 501(c)(3) organization under the Internal Revenue Code. It was established by a group of attorneys and judges committed to the ideal that diverse law school student bodies are a means of ensuring further diversification in the legal community. Although the Foundation was formally established in March 2008, the Foundation’s mission had its genesis in 2002, when 17 bar association presidents joined together for the first symbolic swearing-in and took an oath to promote the goal of advancing diversity within the Chicago legal community. In subsequent years, the number of participating associations has greatly increased, to where, today, more than 50 associations have joined together to partake in the symbolic swearing-in and pledge to support the increasing need to take concrete steps to diversify the legal community.
