MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE WITH A SMALL EFFORT
ACC Chicago, once again, conducted our high school diversity pipeline program - Street Law 2024, an engaging initiative designed to help prime the pipeline to the legal profession for young people from underserved high schools in Chicago and the Northwest suburbs.
This program – developed by ACC in collaboration with the Street Law organization (www.streetlaw.org) - creates partnerships between lawyers and nearby high school law classes serving youth from a variety of backgrounds. The idea behind the program is to encourage high school students to continue their educations and to consider careers in the law.
The ACC Chicago Chapter Street Law Program has both a Chicago and a Northwest Suburbs component, and volunteers can select which component (city or suburbs) is most geographically convenient for them. ACC Chicago has forged relationships with both Chicago Public Schools and the U-46 District; together, we have identified a number of high schools and teachers that are grateful for opportunities to partner with in-house counsel through the spring semester.
Volunteers find it to be a fun and gratifying way to give back to the community and, at the same time, form meaningful relationships with their in-house colleagues. The time commitment involved is fairly flexible, probably averaging 10 hours over the course of two months – a small commitment to perhaps change the life of a deserving student.
In the spring semester, ACC Chicago volunteers visit each of the participating classes, and ACC Chicago brings all of the students to a one-day conference (one for each geographic component) near the end of the spring semester.
The program kicks off with online training sessions during which we learn how to access proven lesson plans for the classroom visits, and begin to plan for the student conference.
The program has been extremely successful each year with more than 70 in-house attorney volunteers reaching out to well over 200 promising young students. We receive tremendously positive feedback from the students and teachers. It is very gratifying.
If you are interested in volunteering to participate in this very worthwhile program in 2025 (even just for the conference days) please contact:
Sara Levy, Board Member, Program Co-Chair
ACCLoopStreetLaw@gmail.com (Chicago program)
Adam Rouse, Program Co-Chair
ACCNWSuburbsStreetLaw@gmail.com (NW Suburbs program).
