Fried Frank Partners With Hunter College in Diversity Initiative

NEW YORK, May. 05 /PRNewswire/ --

NEW YORK, May 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP has announced that it has partnered with New York's Hunter College to form the Fried Frank Pre-Law Scholars Program, the Firm's most recent pipeline diversity initiative. The intent of the program is to prepare the college's diverse student body to become competitive law school candidates through intensive LSAT and academic preparation and mentoring programs.

The Fried Frank Pre-Law Scholars Program will focus on intense and comprehensive preparation of Hunter's undergraduates, 33 percent of whom are identified as either black or Hispanic, for law school admissions. The program, incepted last fall, includes early and extended LSAT workshops, interaction with Fried Frank lawyers for help with law school essays and other aspects of the application process, and exposure to the legal profession.

"We believe that diverse perspectives enrich the experience of our colleagues and, ultimately, the service we provide to our clients. In our commitment to maintaining an inclusive environment, we began to identify the importance of pipeline issues, and the need to help minority youth from early on to achieve their goal of entering the legal profession," said Douglas Flaum, co-chair of the Fried Frank Diversity Committee. "At Fried Frank, we're now focusing on helping undergraduates overcome the challenges they face in making that important step of entering law school."

According to the last United States Census, while racial and ethnic minorities constitute 30 percent of US population, they make up less than 15 percent of practicing attorneys in the US. Ideally positioned to address this discrepancy through the Fried Frank Pre-Law Scholars Program is Hunter College, one of the oldest public colleges in the US that continues its mission of providing equal access and opportunity to students underrepresented in US higher education institutions. In addition to being one of the most diverse universities in the nation, two-thirds of Hunter's student population live in households with incomes under $50,000, including almost a third in households with incomes below $20,000. A significant number of students are immigrants and/or the first generation in their families to attend college.

"We are taking a comprehensive approach to addressing challenges minorities face in entering the legal profession, focusing on timing at many points in the pipeline -- including high school and college," said Maja Hazell, director of diversity and inclusion at Fried Frank. "In creating a partnership with Hunter College, we recognized a comparative lack of pipeline programming at the college level. By specifically targeting the LSAT preparation and law school application process, we believe that we can eventually make a difference in achieving and maintaining diversity in the legal world."

Fried Frank is no stranger to pipeline programs. The Firm is already a partner of the New York Law School (NYLS) Racial Justice Project's Street Law Project, aimed at teaching Brooklyn public high school students from impoverished communities who participate in enrichment programs at the non-profit organization Groundwork, Inc. about the legal profession. The Fried Frank/NYLS Street Law Program is designed to bring together law students, high school students from low-income communities and practicing attorneys to educate high school students about how the law affects their daily lives, and inspire them to focus on their studies, potentially considering a career in the legal profession. In April 2008, students in the program, along with their law school mentors, visited Fried Frank to present their final oral arguments to a team of Fried Frank lawyers who served as moot court judges.

For the last eighteen years, Fried Frank has also participated in the Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO), a highly competitive mentoring program that provides minority students who have been accepted to law school with pre-law school summer internships.

Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP is a leading international law firm with more than 650 attorneys in offices in New York, Washington, D.C., London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Fried Frank lawyers regularly represent major investment banking firms, private equity houses and hedge funds, as well as many of the largest companies in the world. The Firm offers legal counsel on M&A, private equity, asset management, capital markets and corporate finance matters, white-collar criminal defense and civil litigation, securities regulation, compliance and enforcement, government contracts, environmental law and litigation, real estate, tax, bankruptcy, antitrust, benefits and compensation, intellectual property and technology, international trade, and trusts and estates. The Firm has an association with Huen Wong & Co. in Hong Kong. More information on Fried Frank can be found at www.friedfrank.com.