Pathways to a Diverse Legal Academy: Pipeline Programs After SFFA

Responding to the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA) decision invalidating race-conscious admission policies in a public and private university, I urge an emphasis on pipeline programs to ensure law school admissions pools include racially diverse applicants. I detail my school’s pipeline programs for high school, college students, and recent college graduates—both as these programs were implemented before the Court’s decision and as they changed in its wake—as examples of what law schools generally, and collectively, should be doing. Most importantly, I focus on the lawful recruitment, design, and content of pipeline programs aimed at fostering diverse campus admissions toward a legal profession still lacking diversity.