Published: December 2023
Written by: Karla M. Armstrong & Shania Grant

KARLA: I received an email from the St. Thomas Career Development Center about the Palm Beach County Diversity Internship Program (“DIP”). I was thrilled at having an opportunity to intern within my community, and I received the email right after finals while I was on a trip with friends trying to mentally escape the pressures of law school. I read the mission statement of the DIP, and I thought it offered a perfect opportunity for me as an Afro- Latina Lesbian. I admire how it strives to bring everyone to the table.

 As part of the DIP, I interviewed with the Palm Beach County School Board General Counsel’s Office, (“OGC”), and I was told what my summer would look like if I interned with them. I knew from the moment that I spoke to them that I wanted to be a part of their team for the summer. Shortly after interviewing, the OGC called me to offer a summer internship position. I was a mixture of nervous, excited, and grateful. Even though I had a career before law school, I had never worked directly under attorneys. As the summer neared, the worry cloud started to take over. What would it be like? Am I capable? What if a real-life experience would show me that I cannot do this? One word summarized my thoughts – terrified.

SHANIA: As a high school student, mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, I came across a post about interning for the Palm Beach County School District. Ignorant to all of the different fields that go into running a school district, I thought to myself, “What could the School District have to do with my career goal of becoming an attorney?” Even with these doubts in mind, I went to the district’s website, and to my surprise, I saw the opportunity to intern with the Office of General Counsel. Once I interviewed with the OGC, I quickly fell in love with the team there, and I was inspired by its diversity. As a first-generation American and a black girl, I felt proud to see the wealth of identities and diversity in the office, as it showed that I could, in fact, get there one day. When I received a call offering from me the position, I immediately accepted, knowing the OGC would provide me with a fantastic summer internship experience.

What kind of work did you do at the OGC?

KARLA & SHANIA: We worked in four departments: personal injury, governance, labor and employment, and business operations. Each department immersed us in their work for the two weeks we were with them. For business operations, we attended the weekly meeting and researched new case law and statutory changes, for example, those dealing with garnishment and student loans. The personal injury department asked us to summarize an entire medical file in one of their cases. Governance had us reading new legislation and assessing possible impacts on the school board. Labor and employment entrusted us with summarizing deposition transcripts and researching the possibility of a four-day workweek.

Our internships overlapped with a hectic time for the OGC as they underwent many changes and adapted to new legislation. We had the opportunity of seeing OGC attorneys discussing the impacts of the changes and preparing for the worst-case scenarios, all while having a goal of providing an enjoyable and safe environment that embodies the community’s values. 

What did you take away from your experience?

KARLA: The experience at OGC taught me that passion, dedication, and heart can lead you down many roads, and that every law student should intern in different areas of the law. Every lesson is valuable – whether someone learns they like or dislike working in a specific field. Also, working with a high school intern like Shania, who knows she wants to be an attorney, was inspiring. Thank you to the OGC!

SHANIA: As a high school intern, I not only gained great experience with the attorneys at OGC, but also I gained Karla as an amazing mentor and friend. Karla is someone who I aspire to be like given all she’s accomplished, and because she is so proud of who she is. The environment in the OGC was so supportive as well. As a high school intern, I knew little about the law and all the legal jargon. However, the OGC made me feel comfortable to learn and ask for help while I was experiencing things that I never had before like my first trial, and a school board meeting. In addition, I was able to see the operational side of everything, which allowed me to better understand how the law governs and affects people’s lives. The whole experience made me believe that I can succeed while being unapologetically me.

Karla M. Armstrong is a second-year law student at St. Thomas University School of Law and is set to complete her J.D. in 2025.

Shania Grant is a senior at Florida Atlantic University High School. Shania is dual-enrolled and is currently set to graduate with a B.A. in Political Science with minors in Spanish and Criminal Justice in December 2024.

Published: November 2023
Written by: Marc Hernandez

Have you applied for a legal job and been asked where you went to law school? By itself, the question is relevant and harmless, but the question also may reflect or lead to biases that prevent consideration of the applicant as an individual.

Presumably, most lawyers are proud of our alma maters—whether they be Florida public or private universities, out-of-state universities, HBCUs, universities with a religious affiliation, and of course, Ivy League universities. We worked hard to get into our institutions, to earn our degrees, and to form long-lasting ties with our alumni networks.

For better or worse, all law schools have a reputation, including for academic rigor, utilization of a particular teaching method, emphasis of either practical skills or theory, association with a jurisprudential school of thought, and success of their graduates in passing the bar and practicing as lawyers. However, reputation does not always match reality.

Many law schools invest significant resources to obtain a high ranking from publications like U.S. News & World Report. But recently at least 16 law schools—public and private institutions ranked between #1 and #49—voluntarily withdrew themselves from the ranking system. Deans of these institutions—with their names deliberately omitted—have expressed the following concerns:

• “Overall, the [S. News ranking] methodology creates incentives that work against schools’ interest in attracting and retaining classes of students with a broadly diverse set of qualities and experiences, and in supporting the widest possible array of career choices for their graduates…”
• “They create the wrong incentives by rewarding schools for the amount they spend, regardless of whether this money is spent directly on the student experience, rather than prioritizing outcomes that really matter to students, such as the long-term employment of graduates.”
• “[L]aw schools to a greater or lesser degree sometimes are forced to consider the effect of any changes in their programs on their rank. . . . While [our law school] has consistently resisted the pressure to take actions that are contrary to our mission, the demands of the S. News algorithm always lurk in the background.”
• “Rankings can provide helpful guidance, and S. News has long aggregated data about law schools. . . . That said, overreliance on a single source can distort decision-making, and any given ranking is only as useful as the relevance and accuracy of the comparative information on which it is based.”

These concerns complement my own observations, which have been that a graduate from a “lower-tier” law school can be smarter, more successful, and a better overall advocate than one who graduated from a “top” school.

None of this means it is inherently wrong to ask lawyers where they went to law school. If you have been on a hiring committee, the question is often well-intentioned when asked in a manner designed to connect with the applicant, or to get a brief sense of his or her background. However, overreliance on the question—just like overreliance on law school rankings—can be problematic if we form preconceived notions about the applicant that cause us to ignore other data points showing an applicant from a “less prestigious” school is more qualified than an applicant from our “preferred” school.

Fortunately, a recent trend of employers considering more than an applicant’s law school pedigree is emerging. Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have traditionally selected their law clerks from the most elite law schools, but Justice Clarence Thomas—himself a graduate of Yale Law School—has disagreed with this approach. Believing that other justices are biased against lower-tier law schools and have created a “new or faux nobility” among lawyers, Justice Thomas has been critical:

“Isn’t that the antithesis of what this country is supposed to be about? Isn’t that the bias that we fought about on racial terms, or on terms of sex, or on terms of religion, et cetera? My new bias, which I now embrace, is that I don’t eliminate the Ivies in hiring, but I intentionally prefer kids from regular backgrounds and regular students. . . . I never look at those rankings. . . . There are smart kids every place.”

Although this way of thinking used to be isolated, other justices have come around to Justice Thomas’s approach. Members of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 clerkship class graduated from 13 different law schools, a historically high number. The Court’s newest justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, has hired three non-Ivy League law clerks in a little over one year, and going forward, Justice Jackson has committed to a transparent hiring process that is open to all.

This is not to say that every lawyer deserves to be hired for an elite position like a U.S. Supreme Court clerkship. Rather, this article merely calls for a recognition that lawyers of all educational backgrounds excel at prestigious jobs. As a result, lawyers of all educational backgrounds should be considered when hiring for them.

Marc Hernandez is a board-certified appellate attorney at Lytal, Reiter, Smith, Ivey & Fronrath.