Academic support programs find favor with law students.

Since the early 1990s, an educational movement has been gaining steam--and esteem--at many law schools in the form of academic support programs (ASPs).

These programs aren't exactly new--they started during the modem civil rights era--nor do they promise to churn out ready-made legal practitioners.

What ASPs do ensure is that highly motivated but often educationally disadvantaged students have a chance to excel at law school--a place that has the look and feel of a very strange land for some aspiring lawyers.

The law school professors leading the ASP movement won a boost in status a few years ago when they successfully petitioned the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) to create a section in the organization devoted specifically to these programs. In the early 1990s, the Law School Admission Council sponsored a national ASP conference--now held annually--so that academic professionals can meet in order to exchange information and ideas about the programs.

"When I first started working with academic support programs in 1983, law schools did not have a big commitment to them," said Kris Knaplund, director of the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law's program and the AALS section's first chair from 1995-96. "Now, a majority of the schools have some kind of program."

In addition to addressing the immediate needs of law school students, ASP advocates also say these programs are helping to light the path to a diverse legal profession, one that is more representative of the clients that most lawyers serve.

Jim Alexander, a second-year student at St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami, participated last year in Dean's Fellow classes--the name given to that school's support program. St. Thomas's program is not specifically designed for disadvantaged students; the school encourages all to participate.

"This program is so invaluable," said Alexander, who is now a Dean's Fellow, facilitating academic support classes for first-year students. "If I hadn't been in these classes, law school would be so much more stressful.

"I went relatively religiously [to ASP classes] during my first year. They give you a way to take advantage of something that will help you learn this stuff. This program doesn't enforce the sink-or-swim mentality of some schools."

Alexander said he believes the program is also preparing him well for his intended career as a trial lawyer. "I never used to like to talk to groups of people. I thought, `I've got to break that,' because if I'm going to be a trial lawyer, I'm going to be doing that every day. And I'm going to be talking in front of jurors--everyday people. I've got to know how to say things simply and clearly. These classes help me do that."

Knaplund, describing how ASPs are run, said that, generally, faculty members teach credit courses that focus on skills building, work with small groups of students, or meet with them one-on-one. More senior students, like Alexander, may conduct study sessions for a group of first-year students in the program.

Some schools' ASPs focus only on writing skills improvement, while the more expansive and well-funded programs try to enhance students' total law school experience--and, thus, enhance their learning--by setting up social events with other ASP students and informal counseling, in addition to offering skills training.

ASP participation is sometimes determined by a law school's evaluation of a student's "predictors," such as admissions test scores, writing ability, or time that has passed since the student has been in an academic setting. The administration then asks these students if they would like to participate.

Some schools have summer programs that take place before new law students start their first semester, while others have ASPs that run concurrently with students' regular classes. UCLA identifies potential ASP students at the end of their first year of law school, based on their academic performance. ASP participation is rarely required unless a student has been placed on academic probation during the school year, Knaplund said.

Although the format and content of ASPs vary from school to school, the central component is to teach skills, not substantive legal theories.

"Some people think that academic support programs make things easier academically for the students, but these programs are not about tutoring," Knaplund said. "We're not saying, `Here are the five elements of adverse possession. Memorize them.'"

Kent Lollis, associate executive director of the Law School Admission Council, said that ASPs are vital during an era of declining law school applications.

He said they help students who get into law school stay in.

"Academic support programs really hone in on the things that students need," Lollis said. "Most schools will tell you that they've been helping students who have these needs for a very long time, but academic support programs take a more formalized look at how to meet their needs."

He said that the law professors who are involved in developing ASPs and teaching the students--as well as the law schools who fund ASPs--gain a great deal from the programs.

"Academic support programs force law school professors to teach in different ways so that students in general could learn better," Lollis said. "It's pretty clear that the traditional Socratic method is not the way that a lot of law students learn."

The concept of ASPs, also known as academic assistance programs, first emerged in the 1960s. They were designed to help minority students through the rigors of law school by offering them special classes in analytical thinking and writing--skills some believed to be lacking or undeveloped because of educational, financial, or social disadvantages.

"These programs have evolved since then," Knaplund said, explaining that most law school administrators encourage the participation of any student who wants to improve his or her skills.

Generally, though, students are either part of a minority group or are considered to be nontraditional: a woman who wants to practice law after having raised a family; a student for whom English is a second language; or a young man who was the first college graduate in his family.

"The idea is that we not only want to admit diverse law school classes, but also we want to graduate diverse classes. Our question is, `What can we do to help?'" Knaplund said.

Leslie Garfield, an associate professor and director of Pace University School of Law's ASP in White Plains, New York, said the ASP approach "all comes down to how the law professor communicates a belief in the individual. In the end, I think the students have a strong understanding of how one analyzes the law, more than they would if they were just learning the black-letter law.

"As lawyers, they bring to a client a sense of compassion. They have the understanding of what it takes to move oneself from one difficult place to another better one. I think that because of that they are probably more in touch with the client."

Law professor Kathy Cerminara developed an ASP exam-writing course while she taught law at the University of Miami. She now incorporates techniques she learned at ASP conferences into her classes at St. Thomas University School of Law, where she is a visiting assistant professor.

Cerminara said she participated in an ASP during law school at the University of Pittsburgh in the early 1980s.

"The summer before I started law school, I got a letter from the school asking if I wanted to be in a new legal writing section, so I signed up," Cerminara said, adding that it wasn't until several years later that she realized that she actually had been in an ASP.

Cerminara--a former newspaper reporter and writer who scored well on the law school admissions test--said she thinks she was asked to participate because the university considered her to be a nontraditional student. She had worked for nearly two years after leaving undergraduate school.

"Some may think there is a stigma attached to ASPs," Cerminara said. "It's not a negative thing. It means this person spent more time learning a lot about the skills needed to practice law."

And that should be good news to trial attorneys who are looking to hire new associates, Cerminara said.

"Employers are searching for students who will serve them well. They are looking for something that shows this person spent a lot of time working on practical skills. Academic support programs help in this area," she said.

Lawyers--and probably trial lawyers, in particular--have long lamented that newly minted colleagues don't know much about practicing law. Clinical academic programs have gone a long way toward teaching students how to practice, but the fact remains: Nothing beats on-the-job training under the steady guidance of a real-life, practicing lawyer.

But, as Cerminara pointed out, who has the time?

"Trial lawyers may be in trial eight hours a day, and during the night hours, they work on administrative tasks in the office," Cerminara said. "Unlike, say, corporate lawyers, trial lawyers are not in a setting where they can have someone sitting at their knee, learning the job.

"Academic support programs are one place where students learn things like picking out holdings versus dicta or drafting consent decrees and settlement agreements,"

Knaplund, likewise, emphasized the practical advantages of ASPs. "I find that people in law schools are so focused on the LSAT. I don't think you'll find any plaintiff lawyer who is going to choose to hire someone based on their LSAT scores."