BC Part of Successful Early Efforts to Fund Program for Minorities in Law

Bryan Cave LLP has joined with more than a dozen major law firms in New York to support minority law students and early career attorneys in the metro area. After one month of fundraising, the firms have contributed a total of $180,000 to the Practicing Attorneys for Law Students (PALS) campaign.

PALS is New York-based non-profit dedicated to providing mentoring and career guidance services to minority law students and new attorneys. The campaign was launched in March to expand the reach and resources of the program. The eventual goal is to raise $400,000.

Bryan Cave has sponsored substantive events for PALS, and the firm’s New York attorneys act as mentors in the program. Bryan Cave and other firms were recognized for their ongoing support of PALS April 20 in the New York Law Journal.

“We are delighted that so far more than a dozen of the world’s leading law firms have issued such a resounding call to action within the industry through their swift and generous support to the Campaign for PALS,” said Amanda Samuel, chair of the PALS Board of Directors. “Recent industry statistics show that minority lawyers still face great hurdles related to hiring, professional development, work assignments and promotion. PALS is well-positioned to address these challenges by bringing together leading lawyers of all races to serve as mentors to minority law students and early career minority attorneys.”

PALS was founded in 1984 as the “Adopt-a-Law Student Program” by Patricia Irvin, an African-American associate and later a partner at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy LLP, who began mentoring minority students from NYU School of Law. The program has expanded to serve students from the 13 major law schools in and around New York City and includes lawyer mentors from most leading law firms and many locally based corporations. All PALS programs are offered to minority law students free of charge.

The ultimate goals of the current campaign include the creation of an endowment for PALS’s longstanding Supplemental Bar Tutorial program and funding a full-time executive director to oversee day-to-day operations and manage the program's continued growth and development.