Education Is the Key to Diversity by Paula J. Frederick

Winter 2010

As a military brat, I was educated in public schools throughout the country in the late '60s and early '70s. Back then students, teachers and parents were all invested in the educational process, and there was an emphasis on hard work and collaboration. Although two of the eight schools I attended before college were de facto segregated, dedicated teachers gave their students the necessary education and encouragement to seek higher education. Armed with a set of basic skills, my classmates and I were well-equipped to seize the opportunities that came our way. We hoped that our generation would change the landscape of traditionally non-diverse professions, including the legal profession.

Times have changed. While in many ways the world is much better off than it was 40 years ago, public school systems struggle to educate the next generation. From where I sit, the quality of public education is declining, not improving. I see the consequences of this decline every day in my dealings with a generation of young adults whose writing and grammar skills don't measure up to those of their grandparents—much less their parents. I don't just blame shrinking public budgets for the problems I see. Many parents could take more of an interest in helping their children achieve and many students seem completely unmotivated to learn. To the extent that the problems stem from a lack of funding for public schools, however, it is unlikely that things will change soon.

Decreasing budgets and a resulting diminished quality of education in low-income and minority neighborhoods make it especially difficult for minority students to excel in school. And since doing well in school is still the best route to becoming a lawyer, our profession must find ways to change the status quo and fuel the pipeline.

Of course a complete overhaul of the educational system is unlikely in the short term. Thankfully, there are things that individual lawyers and Bar groups can do in the meantime.

One short-term solution is to identify at an early age interested minority students who would benefit from exposure to the legal profession. Providing students with hands-on, nurturing mentors is one way to "grow" a pipeline. As the past chair of the American Bar Association Diversity Center ("ABA-DC") and past president of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys ("GABWA"), I have seen first hand the power that one-on-one mentoring can have in bringing individuals into the pipeline.

Bar organizations have created law camps and in-school mentorships designed to develop and encourage the next generation of minority attorneys. For example, the Atlanta Bar Association in Georgia has a long-running summer law program that it coordinates with the Atlanta public school system. Participating high school students work in externships at law firms and government offices. My employer, for example, invites high school seniors to work in the office on a number of administrative tasks such as filing, preparing paperwork, or running errands. Of course the students meet the lawyers in the office, but they also learn about other possible careers in the law by interacting with judges, paralegals, courtroom staff, and legal secretaries. In this way, we expose students to possible careers in the law at a very early age. We hope that this type of exposure will spark an interest in the legal profession that may not have occurred without the exposure.

In addition to mentorship and externship programs, individual role models play a critical role in stimulating pipeline growth by inspiring students to achieve goals they may not have thought were possible. For example, the election of President Barack Obama has been incredibly inspirational for young minority students. Since the election, I have spoken with a number of students at inner-city schools. The election of our first African-American president has generated an interest in politics, government, and public service. Many of these students lacked this interest and zeal two years ago. I hope that President Obama's example has raised the aspirations of the younger generation, as well as their desire to learn and be curious about the world they have yet to explore.

My own experiences have taught me that diversity forces individuals to move out of their comfort zone and abandon some of the restrictive views that homogeneity often breeds. And it works both ways, to the benefit of both the minority and majority participant.

For instance, I once served on a board that was dominated by white men whose dinner conversation seemed almost stereotypically designed to exclude anyone different from themselves. One particularly memorable evening I was treated to a debate over the merits of various quail hunting plantations, a rehash of the prior weekend's college football fiasco, and whether two of the members shared a common ancestor—a colonel who fought for the South in the Civil War.

While it would have been easy to believe they were purposely excluding me from the conversation, it dawned on me that these conversations actually were about the same things I talk about over dinner—a recent vacation, a good book or movie I've seen, and an update on family exploits. I also realized that my fellow board members—all people of good wil—had never been challenged to change. They had never given any thought to how their conversations, about topics unfamiliar to me, made me feel. The conversations were not meant to be exclusive, but instead were unintentionally not inclusive.

Ultimately I did call "time out" with my dinner companions. When I spoke up I found that I was not the only one who felt excluded by the table talk; some of the less boisterous members of the group could never get a word in edgewise. We agreed that each of us should be able to introduce a dinner topic to be discussed by the whole group for ten minutes. Our subsequent conversations covered a diverse range of topics, and I found myself actually having fun within the group.

My premise is simply this; a sound education and diverse experiences can help to put any potential lawyer in a position to enter, thrive, and succeed in the legal profession. As lawyers who are interested in ensuring that the profession reflects the diversity of society at large, we must all do our part.

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Paula J. Frederick was recently named General Counsel for the State Bar of Georgia, where she interprets ethics rules and handles attorney discipline cases. Prior to joining the Bar in 1988, she was an attorney for Atlanta Legal Aid Society for six years. Ms. Frederick is the former chair of the American Bar Association's Diversity Center, as well as the first African-American president of the Atlanta Bar Association. She is also an active member of the Gate City Bar Association and the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers. In 1998, Ms. Frederick was president of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys. In 2004, Ms. Frederick was inducted into the Gate City Bar Association Hall of Fame. She is the recipient of the Charles Watkins Award for distinguished and sustained service to the Atlanta Bar Association, and the Kessler Award from the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers. Ms. Frederick is a 1979 graduate of Duke University and a 1982 graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law.