Twelve receive scholarships to help with bar exam expenses

Twelve graduating law students — including three former inner-city teachers, an immigrants’ rights activist and two single mothers who have overcome substantial obstacles to graduate from college and law school — were awarded scholarships last month to assist with the cost of taking the bar exam. The recipients were awarded the Rosenthal Bar Exam Scholarships by the California Bar Foundation.

Nominated by their law schools, the students have demonstrated a commitment to public service, including hundreds of volunteer hours at legal clinics and other nonprofit organizations, an impressive academic record and an average educational loan debt of $143,000. Their plans after graduation include Skadden and Equal Justice Works Fellowships, federal judicial clerkships, the Army National Guard JAG Corps, and positions at various district attorneys’ offices, public defenders’ offices and legal services organizations.

The scholarship is one of the few programs in the country specifically aimed at providing bar exam-related support for public interest lawyers-to-be. Reed Smith LLP and The Sidley Austin Foundation have underwritten the cost of the foundation program, which will give $2,000 scholarships to each recipient. In addition, the top six recipients also receive California BAR/BRI Law Review Bar Exam review courses valued at more than $3,500 each.

Since 1997, the foundation has awarded $200,000 in cash awards and bar review courses to more than 230 graduates of California law schools. In addition, for the past five years, BAR/BRI of California has provided the foundation with discounted bar review courses for the top winners.

This year’s Rosenthal Bar Exam Scholarship recipients are:

California Western School of Law: Kyung Eun Latimer, Lisa Orozco and Liseth M. Saravia; Stanford Law School: Katrina Eiland and Rachel Marshall; University of California, Berkeley: Angela McNair Turner — Reed Smith Scholar; University of California, Hastings College of the Law: Meredith L. Alexander and Anna Claire Johnson; UCLA School of Law: Maribel Gonzalez — The Sidley Austin Foundation Scholar and Julia I. Vazquez; and University of Southern California Gould School of Law: Jessica Hewins and Harden Sooper.