By Michael Fisch
law community
Ted Lucas and his family immigrated to the U.S. when he was 8 and faced some challenges from an unethical landlord. Ever since high school, he’s thought about becoming an attorney and helping people facing similar issues. Even though he’s had a dean’s-list college career so far—he’s majoring in political science at Bridgewater State University—the rising senior wasn’t sure how to make that dream come true.
Enter Suffolk Law’s Summer Pre-Law Achievers Network, a two-week immersion program designed to make that dream easier to reach. The school hosts a range of participants, including students from low-income families, first-generation college students, and groups underrepresented in the legal profession.
Things really clicked for Lucas when, during the program’s field trip to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, he and the other students met one of that court’s sitting justices, Serge Georges, Jr., who graduated from Suffolk Law in 1996. “Justice Georges mentioned to me that he was Haitian. It was inspiring to see someone like that in a high position, and it made me think, ‘I’m not limited. I’m not in a box. Look at where he is.’”
Lucas and 19 other students spent a busy two weeks in June taking classes on trial advocacy, negotiation, LSAT prep tools, and the law school application and scholarship process. They also got to meet with Suffolk Law alumni and visit Boston-area courts. “It was exactly what I needed to start my journey,” Lucas said.
Like Lucas, the American Association of Law Schools is a big fan of the Achievers Network. It honored the program with its 2023 Changemaker Award. Further national recognition has come in the form of a grant from the Law School Admission Council.
One critical part of the training is a course that takes apart a complex drunken-driving case and culminates with a mock trial with a professor playing the judge. The students, dressed in suits, act as defense lawyers or prosecutors in the Law School’s largest oak-paneled moot court room.
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winter 2024
Photographs: Michael J. Clarke
Ted Lucas
Solace Porter, a 22-year-old participant from Guilford, Connecticut, described the immersion program as “eye-opening.” Meetings with Suffolk Law alumni and the pipeline’s negotiation course offered her a new sense of the range of job options open to those with a law degree, including the field of mediation, which was new to her, she said. And the school’s admissions officers helped her create a list of scholarship opportunities.
Porter, an Oberlin College rising senior, said that living in a Suffolk residence hall helped the participants get to know each other. “We had a chance to talk to each other about our fears coming into the program, talk about how to do assignments, and we built a community. Some of us who live near each other are planning to do tours of law schools together.”
Program instructors encouraged Porter to look at her application portfolio in a broader way. “For example, I did theater, so that’s a skill I have to offer,” she said. “That’s a skill I can bring into a moot court competition. You have to remember that you have transferable skills. At the end of the program, I felt, ‘This is where we’re supposed to be.’ You turn your fears into a fire to get started on the process.”
Getting Beyond the Fear
Solace Porter
Ted Lucas and his family immigrated to the U.S. when he was 8 and faced some challenges from an unethical landlord. Ever since high school, he’s thought about becoming an attorney and helping people facing similar issues. Even though he’s had a dean’s-list college career so far—he’s majoring in political science at Bridgewater State University—the rising senior wasn’t sure how to make that dream come true.
Summer Pre-Law Achievers Network students at the Law School.