Expanding access to legal education has become both more urgent and more complex. As law schools navigate rising costs, shifting admissions rules and increased scrutiny around how opportunity is defined, many institutions are rethinking not just who they serve, but how they open the door.
The Justice & Opportunity Honor Roll recognizes law schools for leadership in expanding access to legal education. The framework reflects an evolution from our previous coverage of diversity alone and places greater emphasis on the structures, policies and programs that create pathways into the legal profession.
In “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” framing justice as a system whose strength depends on inclusion and access. That principle — long central to the nation’s democratic ideals — guides the Justice & Opportunity Honor Roll’s focus on how opportunity is created and sustained.
Rather than focusing on enrollment outcomes or demographic profiles, the Honor Roll centers on mechanisms — the admissions pathways, affordability measures, program design choices and student-support systems that expand opportunity and support persistence once students arrive.
preLaw invited law schools to submit information about initiatives, partnerships or strategies that reflect this mission. Schools were evaluated based on the scope and maturity of their efforts, including evidence of scale, longevity and measurable impact where available. Institutions designated as A demonstrate multiple, well-established access strategies that work together to lower barriers to entry and persistence. Schools recognized at the A- level meet the Honor Roll criteria through defined initiatives, with distinctions reflecting breadth and scale rather than quality. The Honor Roll is not a ranking, but a recognition of meaningful action at a moment when access pathways matter more than ever.
The Honor Roll reflects leadership across four primary access models — geographic and rural access, mission-driven urban public access, admissions innovation and modality and design — showing how schools are opening the door in different but equally meaningful ways.
Justice & Opportunity Honor Roll
Building a pipeline to rural justice
Across the Justice & Opportunity Honor Roll, several law schools are confronting the challenge of rural access by rethinking how students are recruited, trained and supported for practice beyond urban centers. Programs such as the Rural Law Opportunities Program at University of Nebraska College of Law; rural justice and placement initiatives at University at Buffalo School of Law, The State University of New York; and funded rural externships paired with a Third Year Anywhere option at Washburn University School of Law illustrate how geographic access can be built into legal education. Similar efforts are underway at Gonzaga University School of Law, which emphasizes rural internships and regional pipelines, and at The University of Mississippi School of Law, where an HBCU-centered pipeline is paired with transition support for students preparing to serve rural communities.
At University of Tennessee Winston College of Law, that same challenge is addressed through a comprehensive strategy that treats rural access not as a single program, but as a system. It is a strategy that connects early education, legal training and community service into one pipeline. That approach is increasingly urgent as rural legal access, once seen as local, becomes a national concern.
At the center of Winston Law’s work is the Pipeline Initiative, launched in the 2025–26 academic year to coordinate outreach, student support and community engagement into a scalable framework. The goal is to recruit students and remove barriers across the arc of legal education while strengthening access to justice in underserved regions.
For Briana Rosenbaum, associate dean for access and community engagement at Winston Law, access must be understood as a continuum.
“Access is not just about admissions,” Rosenbaum said. “It is access to legal education, access to meaningful opportunities once students arrive and access to justice for the communities we serve.”
That framing shifts the work from launching programs to fixing breakpoints in the system. Winston Law listens to students, educators and communities first, then designs models meant to last beyond any one person or moment.
High school outreach shows the difference. Instead of one-off visits, the law school works with educators to identify barriers such as limited exposure to law and lawyering. Winston Law is building reusable materials and centralized resources so communities can sustain programs even when the law school cannot be physically present.
“We cannot visit every high school in Tennessee,” Rosenbaum said. “So, we ask how we can serve the people who serve. That is scale.”
The same approach shapes the Winston Law First-Gen Program, where a student-led advisory board drives mentoring and programming and where an endowed scholarship will launch in Fall 2026. Rather than symbolic support, the program builds infrastructure for belonging, professional readiness and persistence.
System design matters most in rural America. Tennessee, like many states, faces growing legal deserts, counties with too few lawyers to meet basic civil legal needs. Residents struggle with evictions, family law, estate planning and consumer disputes because lawyers are scarce, not because problems are rare.
“We do not lose rural lawyers because of lack of commitment,” Rosenbaum said. “We lose them because of lack of support.”
Winston Law’s Legal Clinic already serves more than a quarter of Tennessee’s counties. The school is planning a Legal Deserts Symposium in April and exploring an incubator model to support graduates with mentoring, business training and resources as they build rural practices. As legal deserts expand nationwide, rural access is now tied to housing stability, economic health and civic trust.
Students experience the strategy firsthand. Quincy Sackey-Mensah, a 2L and Access and Community Engagement Fellow, came to Winston Law after teaching elementary students through Teach for America. Raised by parents who immigrated from Ghana, he had no lawyers in his family.
“Access to legal education means being able to enter the legal field no matter your background,” Sackey-Mensah said. “The law works better when it represents more people.”
Through the First-Gen Program and community outreach, Sackey-Mensah helps build pipelines.
“Winston Law made access to legal education attainable,” he said. “It’s great to feel like you belong, to be part of the effort to build something continuous.”
Rethinking admissions, widening the gate
A growing number of law schools are also reexamining how readiness for law school is defined and assessed.
At University of Arkansas at Little Rock Bowen School of Law, performance-based LEAP admissions give applicants a chance to demonstrate ability beyond test scores, while Widener University Commonwealth Law School operates a no-cost LSAT Pathway Program designed to widen access without lowering standards. Similar approaches are underway at St. Mary’s University School of Law, which pairs conditional admissions with readiness bootcamps, and at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, where the SCALES program evaluates applicants through performance rather than rankings alone. At University of Houston Law Center, pipeline programs are tied directly to admissions outcomes, linking early exposure to enrollment.
At Suffolk University Law School, that same philosophy is embedded in the institution’s history and continues to shape how the school opens alternative paths into legal education.
As history goes, Suffolk Law was founded in 1906 by Gleason Archer as an evening law school for Boston’s immigrant and working-class communities. Gleason had grown up poor but received help funding his law school education from wealthy businessman George Frost.
To pay that gift forward, Archer laid the foundation for what would become a top-ranked law school still dedicated to broadening access to a legal education for students of all backgrounds and circumstances. Suffolk Law offers flexible J.D. pathways, part-time and hybrid options and evening classes to reach more students.
“Part of our mission statement is to serve underrepresented populations,” explained Anthony Orlando, dean of admissions for Suffolk Law. “Law is by far the least diverse of the professions out there. We need more attorneys of color. We need more first-generation attorneys as well, as they are underrepresented in the legal profession. We’re trying to increase visibility for this path as an option.”
While adhering to what are considered “race-neutral” legal requirements, Suffolk Law has a range of initiatives intended to empower students from diverse backgrounds to pursue a legal education marked by ideological diversity and civil discourse.
Among those initiatives is the Summer Pre-law Achievers Network, a two-week residential program for aspiring law students from underrepresented or underserved communities. Orlando said the participating students are often a year or two away from applying for law school.
“The point is to learn more about the legal profession and confirm if that is the right path for them, and also to give them practical exposure to what it’s like to be a law student,” Orlando said. “They can try it on for size and see if it’s a good fit.”
The Achievers live in the college dorms, take two law school classes, tour Boston law firms, Fenway Park and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. They also meet Suffolk Law alumni like Serge Georges Jr., a first-generation Haitian American who serves as an associate justice for the state’s Supreme Judicial Court and as an adjunct professor at Suffolk Law.
“He really is inspiring to hear from, to show that this is an achievable goal even if you think you don’t come from a background that commonly lends to pursuing law,” Orlando said.
Suffolk Law also offers a performance-based admissions initiative called LEAAP, for the Legal Education Alternate Admission Program. The free two-week online program is offered each March to about 20 students whose LSAT scores fall below the median. They receive instruction from Suffolk Law faculty, followed by an assessment.
“Law school and other admissions tests are not perfect. They don’t always help us find the best students,” Orlando said. “There are a number of prospective students in the applicant pool who might not have the best test scores, but all of the other indicators in their file point to potential success in law school. These students have great letters of recommendation from their professors, strong writing samples, good GPAs and resume experiences.”
Students who complete the LEAAP program get another chance at law school admission. They also become eligible for Suffolk Law scholarships, such as the First-Generation College Student Scholarship, which offers a minimum $20,000 annual gift.
Designing access through flexibility
To expand access, law schools are rethinking how legal education is delivered, paced and priced. Fully online and hybrid models at Purdue Global Law School and Seattle University School of Law are designed to reach students in legal deserts and regional hubs, while South Texas College of Law Houston and Lincoln Memorial University John J. Duncan, Jr. School of Law use flexible, part-time pathways to serve working adults and rural communities. Other schools, including Elon University School of Law and Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, are shortening time to degree or offering day and evening divisions to reduce cost and widen access.
At Mitchell Hamline School of Law, flexibility is not one option among many — it is the foundation of the institution’s approach to access.
Founded in 1900 as the nation’s first night law school, Mitchell Hamline has long served students for whom full-time, daytime legal education was not an option. That commitment now takes shape through one of the most flexible delivery systems in legal education, including the nation’s first ABA-approved blended J.D. program and the largest part-time enrollment in the country.
Launched in 2015, Mitchell Hamline’s blended learning program combines online coursework with required on-campus intensives, allowing students to pursue a J.D. while remaining rooted in their communities. The design was intentional, particularly for students in rural and Tribal areas where relocation can sever professional and family ties and deepen legal deserts. Courses are largely asynchronous, enabling participation across time zones, while in-person sessions focus on simulations, bar-style assessments and community building.
Flexibility extends beyond one pathway. Students can move among blended, fully online, synchronous remote and on-campus courses as their circumstances change. For those near campus, a part-time evening program offers another option for balancing work, family and school. The result is a system that adapts to students’ lives rather than requiring students to reorganize their lives around law school.
That design supports a student body that reflects the breadth of the communities the school serves. Incoming classes consistently include high percentages of first-generation college and law students, military veterans and students from Tribal Nations, with ages ranging from early 20s to mid-60s. Academic advising, career counseling and bar preparation are integrated throughout the program, reinforcing persistence as a core access goal.
At Mitchell Hamline, modality is not about convenience alone. It is a structural response to who law school has historically excluded — and a deliberate effort to widen the path into the profession without narrowing expectations.
When access is the mission
Several law schools are advancing access through public-serving missions rooted in urban communities. At University of San Francisco School of Law, first-generation student support is central to how access is defined in a high-cost city, while Brooklyn Law School has built pipeline and first-generation initiatives shaped by New York City’s diversity. Similar approaches are underway at University of Cincinnati College of Law, where urban pipeline and transition support link legal education to public service, and at UIC Law, where its public, access-first mission is embedded in its identity as an urban institution.
At City University of New York School of Law, that mission is an extension of the school’s work and the reason it exists.
CUNY Law was founded in 1983 with a defined mission: to make legal education more affordable and accessible to more people and to train public interest lawyers who will use the law as a tool for social good. Those future lawyers should reflect the communities they’ll serve.
“That mission, in and of itself, kind of necessitates a sort of unorthodox, holistic recruitment approach,” explained Joanne Hyppolite, CUNY Law’s associate dean for student affairs and enrollment management.
CUNY Law’s admission staff travel to regions far beyond the school’s New York City core to recruit those who are first-generation college students, potentially geographically isolated or who’ve taken a circuitous path to education.
CUNY Law has removed barriers to reach students who might not otherwise consider law school, including omitting a question about criminal history from its admissions application.
“We’ve always been on the cutting edge of just doing things a little bit differently,” Hyppolite said.
The law school’s Pipeline to Justice program, launched 20 years ago, has become a national model for widening access to the legal profession. With intensive LSAT preparation, professional skills development, mentorship and socio-emotional support, the program provides a helping hand to a cohort of hardworking students who might not have otherwise had the test scores to get into law school.
“For students who others may not have considered, we give those students a second look; we give them a second chance; we give them a viable opportunity to be successful in this space,” Hyppolite said.
Methodology
preLaw invited law schools to submit information about initiatives, partnerships or strategies that reflect the mission of expanding access to legal education. Schools were evaluated based on the scope and maturity of their efforts, including evidence of scale, longevity and measurable impact where available. Institutions designated as A demonstrate multiple, well-established access strategies that work together to lower barriers to entry and persistence. Schools recognized at the A- level meet the Honor Roll criteria through defined initiatives, with distinctions reflecting breadth and scale rather than quality. The Honor Roll is not a ranking, but a recognition of meaningful action at a moment when access pathways matter more than ever.
