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UK Rosenberg, Nebraska Law, and Penn State Law each lead diversity efforts

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The University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law publishes two law journals, the Kentucky Law Journal and the Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture & Natural Resources Law. This year, each of the journals is being led by a woman of color, Kelly Daniel and Jocelyn Lucero, respectively.

Daniel is the first Black editor for the Kentucky Law Journal. She says that while growing up she saw many of her peers and classmates going to prison and felt that there were inadequate services to prevent that from happening.

“There were few attorneys who looked like me,” she said.

Lucero is from Lexington, Ky., and became interested in law school from an early age. She saw the struggles her family went through with the immigration process.

“I didn’t understand why it was so difficult for us to achieve something so simple as having my grandmother home for Christmas,” Lucero said. “I witnessed first-hand the lack of legal resources available to the low-income families in the Latinx community. I realized that by becoming a lawyer I could give back to my community, and that has been my goal ever since.”

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The Nebraska Legal Community has joined forces to create the Nebraska Legal Diversity Council. The community is made up of 16 law firms and business, the Nebraska State Bar Association, Creighton University School of Law and the University of Nebraska College of Law. The goal of the NLDC is to foster a more diverse and inclusive legal community in the state.

In 2018, the Bureau of Labor reported that the legal profession is one of the least diverse, with discrepancies extending beyond race and ethnicity into religion, sexual orientation, gender, age, nationality and disability. The NLDC will strive to lessen these gaps and it will do so as the first statewide model to be put in place with such a coalition of involved parties.

The NLDC was incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in May of 2021 and in November, Shawntal Mallory, the executive director, began her work. She brings extensive experience to the role, having practiced adoption, juvenile, family and employment law for the past 15 years.

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Penn State Law announced plans to pilot a new course for its spring 2022 semester that will examine the intersection between law and inequity. Each week for the duration of the semester, a different professor based at or affiliated with Penn State Law will lead a lecture and discussion in their field of expertise.

Topics will include the current state of K-12 desegregation, immigrant exclusion, inequity in military and veterans’ law, legal technology and access to justice, racial justice in the criminal justice system, and more.

The school’s faculty diversity committee hopes that the results of the course will allow them to make the case for a more permanent inclusion in the curriculum.

“I am grateful to our diversity committee for their support and to the more than one dozen faculty who will help to teach this course,” said Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as a clinical professor and chair of the diversity committee. “I hope the course allows students to explore how laws impact people differently.”

Trevor Mason

Trevor Mason

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