“We have an educational landscape in this country in which test score gaps between African-Americans, Hispanics and whites start to appear in kindergarten, and they worsen through 12 years of education.

“Despite some of our best efforts, African-American and Hispanic high school students can read and do arithmetic at only the average level of whites in junior high school.”

Those opening comments by Alice Noble-Allgire, associate law professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Law, set the tone for the ISBA Midyear Meeting seminar, “Diversity Roundtable: Pipeline to the Profession.”

Allgire chairs the ISBA Committee on Minority and Women Participation, which sponsored this presentation on Dec. 7 and another, “Strategies for Achieving Diversity,” on Dec. 8 (see related story).

As moderator, Allgire stressed that the existing educational landscape poses a problem for law schools and the legal profession.

“We have a serious problem of under-representation of minorities within the bar association in general,” she said, referring to it as the “Pipeline Problem”.

ISBA President Irene F. Bahr had requested the Board of Governors to co-sponsor a resolution with other state and local bar associations to start addressing the diversity problem within the legal profession.

“This seminar is one of the first steps in making that happen,” Allgire noted.

Bahr added, “I think it's incredibly important for citizens to see that our legal community is representative of all of the components of out society.

“Diversity builds confidence, in that when people go to the courts or have a dispute that needs to be resolved, they'll see that the face of the justice system is as diverse as the community.”

For Associate Cook County Judge Jesse G. Reyes, president of the Illinois Judges Association, it's all a matter of access.

“Access to dreams, access to goals and access to fulfill your aspirations is what every wave of every immigrant and minority group to ever come to this country has wanted,” Reyes said.

“A lot of the issues that were being addressed, fought for and litigated 50 years ago are still being addressed: immigration and civil rights,” he added. “Individually, we may have made it. But as a community, we still have a long way to go.”

To that end, Reyes stressed that it's important to look not where individuals may be today, “but to children who look to a future to be where you're at, where we're at.”

One group that has been looking at the pipeline problem for two years is Wingspread, which was initiated under the auspices of Dean Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker of the University of the Pacific's McGeorge School of Law.

The St. HOPE Corp. approached the law school to see if it would work on pipeline efforts. A charter school was started, and one of its curriculums was the law and public service.

As the law school became deeply involved, Parker wondered who else was doing this type of work and how the information could be shared.

The result was the Wingspread Consortium of educators, the bench and the bar, with a commitment to “working across the educational continuum to improve the participation, persistence, and success of diverse students in high school and college.”

The group has had six meetings since 2004, and has adopted a goal to “enhance these students' aspirations and capacity to move into positions in the legal profession and in the leadership of the nation.”

Amy Jarman, Wingspread Consortium participant and assistant dean for Academic Success programs at the Texas Tech University School of Law, said different aspects of the pipeline have been studied throughout the six Wingspread conferences.

“This includes everything from family involvement to how bars, law schools and corporations are involved in order to see that diverse students get though the pipeline and enter our profession,” she said.

“If we wait until they're in college to try and get them into law school, it's too late and we've lost so many students.”

Jarman said Wingspread has realized that its efforts are much broader than just growing “baby lawyers.”

“We've realized that when you're working with youngsters in public and charter schools, we don't know where they'll end up in their lives,” she added.

“The important thing is that by working with the pipeline, we develop better citizens overall. We cultivate a generation to be able to take up whatever careers they wind up in.“

Jarman noted that learning deficits begin as early as kindergarten, and many parents may not have the resources or time to see that a child's learning issues are addressed. As the student progresses through the system, the educational problems worsen.

There are many obstacles to overcome, Jarman said, including a “lack of education on our part as to what the models are and what can be done.” Often there is a lack of interest among top administrators.

“We also tend to have good random programs, but not continuity throughout the pipeline,” she said. “And we often have a lack of knowledge about other programs that we can piggyback on.”