From Admission to Bar Passage: Extending a Helping Hand to Students at St. Mary’s University School of Law

摘要

With assistance, the St. Mary’s University School of Law's Summer Skills Enhancement Program (SSEP) was established more than twenty years ago to “create[ ] an opportunity for a very limited number of applicants, who otherwise might not be admitted, to gain acceptance, at the same time that it helps them prepare for the rigors of legal education.” The SSEP determines admission or denial by looking beyond GPA and LSAT scores to the proverbial “whole person.” The program director and another professor teach the one-month Summer Skills Enhancement Program. The program is divided into two components: a traditional law school course surveying various first-year topics taught in the Socratic method and a legal writing course. Following the administration and review of each final exam in the program’s two components, the program concludes with an individual exit interview.