Twenty students bound for Indiana law schools this fall will spend the next six weeks at the Maurer School of Law for the Indiana Conference for Legal Education Opportunity (ICLEO) Summer Institute.
Now in its 26th year, the ICLEO program was established in 1997 to help underrepresented, low-income, and educationally disadvantaged students pursue legal education and careers in Indiana.
Four of this summer’s ICLEO students will begin their legal education in August in Bloomington, while 14 will enroll at the McKinney School of Law, and two will be attending the Notre Dame School of Law.
Students participate in a simulated law school class environment, with instruction from Indiana Law faculty members, including Professors Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, Don Gjerdingen, Asaf Lubin, and Lecturers Ashley Ahlbrand and Lisa Farnsworth. Courses include legal research and methods, civil procedure, and torts.
Since ICLEOs inception in 1997, more than 675 Fellows have gone through the program. Indiana’s three law schools each take turns serving as host for the Summer Institute every summer.
One of those was Kat Bingaman, who participated in the 2022 ICLEO Summer Institute before completing her 1L year at the Maurer School of Law. Bingaman credited ICLEO with preparing her to succeed in her first year of law school and beyond.
“I became a better law student, a better classmate, and a more confident professional thanks to ICLEO,” Bingaman said. “My success in and during law school can be credited to my six weeks spent with my ICLEO Fellows.”
Bingaman noted that many of her ICLEO colleagues have gone on to achieve remarkable success in their law school careers at Maurer, including Sarah Chavez (Latinx Law Students Association President); Marsha-Jean Baptiste (former Black Law Student Association President and National Black Law Students Association Parliamentarian); Gerardo “Al” Alvarez (Lead Admissions Fellow); Aristotle Jones (previous judicial extern for the Honorable U.S. District Court Judge James Patrick Hamilton); La’Kendra Deitche (Karen Hastie Williams Leadership Fellow); and Kendall Bowers (a research assistant to Professor Charles Geyh).
“The first year of law school comes with trials and tribulations, no matter who you are. But, when you come from an underrepresented background, whether that be BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, students with disabilities, low-income, first-generation, or non-native speaking households, the hurdle is seemingly more grandiose. Often, ICLEO students represent a multitude of these social intersections,” Bingaman said.
“ICLEO doesn’t just teach the fundamentals of case briefing and legal writing. The academic learning curve of the legal profession is only half the battle. ICLEO teaches provides students with the tools to tackle both the academic and professional challenges that law school brings. I actively learned law school disciplines while experiencing things that were unattainable for me to experience before. I visited a federal courthouse, met three Indiana Supreme Court Justices, and networked with other ICLEOs in various positions ranging from “Big Law” to public interest.”
The ICLEO Summer Institute begins June 11 and concludes July 22.