The Law School Admission Council (LSAC) recently published its report on The Composition of the First-Year Law School Class and Enrollment: 2021–2025 Trends, documenting an admissions cycle shaped by significant political, economic, and social change. The report notes a substantial surge in applications and an incoming class that is the largest since 2012. At first glance, these figures might suggest a profession that is becoming more open and accessible. Yet a closer look reveals a more complicated reality: even amid overall growth in law school enrollment, first-generation student representation has continued to decline. Historically, less than a quarter of incoming 1Ls in each year are first-generation college graduates. Between 2023 and 2025, the number of incoming 1Ls who were the first in their family to graduate with a bachelor’s degree fell from 24.2% (2023) to 22.95% (2024) to 21.6% (2025).
A few weeks before this report was released, one of my Pre-Law Learning Community (PLLC) students at George Mason University stood before a room filled with judges, attorneys, faculty members, and fellow students to describe her experience in the PLLC. In her reflection, she offered a moment that has stayed with me:
“When I signed up for this course, I told myself that I would give everything I have in me for the chance to attend law school. If things did not work out, it would not be because I did not try. Multiple times this year, I could not believe what my life turned out to be. I would just stand and think, what was this tiny Mexican immigrant doing in the middle of the Supreme Court of the United States? In those moments, I knew I was in the right place, I knew I was walking in the right direction, and I knew I had done the right thing.”
Her words captured something that data cannot. First-gen students who are interested in pursuing law school must navigate their undergraduate and law school education without the experience and professional network of college-educated parents to support them. According to the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) 2023 Report, Focus on First-Generation Students, they are also more likely to have caretaking and work responsibilities outside of law school and to come from families with fewer financial resources. Beyond these challenges, there is often the feeling that spaces like law schools, courtrooms, and legal institutions were never designed for someone like them in the first place.
That reality makes the recent LSAC report particularly concerning. Conversations about accessibility in legal education have focused on rising enrollment, expanded pathways, and growing interest in law school. Beneath those encouraging trends lies the more complicated truth that access to the legal profession is still profoundly uneven, particularly for students who lack inherited professional networks, financial security, or familiarity with the unwritten rules of the field.
The Hidden Curriculum of Law
For many students, pursuing law may feel almost intuitive. They grow up around attorneys, hear conversations about graduate school at the dinner table, understand how internships work, or know someone who can explain the LSAT process. They tend to enter college more familiar with the language and culture of these particular spaces. A General Social Survey funded by the National Science Foundation found that individuals are roughly twice as likely as the general population to have a given occupation if a parent had it too. The data show this likelihood increases significantly with respect to particular professions. Lawyers have parents who are lawyers at a rate 18 times that of the rest of the population, which is higher than most of the jobs on the list. While this “occupational inheritance” is not a direct indicator of how likely someone is to be accepted to law school, it is true that many first-generation students do not have the same access to institutional knowledge. They may be highly motivated, intellectually talented, and deeply capable of succeeding in law school, yet still feel uncertain about how to navigate the path there.
This seeming “gap” in knowledge is what many educators call the hidden curriculum, a term coined by education scholar Philip W. Jackson in the late 1960s. The hidden curriculum refers to the unofficial and unwritten lessons, values, and perspectives that students must learn during their academic journey. While the formal curriculum focuses on substantive knowledge and intentional learning objectives, the hidden curriculum includes the implicit social and cultural messages required to succeed in a particular profession. In the legal profession, that hidden curriculum can be particularly powerful because so much of the field operates through mentorship, networking, professional familiarity, and confidence in navigating elite institutional spaces. The challenge for first-gen students is not a lack of talent; it is a lack of exposure, and exposure matters more than we often acknowledge. This is why legal stakeholders must create and support effective means of guiding prospective students from underrepresented backgrounds through the legal education pipeline, from pre-application to the profession.
Often, exposure comes in the form of pipeline programs. According to the AccessLex Institute, “A pipeline program provides college students and/or college graduates from historically underrepresented groups with information and resources premised on aiding their successful matriculation into law school and the legal profession.” Importantly, the Institute identifies the best programs as collaborative, while providing meaningful and holistic content, experiences, and support. As Ebony Freeland Bryant wrote in her article The Importance of Pipelines for the North Carolina Bar Association:
I have seen many students reduced to tears when they sat in a session with a lawyer who looked like them or had a similar experience. I have seen eyes light up when they realize that the job in the Justice Department is possible for them because someone who has a similar story is currently working there. I have also seen an almost equal number of attorneys who are excited and proud to see students who looked like them from their alma mater pursuing law as a profession.
My experience with the Learning Community has been the same. I introduce my students to the legal profession through sustained, structured contact with the people, practices, and spaces that define it. Through our courtroom visits, trips to state and federal courts in the Washington, D.C. region, and engagement with judges, attorneys, and policymakers, students see the legal system in operation rather than simply studying it from a distance. One student described entering the program with a clear goal but little understanding of the path forward, explaining that she joined the Learning Community “to gain clarity” about her ability to enter the legal profession. A defining moment, she reflected, came through her interaction with a federal prosecutor, whose presence and mentorship allowed her to imagine herself in that role and ultimately solidified her interest in criminal prosecution. In describing that experience, she noted that it showed her “just how powerful that role can be” and helped her understand the profession not only as something she was studying but something she could actively become a part of.
Access Before Admission
Meaningful access to the profession begins long before admission letters arrive. It begins with mentorship, exposure, community, and the opportunity to see legal spaces as places where one belongs. As Cristal Jones writes in the Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality, aspects of the legal hidden curriculum may be less accessible to underrepresented groups by virtue of their lack of networking opportunities:
Building social networks with peers, professors, and mentors through social events and extracurricular activities is a crucial part of educational success and career advancement. Underrepresented students might have limited access to these networks and mentorship opportunities. This can be due to a variety of factors, including the historical lack of representation in the legal profession, a lack of familiarity with how to engage in networking activities, or other cultural and socioeconomic factors. This can also be due to the fact that both students and faculty may look for mentors who are similarly situated, undermining the ability of underrepresented students to find such a similarly situated mentor.
That understanding became the foundation for the Pre-Law Learning Community at George Mason University. While developing the program, my goal was not simply to teach students about law in the abstract. I wanted to create a space where undergraduate students could actively engage with the legal profession, build professional confidence, and develop the skills and networks that many students are otherwise expected to inherit informally.
Over the past three academic years, approximately 120 undergraduate students have participated in the program. Through courtroom visits, legal writing projects, appellate oral arguments, mock jury selections, and networking opportunities with judges, attorneys, and policymakers, students are introduced to the realities of legal practice in ways that traditional undergraduate coursework rarely provides. Students in the program have visited the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the Virginia Supreme Court, legislative chambers, law schools, and law firms. They have engaged with more than 70 legal professionals through guest lectures, mentorship dinners, and professional development events. They draft legal memoranda, analyze Supreme Court cases, and participate in exercises designed to mirror the work of practicing attorneys.
One of the most impactful aspects of the program has been what students themselves refer to as the “hidden curriculum” conversations. During speaker dinners and mentorship events, students ask questions they may not otherwise have the opportunity to ask (e.g., how attorneys chose their career paths, how they navigated setbacks, what law school was actually like, and how they built professional confidence). Those conversations matter. One first-gen student reflected that the hidden curriculum events provided “insight into the legal field I couldn’t get anywhere else, while another explained that the program “gave me the confidence to continue pursuing law and helped me identify which areas of law I’m passionate about.” My goal for these experiences is that they do more than provide information; they reshape students’ understanding of what is possible.
Belonging and Professional Identity
Perhaps the most powerful outcome of pipeline programs is not simply skill development, but identity formation. Research consistently shows that a sense of belonging plays a critical role in enhancing student retention and academic success, especially for first-generation students who are not only pursuing higher education for themselves, but are the first person in their family to learn how these systems work at all. That experience can be both empowering and heavy.
My Learning Community students repeatedly describe the importance of community alongside academic growth. In program evaluations, 95% of students identified cohort relationships as central to their learning experience. Students speak about finding peers who share similar goals, mentors who encourage them, and environments where they feel intellectually challenged while still supported. These moments may seem small, but they are transformative. For many students, the first time they walk through a courthouse, speak with a judge, or sit in a law school classroom fundamentally changes how they see themselves and their future. This brings me back to my student standing inside the Supreme Court, wondering what a “tiny Mexican immigrant” was doing there. The answer, of course, is simple: she belonged there. The challenge is that too many talented students spend years believing otherwise.
Beyond Theory
We cannot assume students arrive equally prepared to navigate the legal profession’s unwritten rules. Nor can we continue treating mentorship, exposure, and belonging as optional enrichment opportunities rather than essential components of professional access and undergraduate education. Pipeline programs alone will not solve every inequity within legal education, but they can play a powerful role in helping students develop the confidence and institutional familiarity necessary to enter the profession successfully.
Organizations like Ms. JD, Barrier Breakers, Inc., the Council on Legal Education Opportunity, Inc. (CLEO), and Bridging the Gap have developed programs aimed at supporting first-generation students as they navigate access to higher education and, in particular, the path to law school. These efforts are complemented by LawHub’s Pathway Program offerings in its Resource Center, designed to expand access to legal education and provide guidance for individuals exploring and pursuing legal careers. Similarly, LSAC’s PLUS Program has, for more than two decades, supported thousands of students from underrepresented backgrounds throughout the law school journey, from initial interest in the field to preparation for the admissions process and beyond.
A robust legal profession depends on more than who is capable of succeeding in law school. It depends on who is allowed to imagine themselves as a part of it in the first place. First-generation students are central to the future of the profession, including its ability to meet longstanding access to justice challenges. That future is first made visible in small but transformative moments of recognition and belonging. At the end of her speech, my student thanked the people around her for “giving me hope without even knowing it.” I have come to believe that this is precisely what meaningful access looks like.
Shea Holman Killian is an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at George Mason University, where she teaches various law and government courses and guides students through the Jurisprudence Learning Community (JPLC). She also serves as a member of the Schar School of Policy and Government’s Gender and Policy Center advisory board, contributing her expertise to advancing gender equity in policy and governance. Outside of George Mason, Shea serves as Counsel at the Purple Method, providing strategic legal guidance, overseeing policy development, and collaborating with stakeholders to create safer and more equitable workplaces.
