Institute helps prepare Hispanic students for law school admissions

Juan Zamora has always stood out from his peers in the legal community.

Tattoos cover his forearms and biceps.

He spent his teen years in and out of alternative education programs for students expelled from school.

And as a Hispanic male from one of the poorest regions in the country, he belongs to a group that has historically struggled to get into law school.

But the now 31-year-old attorney at the McAllen-based Hockema & Longoria law firm is exactly the type of student the University of Texas-Pan America's pre-law boot camp has been trying to reach for nearly a decade, its director Jerry Polinard said.

The Law School Preparation Institute, which graduated its eighth class this month, was started on the campus in 2001 in hopes of increasing the number of minority applications at state law schools.

Each summer, a new crop of aspiring attorneys undergoes an intense session of classes on legal writing, reasoning and argument coupled with visits from legal professors, admissions deans and test prep experts.

"This is arguably the most intensive undergraduate program on the campus," Polinard said. "Not only does this enhance their chances of getting into law school but their chances of staying in."

In 1996, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that race could no longer be considered in admissions decisions at the University of Texas Law School. But that left a problem in recruiting minority candidates, Polinard said.

Studies have shown that Hispanics tend to score lower on their Law School Admissions Test than their Anglo peers because of the heavy emphasis placed on language skills. And that test score remains the single most important factor in making admissions decisions at most schools.

But through the UTPA institute, students not only prepare themselves to overcome that score gap but get a taste for the rigor of law school courses, Polinard said.

Of the institute's graduates who have gone through the application process, 90 percent have been accepted to at least one school - almost double the overall acceptance rate of UTPA students.

Of those that have gone on to start law school, only two have not graduated.

"Everybody always said if you can get through (the institute) you can get through law school," said John Rudy Flores, a recent UTPA graduate who completed the program this month.

Zamora, who decided to become a lawyer while reading the novels of attorney-author John Grisham as a teen, attended the institute in 2003.

In the years since, he has graduated from the UT Law, clerked for U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa and currently works as a general civil litigation attorney.

"It exposed us and gave us a precursor to what to expect," he said. "I felt very well prepared to go to that next level."

Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.