ESQ. Apprentice

Mission

We make the law work for women.

Women of color are, and have always been, the backbone of our nation’s labor force.

Black women are significantly more likely to be employed than other demographics of women, yet still experience higher rates of unemployment, lower wages, less access to work-family supports, and less access to advancement opportunities.* In our unjust legal system, they are 2x more likely to be imprisoned than white women.* They – and all women of color – make up less than 2% of equity partners in United States law firms.*

Esq. Apprentice gives women of color the tools, support, and resources they need to complete California’s legal apprenticeship program and become attorneys. As the nation’s only program utilizing legal apprenticeship to help women from low-income communities gain access to legal jobs and careers without debt, we are building a movement of women lawyers working for a more just legal system.

How We Work
The path to becoming a lawyer is expensive and exclusionary by design. But if you are impoverished, of color, and identify as a woman? You face a daily battle against systemic racial and gender discrimination that wages war on your mental health, creates significant barriers to your learning, and makes your path to a legal career painfully out of reach.

For marginalized women of color, focusing solely on bar exam passage fails to address the very real and deleterious impacts of poverty on their lives – and their ability to study for requisite tests.

Esq. Apprentice works with community law firms to secure paid legal employment for a debt-free route to law licensing, and offers a culturally responsive coaching model that is designed to meet apprentices at the intersections of gender, race, and class.

Your support is a direct investment in their success.

Organization Information