The Fannie Angelos Program for Academic Excellence represents a revolutionary approach to meeting the need for a more diverse legal profession.
This effort begins with legal education—and the Fannie Angelos Program for Academic Excellence has created a groundbreaking way to make it happen.
On June 25, 2020, Professors Mike Higginbotham and Mike Meyerson, founders of the Fannie Angelos program, published an op-ed in The Daily Record. Here is how it begins:
In the aftermath of the horrific deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks, and the nationwide protests calling for social justice, the legal profession must take a hard look at itself. While the protests have highlighted the need for fundamental change in the criminal justice system, the battle for racial equality involves every aspect of law. Read the entire op-ed .
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Program participants Vernon Brownlee, Esq. and Khadyne Augustine, JD at the 2016 Annual Gala
"We are a talent search."
"We do not consider ourselves to be a diversity program," says Prof. Meyerson, director of the Program. "We are a talent search. We have found that if you discover talent and truly level the playing field, diversity will happen."
Michael Higginbotham and Michael Meyerson, the Dean Joseph Curtis Professor of Law and the DLA Piper Professor of Law, respectively, are the co-founders of the Fannie Angelos Program for Academic Excellence, and are known in the law school as "the two Mikes" for their solidarity in envisioning, creating, and running the Program.
READ articles in The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post.
READ the Baltimore Law Fall 2017 issue, featuring a cover story on the Angelos Program.
WATCH interview about the annual gala on Fox 45.
LISTEN to a feature program on WYPR's On the Record morning show.
The Fannie Angelos Program has built a unique collaboration between the UBalt School of Law and Maryland's four historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) — Bowie State University, Coppin State University, Morgan State University, and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The result is the most successful program of its kind for legal education. The program was proud to win the ABA's Section of Litigation prestigious Diversity Leadership Award in 2017.
The program prepares students from Maryland HBCUs and other select colleges for admission to law school, and continues to work with them so that they may excel and thrive throughout their legal careers. We provide extensive LSAT preparation, one-on-one academic mentoring, individualized "whole life" support, and career counseling.
"The ABA award underscores the importance of the program in furthering the goal to diversify the legal profession," says Kurt L. Schmoke, president of the University of Baltimore and Baltimore's 46th mayor. "It has been a joy for me to meet with students who have participated in the program. They will be leaders in their communities and leaders in the profession of law. That can only help to make our country stronger in the future."
