Legal education for incarcerated students expands

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Incarcerated legal students and paralegals in the Prison-to-Law Pipeline program, already participating in what are believed to be the country’s first such accredited legal education programs, appear to have broken further new ground by working on expungement petitions for formerly incarcerated clients.

That’s according to Emily Hunt Turner, founder and CEO of All Square, the nonprofit social enterprise in Minneapolis, which provides opportunities to people “impacted by mass incarceration” and helped launch the Prison-to-Law Pipeline program and a St. Paul-based law firm associated with it.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time where folks who are enrolled in [American Bar Association]-accredited legal education in prisons are not just enrolled in those degrees but also interning or externing at a local law firm,” Turner said. “We’re thrilled to be prototyping that and we’re going to be equally as thrilled when we can find other law firms who want to engage in that externship as well.”

Turner offered an update on the program last week after she received the Nancy A. Sullivan Community Leadership Award from the Minneapolis office of the Barnes & Thornburg law firm. The award presentation occurred during the Minneapolis office’s 12th annual Women in Leadership: Exploring Pathways event.

All Square received a $50,000 grant from the Barnes & Thornburg Racial and Social Justice Foundation to support the Prison-to-Law Pipeline program in 2021. Connie Lahn, managing partner of the firm’s Minneapolis office, serves as foundation president. A number of people from outside the office recommended Turner for the award.

Lahn said she hoped the award would draw more attention to the Prison-to-Law Pipeline program, All Square and Turner’s work on behalf of those “amazing, innovative” endeavors.

“She is setting out to change the world and to make the world a better place for a lot of different populations that are easy to ignore, easy to pretend don’t exist, easy not to focus on,” Lahn said.

Turner said the foundation’s grant and connection with Barnes & Thornburg’s Minneapolis office and other firms says that those in the Prison-to-Law Pipeline program “are seen and they’re welcomed by the legal community.”

“It’s one thing to be building a pipeline, trying to do our part to make sure that those who have been impacted by the law have access to legal education and employment,” Turner said. “But it’s a whole other to know that local law firms are in support of that and are willing to put money behind it. It brings a new level of buy-in and that means a lot to me, but mostly, I think, to our scholars.”

Pipeline update, expansion

The program’s two law students and five recently graduated paralegals have handled expungement petitions during externships with the law firm associated with the Prison-to-Law Pipeline effort, Turner said. Expungements are likely to be a prominent part of the law firm’s case load. The new state legislation legalizing cannabis use for people 21 and older also calls for automatically expunging or sealing low-level conviction records and creating a board to review felonies for expungement or resentencing.

The program’s law students, who attend Mitchell Hamline School of Law classes online under an ABA waiver, are in their second of four years of study, Turner said. That’s longer than the usual three years because of facility-related time constraints. A cohort of nine new paralegal scholars, all at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee, just began their studies.

Plans call for a cohort of formerly incarcerated law students to begin classes in the fall of 2024, in addition to the enrollment of two new incarcerated law students, Turner said. The formerly incarcerated students would attend the law school of their choice and likely would graduate in three years.

The law firm associated with All Square, which has two attorneys and a full- and part-time paralegal, opened in August 2022. Clients include formerly incarcerated people who work or have worked at the restaurant that All Square operates in south Minneapolis. “Once we get our footing, the ultimate goal is to open it up to anyone who’s actively or formerly incarcerated,” Turner said of the firm.

The Prison-to-Law Pipeline program gives those who have felt the effects of mass incarceration an opportunity to have an active role in shaping the law, Turner said.

“We have been missing this whole segment of the population that I know has valuable expertise that is needed to make sure that the evolution of the law reflects lessons learned,” Turner said. “Once the profession is wholly representative, it will look like and honor everyone as opposed to, we would argue, limited segments of the population. Racialized legal outcomes are, sadly, extremely inherent in jurisprudence. One way to heal that is to take the lead of those who have lived those experiences.”

Foundation followed Floyd killing

Lahn said she and other managing partners serving on Barnes & Thornburg’s management committee established the firm’s Racial and Social Justice Foundation in 2020 in response to the police killing of George Floyd. The foundation since has raised more than $1 million, including nearly $350,000 this year, with donations going to organizations in cities where the firm has office.

The Minneapolis office now has a week of giving that coincides with the anniversary of Floyd’s death. “We have a period of reflection about why we’re doing this,” Lahn said. “I see this now as part of our future.”

The award that the firm presented to Turner is named for one of Barnes & Thornburg’s Minneapolis partners who was murdered by her boyfriend in 2014 as she was moving out of her Shoreview home, Lahn said. The firm’s Minneapolis office has a Nancy Sullivan conference room and a painting of her but created the award as a further honor.

Correction: This article has been revised to correct the types of cases handled by program participants.