One by one nearly fifty CLEO scholars walked to the front of the room to receive their certificates of completion during closing ceremonies on July 13 - each to the sound of loud cheers and applause - the sound of the CLEO spirit that developed among the students during their stay at Thomas Jefferson School of Law.

The CLEO scholars pose with TJSL administrators
during the closing ceremonies.

CLEO, the Council on Legal Education Opportunity, is an American Bar Association-affiliated organization that supports diversity in legal education, and its annual summer institute program is a way for students to “jump start” their legal careers. Thomas Jefferson was one of two law schools in the country to host the CLEO program this summer.

Condensed into the six weeks was a semester’s worth of first-year law school experiences. The challenges. The stress. The successes. The tears. The friendships. The chance to network with some of the top members of San Diego’s legal profession.

“It's hard to believe that CLEO is over and we're all just weeks away from the real thing,” said CLEO scholar KaSandra Rogiers, who will be attending the University of Wisconsin Law School in the fall.

“Intellectually I came into CLEO knowing that it would be demanding, but I trusted myself to stay committed and to keep reality in perspective when things got hard,” said Rogiers. “I found that our ‘dry run’ was actually pretty challenging work from the first day to the last.”

When the scholars arrived in early June, Assistant Dean Beth Kransberger told the CLEO scholars the program would be an “academic boot camp.” It was.

“You have inspired us,” a very proud Dean Kransberger told the scholars. “You challenged the assumptions of who you are and who you aren’t. It is vitally important to the future of our country that you become lawyers.”

“I said six weeks ago that CLEO would be a transformative experience,” said Thomas Jefferson Dean Rudy Hasl in his closing remarks to the students. “Others will struggle mightily to gain some of the insights you already have. Take advantage of it. Turn that insight into what it takes to succeed in law school.”

The CLEO scholars were among the first law students in the nation to benefit from the Cognitive Academic Protocol (CAP), taught by Professor Joe Bodine. The CAP program maximizes a student’s learning potential by identifying individual learning styles and showing how he or she can take advantage of it to succeed in law school.

The fruits of the CAP curriculum were evident immediately.

So effective was the CAP program, that some of the CLEO scholars “substantially outperformed their predictors of success, such as low test scores and their own negative expectations,” according to Bodine.

At the start of the CLEO Summer Institute, twelve of the 48 students had yet to be accepted into a law school. After the program, 100 percent of the students have been accepted to law schools – and many of those who hadn’t been accepted will be attending top ten or top twenty law schools. “That’s phenomenal,” said Dean Kransberger of CAP’s success rate.

Thomasine Williams, CLEO’s Administrator and Director of Admissions from Washington, D.C., told the students that what she’s going to look for during their three years in law school experiences comes down to the ABC.

“A is for Attitude," Williams said. “Use it to gain altitude. Also, develop your own anti-intimidation armor.

“B is for Balance: Take that balance with you. You’re going to work hard, but you’re going to have to have fun times too. Do the things that make you feel good and get back in focus.

“C is for Character: Take character with you. Find a secret place that is YOUR place to study. You need to find a quiet place.”

Before she administered the CLEO Oath to the scholars, Williams said she had never been more proud of a group of students.

For each, CLEO was a life-changing, career-changing experience.

Kevin Thompkins, who will attend Northern Illinois University College of Law, said “I think that the CLEO program has a lot to offer, especially to a non-traditional student like me, a student who is older than the average first-year law student.”

“I think CLEO is a wonderful opportunity, and a tool that would prove to be useful for an incoming law student – regardless of what circumstances, skills and past experiences that student comes from,” Thompkins added.

KaSandra Rogiers summed up her experience this way: “The emotional support that Beth Kransberger, Tim Spearman, Joe Bodine and the entire CLEO family provided was really the key that gave me the assurance and the comfort to be as calm and as confident as possible. As I go into law school, this assurance is really going to be my fuel to make it through the toughest days. Having had this support network formed by CLEO, I think we all now stand a great chance against these challenges.”

The CLEO scholars, many of whom forged what promise to be lifelong friendships, have scattered in more than forty different directions – each of them having a more realistic idea of what to expect at law school – having had more than just a taste of first-year law school at Thomas Jefferson. They’ve also had a taste of something else that will stay with them through law school – the taste of success.

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