Cultivating Legal Aspirations: Examining the Protective Factors of Academically Resilient Latino Law Students

• In Event: Creating Opportunities for Latina/o Student Success

Abstract

Using academic resilience as a framework, this paper uncovers the factors that influenced the aspirations of nine academically resilient Latino law students to pursue and persist in the field of law. The findings of this paper suggest that the aspirations of these students to pursue the legal field were influenced by the fears that originated by the anti-immigrant discourse they experienced in the 1990s in California and the injustices they saw in their community. This paper essentially discusses the processes involved that allowed these students to use these experiences to nurture their persistence and foster their legal aspirations.

Author

• Daisy Denise Alfaro, University of Washington - Seattle