Who We Are

AEP is the center of academic and student support at Lewis & Clark Law School. We offer the following services to all entering and first year students that wish to apply or get involved:

• The Summer Institute—an eight-day program offered in early-August to incoming first-year students as an introduction and orientation to law school;
• Skill-building & centering sessions offered throughout the first year;
• AEP Fellows Program: Trained, upper-division Fellows lead skill-building sessions for each first-year course;
• Bar Prep program (six-week program offered to graduates);
• Electronic Resources.

Our Mission

The Academic Enhancement Program employs holistic and data-driven techniques to help students from all backgrounds, particularly those from underrepresented ethnic, socioeconomic, or cultural groups, successfully enter the legal profession.  AEP  focuses on providing avenues for success in four areas:

• Admission
• Acclimation
• Acquisition of skills
• Acceptance to the Bar

From its beginnings as a night school in Portland, Oregon, Lewis & Clark Law School has valued diversity. We firmly believe that our community must reflect the diversity in society to best provide for participants’ intellectual and professional growth. The earliest student bodies included plumbers and corporate executives, teachers and homemakers, recent college graduates and students working on second or third careers. Ethnic diversity adds to this mix, providing a more complete setting for students and faculty to study law.

We have historically worked hard to spread the word among the nation’s future ethnic minority law students that Lewis & Clark Law School offers a welcoming academic atmosphere. In the 1970s the law school decided to take a more active role in diversifying the student body and the legal field. At that time the school began a program now known as the Academic Enhancement Program (AEP). The program was established in order to bridge cultural differences that may exist between ethnic minority law students and the legal academic and professional communities, and to address academic issues before and during law school. AEP has since evolved to include students who are not members of an ethnic minority but who may have experienced cultural or socioeconomic barriers to education.

Feel free to check out our complete listing of core programs and values.