KHOP Welcomes Students for 2013 Session

The King Hall Outreach Program (KHOP), the Law School's innovative, intensive law school preparation program designed to increase diversity among law students and in the legal profession, welcomes nearly two dozen students for this year's summer session, which runs from July 6-August 2.

Established in 2001, KHOP is a unique program that helps first-generation college students and economically disadvantaged students prepare for the law school admissions process.  It provides mentoring and pre-law advising during the school year and takes eligible college juniors and seniors through two four-week summer sessions in which they learn writing, analytical, and logical reasoning skills.  Students also study techniques for taking the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) as they explore career paths available to law school graduates. 

This year's KHOP session will be attended by 10 new and 13 returning students, including graduates of UC Davis, UC Berkeley, CSU East Bay, Mills College, University of the Pacific, University of San Francisco, Santa Clara University, St. Mary's College, and USC.

Seven KHOP alumni are headed for law school this fall, having successfully applied to schools including King Hall, Northwestern University Law School, Georgetown Law, UCLA School of Law, and USC Gould School of Law, among others.  During the 2012-13 year, a total of seven KHOP alumni attended King Hall.

"KHOP offered a gold mine of valuable educational resources," said David Canela, a KHOP alumnus who will return to King Hall this fall as a member of the Class of 2016. "If I were to pick the most useful, I would choose the numerous networking opportunities, which allowed me to engage with a diverse spectrum of legal professionals who gave me useful advice and helped me develop a strategic plan for law school.  I was able to contact many of them in the following months for advice on matters pertaining to my law application or scholarships.  The KHOP staff was also very responsive and approachable throughout the program."

KHOP depends upon the support from the King Hall community, and recent years have seen generous gifts to the program from Downey Brand, the Central Valley Foundation, and many alumni, faculty, and friends of UC Davis School of Law.  If you are interested in making a gift to support KHOP, please contact Karen Charney, Director of Development, by email at klcharney@ucdavis.edu or by phone at 530-752-6209.

Alumni participation is also vitally important to KHOP.  In recent years KHOP students have heard keynote speeches from Chief Justice of California Tani Cantil-Sakauye '84 and the Honorable Alberto Roldan '92, Chief Administrative Law Judge and Chief Executive of Field Operations for the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. This year's volunteers include Charity Kenyon '77, who is scheduled to deliver a lecture on the First Amendment, Clara Levers '03 and Brooks Parfitt '09, who will take part in a panel on Criminal Law, and Mary Waltermire '95, Sara Jebrock '11, and Marien Sorensen '97, who will participate in a panel on Immigration Law.

More volunteers are needed as presenters and judges for mock trial sessions.  For more information on KHOP, or to find out how you can become involved, please contact Chris Rockwood, Associate Director of Annual and Special Funds, by email at cdrockwell@ucdavis.edu or by phone at 530-754-5326.