Come hear Tolu Lawal speak about “Unlock the Bar,” the activism devoted to dismantling the barriers of the character and fitness portion of the bar.
Unlock the Bar is a coalition of system-impacted and allied movement lawyers, law students, and partner legal organizations. Recognizing that the Bar admissions process was created to restrict legal power to white men, we formed during the global Uprisings for Black liberation to build a legal profession where Black, Brown, and system-impacted voices lead. From law school applications to Bar admissions, the legal profession pushes away voices from the most marginalized community, perpetuating a classist, elitist, and white supremacist institution. We believe that a truly inclusive, democratized legal system requires the full empowerment and representation of oppressed peoples.
Tolu Lawal (she/her) joined the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU Law School in 2022. Prior to joining the Center, she was
a Racial Justice Legal Fellow with the New York City Commission on Human Rights, working on legislative and policy analysis, public education and community collaboration, legal research and restorative/transformative justice through a race-specific focus. While a student at NYU Law, she served as the Co-Chair of the Black Allied Law Student Association (BALSA) and one of the lead organizers of the Racism Lives Here Too campaign. She worked at the Center as an intern in 2017, as well as an intern at the ACLU Racial Justice Project in 2018, and with NYU’s Juvenile Defenders Clinic from 2018 to 2019. She also engages in advocacy, supporting Black and Brown-led groups committed to charting the road to liberation for all people, particularly those who are formerly incarcerated. She currently provides legal support to the Justice Impact Alliance. She is also a co-founder and co-lead organizer of Unlock the Bar (UTB), a New York-based campaign and coalition of allied and systems-impacted law students and lawyers who are advocating for a just and equitable legal profession. She received her J.D. from New York University Law School in the Class of 2019 and received her B.A. from Duke University in 2014.
Lunch provided.