The section continues its award-winning partnership with the Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School (TMA). Founded in 2001, the school grew out of the experience of law students and professors in the DC Street Law clinical program at Georgetown University Law Center who, while teaching at a neighborhood high school, witnessed how limited opportunities stunted the academic and social development of students. They also saw an opportunity to use legal principles as teaching tools to educate and empower the bright and energetic students they encountered. The school now enrolls almost 400 students and since October 2005, occupies a newly-restored building, the former Nichols Avenue Elementary School in Anacostia.

The section has developed a Law Day event held each summer for entering freshmen at TMA. section members guide law-related exercises and a mock trial and also discuss legal careers. In 2006, the Law Day was held at D.C. Superior Court and included meetings with judges.

The section this year, will provide volunteers for TMA’s Law Day on Friday, July 17, 2009. With the help of staff and students from the Street Law Program at Georgetown University Law Center, as well as TMA faculty, volunteers from the section and Bar will again carry out a half-day program with eager TMA 9th graders. The program for 2009 will be held at Wiley Rein LLP, 1776 K Street NW, Washington, DC.

For more information on other ways to volunteer at TMA where law-trained attorneys and paralegals are welcome as volunteers throughout the year, see the Thurgood Marshall Academy Web site.

The school is located at 2427 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20020. Contact Jessica Sher, director of programs, by email or phone at 202-563-6862 ext. 149.

In addition the section continues to be among the cosponsors of the city-wide Youth Law Fair held in the spring at D.C. Superior Court.

For more information on the Section's community outreach activities, contact the D.C. Bar Sections Office at outreach@dcbar.org or 202-626-3463. The Honorable Judge Melvin R. Wright is the outreach coordinator.