Lawyers in the Classroom is a program was founded by the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago (CRFC) where attorneys volunteer in primarily lower-income elementary and middle school classrooms and teach students about basic aspects of our country’s laws and constitutional rights. The curriculum is has been developed by CRFC over the past 20+ years and includes lesson plans such as aliens gaining control over the United States and requiring that all citizens vote to determine which 5 of the 10 enumerated rights within the Bill of Rights they want to retain. The lesson plans are designed to encourage the students to engage in thought and discussions amongst themselves as well as form the basis of a dialogue to be held between the students and the volunteering attorneys.
To facilitate the program, the Holland & Hart Foundation has partnered with a local non-profit, Center for Education in Law & Democracy (CELD), to coordinate with Denver Public Schools and identify classes for participation. The volunteer attorneys team up in groups of two or three and make three classroom visits during a semester. Lawyers in the Classroom offers participating attorneys and the Holland & Hart Foundation the opportunity to make a real impact on a significant number of local schoolchildren in Denver, where the public high school graduation rate has historically hovered around 50 percent.
In 2015, 56 H&H attorneys volunteered in 24 Denver Public Schools’ fifth grade classrooms, making it the largest installment of the program at H&H to date!