Kilpatrick Stockton’s 4-Year Mentoring Program Sees ‘Wildly Phenomenal’ Results
Kilpatrick Stockton is being credited with a big win, but it has nothing to do with the courtroom.
One hundred of the firm’s lawyers and staffers have been mentoring a group of students at Atlanta’s Washington High School for the last four years, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. In 2006, the program had 147 students participating. Now there are only 78 left, but the seniors who stuck with the program have something to show for their participation: 97 percent have been accepted into college. They have been collectively offered 320 scholarships worth about $7.2 million.
The Journal-Constitution profiles two members of the group. Class valedictorian Deonte Bridges wants to be an entrepreneur. Veronica Coates wants to be a doctor.
Their paths were difficult. Bridges was once robbed at gunpoint, and his mother battled leukemia. Coates’ stepfather died of AIDS and her mother is HIV-positive. Before joining the program, Coates had moved so many times with her family that the longest she ever stayed at a school was 18 months. She stayed at Washington, however, after moving in with a cousin.
Kilpatrick partner Michael Tyler pitched the idea for the program after the original Freedom Writers created by a California teacher, the story says. The program focuses on journaling, but Kilpatrick’s version also includes field trips and lessons in life skills. Mentors meet with the students every week, while a hired academic coach oversees the effort.
“The success has been wildly phenomenal,” Tyler told the Journal-Constitution. “What we were able to do, if anything, was inspire the students themselves to maximize their full potential and believe in themselves.”
