New Partnership to Support, Broaden Access to Legal Education and Legal Services

UW Tacoma and Seattle University School of Law have forged a new and innovative partnership with the goal to increase access to legal education and careers, and legal services, for residents of Tacoma and the South Sound region, including those from underrepresented populations.

UW Tacoma is the founding principal partner of Seattle U Law’s new South Sound Hybrid Hub. This hybrid initiative will provide significant in-person and virtual programming, counseling, networking, employment, and experiential learning opportunities and resources for both UW Tacoma undergraduates and students in Seattle U Law’s pathbreaking Flex JD hybrid-online degree program. 

“We are excited to inaugurate this collaboration between Seattle University Law School and UW Tacoma. Our law school has deep roots in Tacoma and the South Puget Sound. This new initiative will provide an excellent opportunity to strengthen that relationship,” said Seattle University President Eduardo Peñalver, who is also a professor of law.

“Both UW Tacoma and Seattle University School of Law share a goal of bridging the equity divide and making law school an attainable goal for first-generation and underrepresented students,” said Dr. Sheila Edwards Lange, chancellor of UW Tacoma. “Seattle U Law is unique in the state for being able to offer this hybrid model of legal education that serves place-bound students so well.”

Each institution has made significant strides to make legal education more accessible.

UW Tacoma offers a Legal Pathways program, a state-funded initiative to help students prepare for law school, connect with the local legal community, pursue legal career opportunities, and more. 

Seattle U Law launched the hybrid-online Flex JD program in 2021 to make it possible for aspiring lawyers who live in areas without convenient access to a law school, and who may have families and jobs that keep them in place, to earn law degrees and to stay in their home communities as attorneys providing much needed legal services. Currently, one-quarter of all Flex JD students hail from the South Sound region, in part because Tacoma is one of the largest communities in the nation without a law school.

Through a hybrid format, students can earn a law degree by completing most coursework online, with just a few in-person, weekend class sessions each year on Seattle University’s campus. The South Sound Hybrid Hub will host Flex JD activities for the benefit of students not only located in the South Sound but also elsewhere. 

Seattle U Law also is rolling out Hybrid Hubs in Anchorage, Alaska and in the Yakima Valley to improve access to legal education across the Northwest. Each Hybrid Hub will have a founding principal partner institution that will connect with other participating universities in the area to create the greatest impact.

Anthony E. Varona, dean of Seattle U Law, conceived the Hybrid Hub concept after conducting a listening and learning tour with stakeholders throughout Washington and Alaska. Outside of Seattle and Spokane, both states have many “legal deserts” where there is no law school, great demand for legal education, and a shortage of lawyers to provide essential legal services. Varona envisioned the successful Flex JD program as an opportunity to build out a meaningful hybrid presence in regions like the South Sound to fill this void and provide opportunity and access. 

Varona said, “the time is right to respond to the urgent need for a law school presence in the South Sound with a 21st Century, post-COVID hybrid online solution.” He notes, “hybrid legal education reflects the reality that the practice of law is now and will continue to be hybridized, utilizing online platforms strategically and in a pedagogically sound manner, with important in-person, physical engagement opportunities provided in partnership with key hub-based institutions. We are proud to launch our Hybrid Hubs Program in partnership with UW Tacoma, our founding principal Hybrid Hub partner in Tacoma and the inaugural institutional partner across all three regions.”

Patricia Sully, founding director of Legal Pathways at UW Tacoma, will support activities of the South Sound Hybrid Hub. A 2011 magna cum laude graduate of Seattle U Law, Sully previously served as policy director for the Public Defender Association and assistant director of the Access to Justice Institute.

In addition to serving Seattle U Law’s Flex JD students, the Hub is exploring a variety of programming that will benefit UW Tacoma’s undergraduate students, including an accelerated “Pathway to Admission” program. The law school’s faculty and administrators will also support pre-law academic advising as part of UW Tacoma’s Legal Pathways. A variety of events held on UW Tacoma’s campus — including public lectures, legal employer gatherings, Seattle U Law alumni receptions, legal career panels, and more — will help undergraduate students build their legal knowledge and connections.

UW Tacoma’s undergraduate student population is 61 percent students of color and more than half of the campus’s students are the first in their family to earn a college degree. According to research by the American Bar Association in 2020, just 14% of all U.S. lawyers are people of color.

“The South Sound Hybrid Hub promises to provide a unique opportunity to support, attract and retain South Sound students interested in law careers,” said Lakewood Municipal Court Judge Lisa Mansfield, who also co-chairs the UW Tacoma Legal Pathways Advisory Board. “This powerful partnership will create greater capacity for equity in the legal profession by providing educational pathways for first generation and traditionally underrepresented students. Both UW Tacoma students and the whole South Sound community stand to benefit greatly from this historic collaboration.”

The partnership will be celebrated at an event on Monday, March 11, from 5 to 7 p.m. in William W. Philip Hall on the UW Tacoma campus at 1918 Pacific Avenue in Tacoma. The public is welcome.