About

The Financial Equity Project (FEP) was launched by Magali Duque through the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Black Law Students Association (BLSA) in 2020 to shed light on the financial disparities affecting Black law students. FEP’s primary goals are to:

• Reduce admission related barriers for Black students

• Reduce debt and economic barriers for Black students to enter all legal career paths

• Help Black students feel supported, emotionally, academically, professionally, and financially by their respective law schools

FEP produced and published its first annual report to support students and provide a source of data for all law schools to make informed improvements in their financial aid programs. Initial findings from the FEP survey conducted in 2021-2022 indicate positive improvements in reducing debt burden averages and reveal critical feedback regarding the solutions implemented in 2020-2021.

FEP also served as a catalyst for the author’s forthcoming article, Contracting for Debt: The Relationship Between Debt Capitalism, Higher Education, and the Black-white Wealth Gap in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, which outlines the historical legislative context and troubling broad implications of the US student debt complex.

FEP encourages all university students and administrators to conduct similar in depth surveys of how financial aid policies and practices are impacting the racial wealth gap in their community.

If enough schools and students take the time to identify key areas for improvement, hopefully together we can take a much larger step towards reducing the racial wealth gap and increasing the number of minorities in underrepresented fields such as the number of Black attorneys in the legal profession.

Interested in getting started but unsure where to begin? Please feel free to reach out below!