The Pre-Law Summer Institute for American Indians and Alaska Natives

Who Should Attend PLSI?

Any American Indian or Alaska Native who plans to attend law school may benefit greatly from attending the Institute the summer before. Law school is unlike any other course of study at either the undergraduate or postgraduate level. The skills required to study law are both unique and vital to success in law school, and these are the skills that the PLSI begins to teach.

Some have erroneously believed that the PLSI is designed to be an admission-by-performance program for students with lower than average predictors. That is not its primary purpose, although it serves that function as well. The Institute is as valid a preparatory program for the student with a GPA and LSAT score in the top 25% as it is for students in the lower quartiles. Students who have been admitted to a top ten law school receive as much benefit as the student who has not yet been admitted to a law school when they begin the program. Further, attending the PLSI will give you the opportunity to become part of a cohort of Native American law students from around the country who will have established relationships with Native lawyers nationwide when you begin practice.

The Institute is strongly endorsed by a wide variety of both state and private law schools nationwide. PLSI graduates have gone on to such prestigious schools as Columbia, Cornell, and Stanford, as well as to a wide spectrum of both state and private universities around the country. Graduates may be found throughout federal, tribal and state governments and courts, as well as in private practice and in industry.