Understanding that access to legal knowledge and opportunity is locked behind many walls of inequity, Diana Imbert set out to dismantle barriers from the bottom up when she helped found Defying Legal Gravity (DLG), a nonprofit based in Manhattan that connects students with a groundbreaking legal curriculum. The program is for students from 6th grade through high school who have currently or formerly incarcerated loved ones, empowering them to increase civic engagement within their communities through legal education. The idea came to Diana when she was a volunteer teacher during her first year of law school and began to review what she was learning with her students to both study and teach them about civics. As such, participants in DLG attend a sort of junior law school, where they learn in a manner that mirrors 1L courses, work on social action projects, compete in moot court, write for DLG’s law journal, and more. While students learn foundational and life-changing skills, they also work to spread legal knowledge throughout communities that have traditionally not had access, for instance through DLG’s Semiannual Intergenerational Student Symposium.
