Letter from the Director
Dear friends of Esq. Apprentice,
It’s been a decade since Esq. Apprentice was born and my, how she’s grown! In ten years, we’ve gone from a staff of one to a team of ten staff members and trusted consultants– working to support our operations, development, human resources, and communications. We went from having one program to having three: the Excelerator (pre-apprenticeship), Paralegal Partnership, and Legal Apprenticeship. Esq. Apprentice grew from serving four Apprentice Fellows to serving over four dozen Fellows across all programs. And we went from being a workforce development leader to being the WOCforce development leader as we lead the charge in building a workforce that centers dignified career development for women of color (WOC) via the legal profession.
In addition to all of that, in the last 10 years, Esq. Apprentice has worked with over twenty women and helped 85% of them secure legal employment for the first time and/or wage increases in their existing work. We responded to a global pandemic with critical resources like cost of living support and remote learning opportunities such that, instead of losing apprentices, we enjoyed a 75% retention rate. We garnered over $3,000,000 in in-kind support from our dedicated community of attorney volunteers. And, after nine years of continually refining our curriculum, we passed not one but two apprentices over the Baby Bar Exam. Wow!
Now, as the current regime tries to use every tool in its authoritarian toolbox to harm working people, I’m reminded that our communities have our own inalienable tools which we’ve used to chart paths to freedom; the power of creation being prime among them. All this regime knows is destruction, but we have the freedom to create the world we desire for ourselves and our children. Despite their best efforts, we are still free to decide if we accept what we’re told or if we choose something else. That ability to choose is what makes us free.
So, as I reflect on where we were when we started, and look ahead to what’s next, I know that whatever happens, Esq. Apprentice will always choose freedom.
In the last year we have laid the foundation and begun to build our organization to last. In the next year, we will continue reminding our Fellows that work should work for them–not the other way around. We will not accept the diagnosis of destruction and harm and we will begin to craft policies that heal. And we will do all of this together.
Thanks to you, our community of supporters who have held us up over the last decade. We could not have done it without you, and we will continue to build with each of you in mind.
Enjoy this look back on our tenth year!
With gratitude,
Our Mission & Vision
Vision
Our vision is a redesigned American legal system where all people, regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or gender, have access to a law license, and the economic opportunity that often comes with it.
Mission
Our mission is to create a debt-free path to law licensing for low-income women of color, spearheading a more diverse, economically empowered, and justice-centered legal profession.
Rachel Johnson-Farias
Founder & Executive Director, Esq. Apprentice
2024-2025 Milestones
Active Legal Apprentice Fellows
Excelerator Fellows
Increase in women served
Legal Apprentice Fellows who passed the Baby Bar
Hours volunteered by supervising attorneys
Retention rate
of those served would recommend the program
Program Model
Last fiscal year, we sought out to refresh our program model to drive better outcomes and scale our impact. So, we looked back at our first nine years of life as an organization and gained invaluable insights that helped us shape the next iteration of our work.
The insights led us to develop three distinct programs that we offer at Esq. Apprentice, outlined below.
The Excelerator
Designed as a legal career launchpad, the Excelerator aims to give fellows an understanding of the various career paths they might endeavor to take in the legal field, from legal apprenticeship to law school, paralegal to notary. Our unique, three-part curriculum–Know Yourself, Know the Law, Try the Path–directly addresses an issue quite common for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian women lawyers–burnout. Our goal? Get more women of color into legal careers, and, importantly, make sure they are adequately prepared with what’s to come, so they can have sustainable careers for the long haul.
Legal apprenticeship
For the better part of the last decade, Esq. Apprentice has been honing our legal apprenticeship program to help get women of color into legal professions, without law school and without debt. We work with community law firms to secure paid legal employment for a debt-free route to law licensing, and offers a culturally responsive coaching model that is designed to meet apprentices at the intersections of gender, race, and class.
Paralegal Partnership
Over the years, we’ve seen apprentices pursue fulfilling and sustainable careers as paralegals–without becoming licensed attorneys. Esq. Apprentice is creating partnerships with paralegal certification courses at community colleges throughout California to ensure that Excelerator fellows can get referred to and obtain their paralegal certificate free of charge upon completing the program. We learned early on that if we weren't working to address the impacts of poverty on the lives of our apprentices, we weren't doing it right. The paralegal certification pathway was born out of the very real need for apprentices to get immediate financial security for themselves and their families.
The Launch of the Excelerator
The Excelerator is the culmination of a decade of learning distilled into a 12-week course designed to help participants decide whether law licensing is the right career path for them and, if so, whether legal apprenticeship is the right vehicle to reach their goals. Notably, the Excelerator is rooted in internal transformation because at Esq. Apprentice we’ve learned that we make wiser career decisions when we know ourselves better.
Esq. Apprentice started recruitment for the inaugural cohort of the Excelerator with outreach to Oakland Unified School district’s Workbase Learning Department. Tatiana Newman-Wade and her team jumped at the chance to partner with us to create a pathway to law licensing straight out of high school.
Luky Figeuroa
Inaugural Excelerator Apprentice Fellow
After getting staff support, we gauged student interest with a presentation at Oakland High School. The response was positive: over a dozen OUSD faculty and staff nominated high school senior women from across the district to join our inaugural cohort.
Meanwhile, we’d been having ongoing conversations with the Career Development team at Making Waves Academy in Richmond. With Dr. Arika Spencer Brown’s support, we recruited another student from Making Waves to join the inaugural cohort expanding the Excelerator’s reach across the East Bay into Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.
In April of 2025, we had the distinct pleasure of gathering to celebrate these extraordinary young people for our graduation ceremony in Oakland. It was memorable seeing the faces of proud parents and siblings looking on as their children accepted their Esq. Apprentice “diplomas,” hearing how much they impressed each of their facilitators (like yours truly) throughout the course of the program. Together we moved from awareness to action.
Excelerator Key Stats
Inaugural fellows
Recruitment partnerships with OUSD and Making Waves Academy
would recommend the program
Attorney Spotlight: Zoë Polk
Now more than ever, we need women lawyers who have cultural competency, and we have a real need for building economic security in our communities. What Esq. Apprentice does really helps women become leaders and advocates. I’m a lawyer, I went through law school and it is a very isolating place as a Black woman. I’m so grateful that the organization is helping folks get a legal education so they can give back to the communities that need their support. I am a spirited supporter of Esq. Apprentice and I will continue to be.
– Zoë Polk, Executive Director, East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC)
What's the commitment?
Five years of continuous, active standing
Esq. Apprentice supervising attorneys must be continuously active with the State Bar of California for five years.
Five hours a week
You'll commit to five hours of direct supervision per week, in accordance with the California Bar.
Bay Area based
We're seeking lawyers that are based in the Bay Area. Even better if your firm already works with the communities we serve!
Welcome, Kat and Briana
Kat Lartigue
Kat Lartigue is an experienced operations professional with over a decade of expertise, including more than eight years dedicated to the nonprofit sector. Her career and volunteer work span numerous mission-driven organizations, with a strong focus on education and community impact.
Kat earned her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology: Community Change from San Jose State University, where she was inducted into Alpha Kappa Delta, the International Honor Society of Sociology. During her time at San Jose State University, she co-founded a nonprofit organization that supports emancipated and dually involved former foster and low-income young adults—a program that continues to thrive today.
Kat is currently a Facilitator Fellow with Esq. Apprentice and is a registered legal apprentice with the State Bar of California. Through this path, she is actively pursuing her lifelong dream of becoming an attorney, combining her operational expertise with a passion for justice and advocacy.
Briana Barnes
Barnes is Facilitator Fellow at Esq. Apprentice. With over 15 years of experience working in the non-profit sector, she is especially skilled in working with underserved communities, and restorative justice. Throughout her career, Briana has held many administrative and legal roles and feels that her calling in life is to help people. In addition to her role as Facilitator Fellow, Briana is a legal apprentice, with aspirations to become a family law attorney.
"I feel like my calling in life is to help people because I remember the times I needed help and felt lost and hopeless. I always tell myself: be the person that you wish you had to help you. I feel everyone should be treated with the same respect no matter who or what they have done in life. I’m excited to be a part of Esq. Apprentice because the organization's values align with my own personal beliefs and I feel like this is a place where I can be myself and grow." – Briana Barnes
The Year Ahead: Esq. Apprentice’s Operational Strategy for 2025-26
At Esq. Apprentice, we’ve historically focused on transformative change via holistic and intensely supportive resource sharing for small groups of individuals. In the year ahead, we’ll grow this work to increase our impact on the relational and structural levels. We will change the legal system as we know it–starting with women of color at the center.
Systems Change happens on three levels: structural, relational, and transformative.
At Esq. Apprentice, we’ve historically focused on transformative change via holistic and intensely supportive resource sharing for small groups of individuals. In the year ahead, we’ll grow this work to increase our impact on the relational and structural levels. We will change the legal system as we know it–starting with women of color at the center.
Systems Change happens on three levels: structural, relational, and transformative.
Esq. Apprentice is creating transformative change by developing culturally responsive content that is training the next generation of community-based, high-quality legal professionals (including legal assistants, lawyers, paralegals) and their future mentors and bosses. Examples include our curriculums for the Excelerator and apprenticeship programs.
We’re driving relational change by creating a new local ecosystem for our fully trained professionals (legal assistants, lawyers, paralegals, their mentors, and their bosses) to work harmoniously for both bottom up and top down change. Examples include the membership-based, and wellness-focused training to ensure professional sustainability for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian women seeking legal careers.
Esq. Apprentice is creating structural change by shifting the paradigm nationally for the U.S. Justice System–from the players who uphold and defend it, to those most affected by it.
Hire two director level staff members operating at the structural and operational levels
Allocate 35% to operations, professional fees & contractors, and reserves
Build 4 million prospect pipeline to start to attract the resources to scale
Increase the pipeline of apprenticeship applicants by serving up to 90 women per year with the Excelerator
Develop and launch Saturday speaker series with legal experts and practitioners
Introducing Esq. Apprentice’s Fourth Generation Board
We’re thrilled to introduce the 4th Generation Esq. Apprentice Board of Directors–a dynamic group of leaders deeply committed to sustaining and scaling our work. This new chapter brings four new members–Pamela, Olivia, Devon, and Zsanna–together with two returning leaders, Vanessa and Keshia, alongside Syv serving as board liaison.
From the start, the Esq. Apprentice board has hit the ground running. They’ve already established committees–each guided by a clear charter–to ensure accountability and impact. Out of our most recent board retreat, two critical committees emerged:
Governance Committee – strengthening internal accountability and ensuring long-term sustainability.
Development Committee – attracting the resources needed to fuel Esq. Apprentice’s growth.
We’re especially grateful to Vanessa, who has stepped up as Chair of the Development Committee and Interim Treasurer, helping lead our fundraising efforts with vision and determination.
This group is already proving to be a powerhouse—bringing energy, focus, and unwavering belief in our mission.
Please join us in welcoming the Fourth Generation Board.
Inspired? Join us! Get in touch to learn how you can bring your talents to our board and help expand access to legal careers.
Financials
Total Corporate Revenue
Total Institutional Donations
Total Individual Donations
Increases in Donations Year over Year, 2017 – 2025
We extend our heartfelt thanks to our donors whose generosity over the last year has made our mission to build a more just legal system possible. It’s thanks to you that we can create opportunities for those who have long been excluded from the legal profession, to enter it. * Denotes our sustaining donors whose generous monthly contributions lay a firm foundation for Esq. Apprentice to grow.Supporter ($0-$500)
Elizabeth Sanchez*
Micah Clatterbaugh
Jocelyn Wong*
Jeremy Goldman*
So Young Kang
Rajeev Chanderraj*
Jamila Johnson Phillips*
Hernan Orozco*
Michael Carrillo*
Makda Goitom
Ana Maria Mahiri
Tanya Koshy
Lisa Rimmert
Marc Janowitz
Lakshmi Damerla
Mark Smith
Mr. Mitch
Sydney Thomas & Associates, LLC*
Injury Compensation Law, PC
Champion ($500-$10,000)
Erin Le
Betsy Cotton
Cory W. Johnson, CPA, LLC
Landmark ($10,000+)
Tipping Point
Stupski Foundation
New Profit, Inc
Changelawyers
Funders
Our movement of women lawyers–needs you.
Fund our work
Whether you sponsor their legal education or invest in programming designed to help them build and expand their professional skills, your gift makes a difference. Help create life-changing opportunities for women of color to pursue careers in law.
Become a supervising attorney
Are you an attorney living in the state of California? You can help build a more diverse and justice-centered legal profession. Sign up to mentor or sponsor an aspiring lawyer today.
Become an organizational partner
Is your organization interested in helping expand women of color’s access to the law? We want to hear from you! Reach out to become a pipeline partner today.
Women of color have been excluded from the law for far too long. Your contribution of just $100, $250, or $500 creates opportunities for them to flourish.
