First Generation initiative helps students to find their footing at NYU Law
Growing up in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, Henessy Pineda ’27 became passionate about pursuing a career in criminal defense due to a profound, deeply personal situation: her father’s incarceration.
“Going through the legal system can feel very disempowering for communities that I am a part of. And I want to make that experience feel less daunting for families,” says Pineda, who has held internships at the Innocence Project, the Legal Aid Society, and the Federal Defenders of New York during her time at NYU Law.
Pineda is the first person in her family ever to attend college or law school. And despite having flourished as an undergraduate at Cornell University, she anticipated a difficult transition to studying law at NYU. “There was a huge learning curve [in law school],” Pineda says. “And I was full of so many questions like, ‘What is a section and why does it matter?’”
But then she discovered the Law School’s first-generation program, aimed at students who, like Pineda, are among the first generation in their families to earn a bachelor’s degree during the journey to law school. Pineda received answers to questions, forged bonds with students whom she could relate to, and developed a sense of confidence that has carried her throughout her law school years. “When I arrived, I was experiencing imposter syndrome and just feeling like I didn’t belong,” she says. “But meeting people who have had very similar experiences [and who] find joy and purpose in law school definitely gave me reassurance.”
NYU Law’s comprehensive initiative, which launched four years ago, provides wide-ranging support to first-generation students via panels, workshops, faculty meet-and-greets, departmental info sessions, and field trips. “The program is about providing this cohort of students an opportunity to build community with other first-generation students. It’s also a chance to demystify some of the norms and expectations of law school,” says Ileana Casellas-Katz, director of Community, Access & Leadership, who oversees the program and helped to design the concept when it was being conceived in 2021. “The students themselves had been calling and advocating for additional resources. It was really in response to the student voice, in particular, that we developed this program.”
Initially launched as a standalone First-Generation Pre-Orientation Program—or, as it’s informally called among students and administrators alike, FGPOP—the venture offered students both a sneak preview and a roadmap to the law school experience in advance of the traditional orientation assembly. Since then, the first-gen program has expanded considerably. Held over the course of four days in August, this year’s FGPOP featured an even broader array of offerings than ever before. The sessions included a mock class taught by Randy Hertz, Fiorello LaGuardia Professor of Law and Vice Dean of Curriculum, which outlined how to read and brief a case, in addition to panels that covered public and private sector career development, mental health services, budgeting tips, studying strategies, and peer-to-peer discussion forums.
“We want to make sure that we’re starting to plant the seed of both the supportive resources that students can take advantage of and the opportunities where they can stretch and grow,” Casellas-Katz says. “We think about this program through an asset-based lens. This is not a remedial program. It is really about finding ways as to how we can support these students in leveraging the assets and strengths that they are bringing to the law school, and to create a foundation and platform for them to launch even more exceptionally into their careers here.”
The first-gen program fulfills a noteworthy mission at NYU Law, agrees Katie Shirley, assistant dean of student affairs. “What I think is so special about the pre-orientation program is that our first-generation students are now being offered something better than a manual. They have several days before their classmates arrive in rooms full of people to build connections and community, and to get insights from both those who have been through it and those whose jobs are to support them,” she says. “Our first-gen students arrive having already done something—likely many somethings—difficult, often on their own, just to make it to NYU Law. This program says clearly that they don’t have to keep doing it that way and that there is scaffolding and a community to support them every step of the way.”
In a sign of the program’s evolution, new features such as exam prep workshops, group discussions, and job-related panels have been added to maintain engagement with first-gen students throughout the academic year. The ultimate goal, Casellas-Katz adds, is to provide a continuing stream of support for first-gen students throughout their timespan at NYU Law. “The first year is the most intense, the most unique, and the most treacherous sometimes for students to navigate. So that’s obviously where we focus our attention, but there are still things that uniquely impact first-gen students in their 2L and 3L years,” she says. “And that is when many students will still want to ask questions…that are unique to their firsthand experience. ‘Do I talk about being first-gen in an interview?’ Or ‘How do I find professional mentors and build my network in a way that feels authentic?’”
In the past two years, the program has incorporated a student coordinator, a role currently being filled by Prince Islam ’27. Over the summer, Islam assisted Casellas-Katz in helping to devise this year’s edition of FGPOP, counseled and prepared students for individual sessions, and will be a liaison for programming throughout the 2026–2027 academic year.
Islam, who recently completed an internship at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP and serves as president of the Student Bar Association, notes that he’s giving back to an initiative that he himself has benefited enormously from. Islam’s parents emigrated from Bangladesh to the US, where his father spent most of his working life as a cab driver while his mother worked as a retail store cashier and in a restaurant kitchen. “I don’t have any lawyers in my family,” Islam said with a laugh. “I feel so lucky to have my college education [with a bachelor’s from Tufts University and a master’s degree in teaching via Teach for America] and that I’m finishing my legal education. I understand so much about how our society runs because of all the law classes that I have taken.”
Islam credits the first-gen program with enabling him to hit the ground running when he started at NYU Law. “This is my third degree. There’s nothing that compares to what a law professor will ask you once you’re in that classroom and how you are expected to analyze cases,” he says. “Coming here, I needed to develop a new skill set. And having a sense of the high level of rigor that exists in law school prepared me in a way that I could not imagine otherwise.”
Pineda, who reflected on some of her academic and professional experiences at the recent FGPOP, agrees with the sentiment. “This program is about equaling the playing field. It allows first-gen students to have a seat at the table and to not feel completely ostracized by not understanding certain things,” she says. “At the same time, it gives you the ability to know that it is okay to ask for help. The people who work in the program like helping students, and they know how to light fires in us to achieve success.”
Group photo by Ileana Casellas-Katz.
