The Thurgood Marshall Bar Association (TMBA) was formed to emphasize excellence and integrity in the practice of law, increasing diversity, multi-culturalism and community service. As part of its efforts to increase the diversity in the legal community by easing some of the financial burden faced by law students, in 2017, TMBA began offering scholarships to students who were engaged in the organization and their respective Orange County law school and were selected to serve a one-year term as a TMBA Law Student Ambassador (LSA).
In 2019, TMBA added another scholarship opportunity aimed at supporting first-time and repeat bar examination takers. To help grow the effort of supporting students, in 2020, the Thurgood Marshall Bar Association Foundation (Foundation), a non-profit organization, was created as another means to enhance the fundraising efforts to provide greater number of scholarship award recipients and/or increased amounts of the scholarship awards for the LSA and Bar Taker scholarship programs.
Today, through the partnership between TMBA and the Foundation and their combined efforts, these organizations continue to provide law students and bar examination takers with monetary scholarships in an effort to minimize the financial challenges, which often serves as a barrier to the legal profession.
The Foundation also supports TMBA programs and events for the Orange County legal community and community at large aimed at promoting diversity and inclusion, such as networking events involving practicing attorneys, judges, and law students, webinars/seminars that provide valuable tips to bar examination takers to help them achieve their goal of passing the California Bar Exam, among many other programs.
Thurgood Marshall Bar Association Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization | Tax I.D. Number: 85-2994133