Scholar Entries - Hispanic Lawyers Scholarship Fund of Illinois

← Go back

EmailEmail hidden; Javascript is required.

Are you a past recipient of an Hispanic Lawyers Scholarship Fund award?

Name

Alexis Lopez

Current Mailing Address

1634 Paul Avenue
Glendale Heights, IL 60139
United States
Map It

Phone

(630) 917-5575

Connection to Illinois

Home

In what city do you intend to practice law upon graduation?

Illinois

Name of Law School

Northern Illinois University

Class year

1st year law student

Full Time or Part Time Student?

Full Time

Date you began attending THIS law school

08/12/2025

Anticipated Graduation Date

05/20/2028

Current GPA

3.24

Law School Honors, Awards or Special Recognitions

Law School Ambassador I 1L Class Representative Latinx Student Association

Name of Undergraduate Institution

DePaul University

Degree (BA, BSE, etc.) and Concentration/Major

Undergraduate Graduation Date

06/15/2025

GPA

3.8

Undergraduate Honors, Awards, or Special Recognitions

12x Dean's List Recipient

Were you employed in 2025?

yes

If yes, please identify your employer(s).

State Farm Insurance - Licensed Sales Representative & Account Manager

What was your immediate family’s (including you and your spouse or domestic partner, if applicable) estimated income from all sources for the 2025 Tax Year?

$70K

Do you expect to be employed in 2026?

yes

If yes, please identify your employer(s).

Unknown- seeking summer internship

Please estimate your immediate family’s (including you and your spouse or domestic partner, if applicable) income from all sources for the 2026 Tax year

$78K

Please estimate your parent's average annual household income over the last five years

$75K

Do your parents own or rent their home? Please describe, if necessary

Own

Describe your parents' health insurance situation. Do they have employer-sponsored health insurance, health insurance through the exchange, or no health insurance?

Employer-sponsored health

LIST below your total EXPENSES for attending law school for ONE YEAR (Please refer to example in FAQs)

Total Tuition Cost $

17,376

Books Cost $

2,100

Fees Cost $

8,420

Housing Cost $

Food Cost $

600

Total Expenses $ (add above entries)

$28,496

LIST below your total FUNDING sources you plan to use to pay for these expenses (Please refer to example in FAQs)

Student Loans $

$20,500

Scholarships and Grants $

$6,000

Personal Contribution (Savings/Employment) $

$500

Family Contribution $ (include parents, spouse, partner, etc.)

Total Funding $ (add above entries)

$27,000

For 2Ls and 3Ls, what is your current TOTAL loan debt from the previous law school years?

N/A

Please list any community service activities with which you have been involved in the last ten years, paying particular attention to activities in support of the Hispanic community. For each activity, please include the dates of your participation, a short description of the organization and the community they serve, and a description of the activity you performed to help them. (Please read FAQs before completing)

Assisted in hosting Latinx Student Association Day of The Dead Celebration
Currently in the process of assisting my uncle with creating a website to help our community with more information about immigration, labor and employment, and estate planning. I assist with overseeing informational videos that are posted on the site and YouTube and also assist with sharing the information with our community. He is a retired JAG attorney located in Texas but the website is catered to those in Illinois and Washington.

Please provide a statement describing your background and focus your statement on your reasons for pursuing a legal career and your legal career goals. This statement is important. Please give it appropriate attention. (min. 1000 characters) (Please read FAQs before completing)

As a first generation Latina, overcoming adversity has become second nature. From a very young age, I have always known that I wanted to become a lawyer. However, I also knew how underrepresented Latina’s are in the legal field. Latina lawyers currently make up around 2% of the US legal profession. 2% was a statistic I have grown up hearing continuously.
In high school I went to a predominately White high school that had a high percentage of their graduates attending a four year university upon graduation. While I am grateful for the opportunity to attend such a prestigious high school, I still faced tremendous difficulties. With only a handful of minorities around me, I had to work nearly twice as hard to even be in the same room as my classmates. As a tri-sport athlete, I always felt the need to prove myself on the field as well in the classroom because I knew: things will never be handed to me. It was my junior year when I approached my school counselor to let him know my plan of a four year university and then attend law school. He looked directly at me, and laughed under his breath:“Do you understand how hard that is for someone like you?”. Taken aback, deep down to an extent I knew he was right. “People like me” usually don’t attend law school. However, just because they don’t doesn’t mean they can’t.
From that moment forward, I have set out my path to becoming the first lawyer in my family. My high school counselor wasn’t the only one to point out the obvious that the legal field is very underrepresented for our community. I have lived with this statistic my entire life, and yet here I am trying to defeat the odds. This difficult journey has taught me several life lessons. The most important being that the world needs more of our community.
I will work endlessly to provide help for our community by advocating and assisting students that wish to attend law school. Not only do I plan to help Hispanic students, I also plan to help our community through pro-bono work. While I predominately wish to work in transactional law, I believe this is still an area of the law that our community needs help with. I want to ensure that no one is turned away from creating a business because they are unable to read a contract. Everyone in life deserves the chance to turn their dreams into reality. I plan to increase the statistics of Latina lawyers in our field, but my work will not stop there. I want to help the future generation continue defying the odds, while still helping our Hispanic community grow and change the narratives.
I have understood firsthand how difficult it is to become a hispanic lawyer. My goal is to advocate as much as possible to let our neighbors know that it is possible. Statistics are just a number that should not place limitations on our dreams. We must stay ambitious and defy the odds even when they are all stacked against us. This scholarship will help me ease the worries of the expenses of law school, and allow me to start helping our community sooner. As a first generation Latina, I am living proof that statistics are meant to be broken. Our community is evolving, and I wish to be a part of leading the change.

Please upload a copy of your financial award letter labeled as follows: LastName.FirstName.FinAwardLtr*

Warning: Trying to access array offset on false in /srv/users/serverpilot/apps/hlsf2023/public/wp-content/plugins/syncs3-gravity-forms/includes/integrations/gravityview/integration.php on line 37

Warning: Trying to access array offset on null in /srv/users/serverpilot/apps/hlsf2023/public/wp-content/plugins/syncs3-gravity-forms/includes/integrations/gravityview/integration.php on line 37
Lopez-NIU-Financial-Aid.pdf

Please upload a copy of your resume labeled as follows: LastName.FirstName.Resume*

Please upload a copy of your law school transcript labeled as follows: LastName.FirstName.LSTranscript*