Castillo Scholars Mentorship Program
About Us
Launched in 2020 by then-students Fernando Hernandez Paredes (JD ’21) and Elizabeth Flores (JD ’21), the Castillo Scholars program helps underprivileged students nationwide apply to law schools by pairing them with current law students as mentors.
Mentors advise mentees on every part of the process: studying for the LSAT, completing the application, writing personal statements, deliberating part versus full-time enrollment, choosing a school, finding financing, and exploring different areas of practice. When mentors don’t have an answer, they strive to connect mentees with someone who does.
“The idea is for us to work with mentees who are a full year from applying, so we can give them all the information with plenty of time to prepare to apply the next fall,” says previous board member Aceves, adding, “But we are here to help anybody at any stage of the process.”
Over the last two years, the Castillo Scholars program has served hundreds of mentees. It is an impressive total given that the program relies almost exclusively on word of mouth to reach prospective mentees. Our three directors and their fellow mentors reach out through alumni networks, faculty, and admissions staff, as well as through academic advisors and affinity student groups at their own undergraduate universities.
This program, conceived to help Latinx students, was named in honor of Ruben Castillo (BA ’76), the first Latino to be named a judge, and later chief judge, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Judge Rubén Castillo
Judge Rubén Castillo (born August 12, 1954) is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. In 1994, Judge Castillo was the first person of Latino descent to be named a judge in the Northern District of Illinois, and in 2013 the first to become Chief Judge.
Born in Chicago, Illinois to a Mexican-American father and a Puerto Rican mother, Judge Castillo was the first member of his family to finish college. Judge Castillo earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1976 from Loyola University in Chicago, working nights as a clerk at the Illinois Circuit Court of Cook County to put himself through school. He then earned a Juris Doctor from Northwestern University School of Law in 1979.
From 1979 until 1984, Castillo worked in private law practice in Chicago as an associate attorney for the law firm Jenner & Block. In 1984, he was named an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. He worked as an Assistant United States Attorney until 1988 when he became a regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund. In 1991, Castillo returned to private law practice, where he worked as a partner at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis until 1994. Following his retirement from the judiciary, Castillo rejoined private practice in the Chicago office of Akerman LLP.