Why Chasity Boyce and Tiffany Harper Co-Founded DAPP, And Their Mission To Train Women of Color

DAPP needs your help and support to continue to flood the pipeline to law firms and coveted legal positions with talented women of color.

Chasity Boyce

Every interview I’m representing you, making you proud /
Reach for the stars so if you fall, you land on a cloud.”
Kanye West

This week, I had the opportunity to catch up with the amazing Diversity Attorney Pipeline Program (DAPP) co-founders Chasity Boyce and Tiffany Harper. Boyce is a former litigator who is now working in the Chicago office of an Am Law 100 law firm on the global diversity and inclusion team. Harper is in-house counsel at one of the top accounting firms in the country.

Tiffany Harper

Boyce’s and Harper’s non-profit, DAPP, focuses on first-year, women of color law students in Chicago — teaching them to excel academically during weekly sessions, providing professional development and mentoring, and finding paid internships for their 1L summers. The program also provides students with professional headshots, interview suits, and book stipends.

This year, Boyce and Harper launched the DAPP Direct program, a national job-placement and career readiness program for first-year, women of color law students. DAPP Direct has already successfully placed women in law firms across Dallas, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and New York City.

In June, Boyce and Harper will help prepare DAPP program students for a client-readiness boot camp, hosted by Microsoft, to ensure their success during their summer placements.

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The following is a (lightly edited and condensed) write-up of my conversation with these two paragons of the legal profession:

Renwei Chung (RC): You both were the first in your family to attend law school and become attorneys. What motivated you to attend law school and what was this experience like for you?

Chasity Boyce (CB): I wanted to go to law school because I didn’t know any other lawyers who looked like me, but knew a lot of people who had interactions with the law and were either failed by the system or didn’t know how to adequately navigate it. I wanted to be a resource for them and others like them.

Growing up, I was lucky enough to have parents who had a lawyer who handled their will and maybe a few other random matters, but I had no true insight into what law school was really like. So in the beginning, I struggled. I didn’t know what a tort was or understand the casebook method (especially when it came to civil procedure) and it took forever to read. I also lost both of my grandmothers within three months of each other 1L year.

Needless to say, it was a rough transition for someone who had been pretty smart and done reasonably well in school her entire life. I was lucky to attend Howard and have some great professors, mentors, and friends who helped me figure it out.

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Tiffany Harper (TH): I actually thought I was going to be a doctor for my entire life. I made it all the way to organic chemistry and then realized that I absolutely *hate* hospitals and could in no way pursue a medical degree. The only other thing that moved me was fighting for underdogs.

My maternal grandmother picked cotton in Mississippi so she could move north and have a better life for our family, and I knew fighting for people like my grandmother who had little to no resources was important to me. So law school seemed like the next best step, and I envisioned myself arguing before the Supreme Court on civil rights issues one day (clearly, I’m not even a litigator and this will never happen, but it totally made sense to 19-year-old me).

The transition to law school was difficult despite the fact that I’d spent four years in the Ivy League. All of my professors were white and the law was completely taught from their homogeneous perspective.

It took me a long time to figure out where I fit and why my community wasn’t represented. Founding DAPP was a no-brainer for me because I vividly remember sitting in a classroom with two other black students and feeling so isolated and alone. It’s hard to learn like that and no one should have that experience without the proper network or support system, which is what DAPP provides.

RC: What advice do you have for prospective law school candidates or for those about to graduate and enter the legal job market?

CB: Remember that you can do it and there is space for you in the profession. Join a bar association and find a mentor. We’ve been blessed to have so many women who have poured into us that it allows us to be able to pour into others. And quite frankly, taught us how to do it.

For students, your first-year grades often determine where you can work during the first few years of your career, so do everything you can to make yourself successful. Participate in pipeline programs, use supplements to help understand legal concepts, GO TO YOUR TEACHER’S OFFICE HOURS, don’t stop reading, and do not suffer in silence.

TH: Everything that Chasity said above in addition to finding your person. Chasity is mine, the person who is always willing to help me brainstorm about my career, or difficult situations, or issues with diversity that I face every day in a legal profession that is so white and male.

You need your person to get through this so find him or her as soon as you can and work together and support each other.

RC: Can you share with us how you met and decided to co-found DAPP?   

CB/TH: We met while working together in the Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Greater Chicago, Inc. (BWLA). Ultimately, we both became presidents and had the opportunity to support each other during our terms. During our time in BWLA, we met with several leaders of law firms, as well as minority bar associations. We organized panels and programs where attorneys and thought leaders discussed the lack of diversity and mass exit of women of color in the profession.

We also knew several talented women of color attorneys who were no longer practicing at law firms for a myriad of reasons, but some because they just did not have an opportunity for retention or promotion. We wanted to move past the conversation to a tangible solution — one that worked to remedy the systematic and continued decline of women of color lawyers across the legal profession.

RC: What makes DAPP different from other types of law-focused programs that promote diversity and inclusion?   

CB/TH: DAPP is specifically focused on women of color, first-year law students. That makes us different at the outset. Additionally, DAPP is NOT a mentoring program. Mentoring is definitely part of what we provide, but our hands-on approach, focus on classroom excellence throughout the entire school year, commitment to both support and empowerment of our students, and placement of students in paid internships during the summer after their 1L year make us different.

We also spend a significant amount of time and resources training our students to navigate the legal field as women of color. Not only do we want there to be an overflow of diverse talent in the pipeline, but we want those women of color to have staying power and be leaders in the profession.

We have a few things that make us similar, too — a dynamic board of directors, amazing volunteers, generous sponsors, and an overall commitment to diversifying the profession. Those things make us similar to other pipeline programs.

RC: It was great chatting with you both. Is there anything else you two would like to share with our audience?

CB/TH: DAPP needs your help and support to continue to flood the pipeline to law firms and coveted legal positions with talented women of color. You can learn more about DAPP and what we are doing to support the pipeline of women of color lawyers by viewing our video here or by visiting our website where you can read about our programs, our board of directors, and of course, donate.

To keep up with DAPP, be sure to follow the non-profit organization on Facebook at DAPProgram, LinkedIn at Diverse Attorney Pipeline Program, Instagram at dapprogram, and Twitter at @dapprogram.

On behalf of everyone here at Above the Law, I would like to thank Chasity Boyce and Tiffany Harper for taking the time to share their story with our audience. We wish them continued success in their careers.


Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn