The Bridging the Gap Scholarship with WashULaw Alum Jo Gbujama

Anna Donovan: Welcome back to Applying Yourself, a law school admissions podcast out of WashU Law. My name is Anna Donovan. I am the Communications Program Manager here, and we are back to have some new episodes of this podcast for you all.

I am very excited today to introduce — or, I guess, let him introduce himself — Jo Gbujama, a 2021 grad, who’s going to be talking with us about a nonprofit he started called the Bridging the Gap Scholarship. I will turn it over to you, Jo. If you want to start out by telling us a little bit about what you’ve been doing since you graduated law school.

Jo Gbujama: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I am currently an associate at Littler Mendelson in San Francisco. I do management-side labor and employment, and I’ve been having a great time doing that. I litigate a lot — lots of advice and counsel. I’m actually going to be transitioning soon to start a federal clerkship in the Northern District of Illinois later this year. So practice has been fun, and I’ve been enjoying it.

Anna Donovan: Excellent. I think this ties into how this got started. But do you want to tell us a little bit — I know it’s reaching back — but what you were involved in in law school, your law school experience, and how that fed into this idea and starting the scholarship?

Jo Gbujama: Yeah, I had an awesome time in law school. I was pretty involved in the Black Law Students Association, Phi Alpha Delta, the Journal of Law and Policy, and a couple of externships. One of the best experiences I had was through BLSA — just meeting a bunch of different people. And in BLSA is actually where I met the other founders of Bridging the Gap. That’s how we were able to get togetherand come up with the idea.

Anna Donovan: Excellent. And I guess this is the big question, but tell us about your idea and what you all do.

Jo Gbujama: Yeah, so by way of background: I came from a single-parent household, and I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about the law school process. I did have an aunt who was a public defender who inspired me to go to law school, but we didn’t really talk too much about what to do — or rather, her experience was limited to the public defense and, later, the prosecution route.

So I had the experience, in undergrad, of meeting people and mentors who were able to talk to me about how to get to law school and how to get to big law. And then when I actually got to law school, I was able to see the actual process and talk to the amazing support at WashU and my classmates, and to really see and understand and learn the process of big law.

I kept thinking, “Man, it would have been really nice to know a lot of this — to have all this information earlier in my career — and to have the resources to actually act on it,” because that just was not there for me at the time.

I ended up meeting up with Imani Maatuka, Elizabeth Pratt, and Brendan Hughes — three other WashU alumni who were all first-years at the time, who had similar experiences in terms of wishing that they had known more about the big law process and about how much, you know, maybe a thousand dollars could have made a difference in someone’s experience.

So we talked together, and we all just came together and decided, okay — we’re all working in big law this summer, we’re all going to be making a lot of money, so let’s take a thousand bucks from our salaries and start a scholarship and market it and promote it. And just try to encourage other people to apply.

So that’s what we did. We got together, ended up picking four scholars after a social media campaign, for lack of a better term, and then counseled and advised those students in their applications, paid for the resources — and ultimately we were able to help them get into some of the top schools in the country: Georgetown, Penn, Cornell, and WashU.

We thought this was something we could definitely repeat. So we took a break because of COVID, but last year we officially became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and we’re just trying to pick back up where we left off in 2019 to bridge the gap.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about — I guess, sort of the sell — but how candidates who are interested can apply, and also a little more detail about what kind of things the funding can go toward? I think so many people don’t even know what they might need money for. In the same way you didn’t know much about big law, they don’t even know what they don’t know about how far this could take them. What can it be used for?

Jo Gbujama: Yeah. The way you apply: you go to our website, www.BridgingTheGapScholarship.com, and we’ve got the application up there. It’s a big yellow “Apply Now.” We ask a series of questions that I can get into a bit later.

But in terms of what the scholarship covers — it really just covers everything a law student would need, depending on where they’re at in the process. So, let’s say you have a good GPA, but you don’t have anything else — you don’t have an LSAT score, you don’t know about the personal statement and whatnot. The scholarship will cover the LSAT course, law school admissions consulting through a vendor we’ve been working with, a BARBRI Law Preview course (a course designed to help you during your first year of law school), a $1,000 scholarship that goes directly to the scholars to help them with applying for law school or just anything they need to support themselves, and then mentorship from myself and the other board members of the scholarship.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, absolutely. So this is specifically for prospective law students — not for current law students. Is that right?

Jo Gbujama: Yes. And that’s not to say that you have to not have taken the LSAT. If you’ve taken the LSAT, then obviously you don’t need the LSAT course — but it’s just kind of meeting you where you’re at to help you figure out what you need to do to take you to that next level.

Anna Donovan: Absolutely. Very customized to the candidate. So everyone should apply. Please do. I always mention our millions of listeners, which is funny because we don’t have that many — but maybe we will one day. That is excellent.

What would you say to people who are just thinking about law school, or are currently applying to law school — maybe they’ve applied for this cycle, or they’re thinking about future cycles? What advice, besides applying for your incredible scholarship, would you have for those candidates?

Jo Gbujama: Yeah. I think the biggest advice I would give is that we need to learn to be our best advocates. For me personally, I struggled because I didn’t have any externship experience, and so I thought, “Oh, I may not have the best chance of getting into good law schools, or I might not have the experience to be a good attorney, because I only really had club experience.” I was president of the Black Law Students Association and Phi Alpha Delta and some other stuff, but I didn’t have actual work experience.

So I struggled initially to think, “Okay, well… other people are going to apply — maybe they’ve been working for years — so I’m just not going to be a good candidate.” But then I spoke with people who really told me, “No — you have skills, and your experiences are what they are, so you need to learn how to market yourself, how to be your own best advocate, and show people how you utilize your skills and what you can bring to the table to show that you’ll be a good attorney and how you’ll be able to use your skills to serve your clients.”

So to anybody who’s applying who’s thinking, “Oh, I don’t know if I’m good enough to apply, or if I have the skills I need” — I would encourage you to take a step back and look at the totality of everything you’ve done, and just think, “Okay, how can I use this? What can I say about this? What can I say about these skills to show, no — I am somebody who deserves to be there?”

Because if you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else has a reason to. I just firmly believe we need to learn to be better advocates for ourselves.

Anna Donovan: Yeah, absolutely. In admissions, we try really hard when we’re reviewing applications — we’re not going to admit any candidate who is not capable of doing law school, being successful, and getting a great job. But every student who gets to law school — every single one, regardless of how well their scores or background are — they have imposter syndrome, and they feel like, “Oh my God, what do I do? What if I can’t do this? What if I don’t get hired?”

It definitely comes back to being your best advocate and using the resources. I think yours is such a great one. Obviously, I can only speak to WashU and our career center and that support, but there are these other opportunities out there as well. It’s so fantastic that you all moved into this space. I think it’s super important. We never want candidates to self-select out of applying to a school that they think could be the right fit and get them to a great spot after law school with this great degree.

Any parting words of wisdom, or anything else you may have forgotten to mention that you want to touch on before we wrap up?

Jo Gbujama: Yeah. The two big ones: our applications are open through January, so definitely apply — get them in. And if you are listening and you believe in the cause and want to support, we are always happily accepting donations.

Anna Donovan: Absolutely. If 1Ls can take some of the summer money they made to put into this, others can take some of theirs as well. I think that is super true.

Jo Gbujama: You said it, not me.

Anna Donovan: It is. It’s overwhelming. I think that is even just one of the considerations as well — you do make a lot of money. What do you do with it? How do you manage that? That’s a whole other conversation. Anything else?

Jo Gbujama: No, yeah — just to your point: thinking back to my experience, the reason I was able to attend a school like WashU… I didn’t do well on the LSAT when I first took a practice test, so I needed a course. For me, it’s crazy to think that, were I not able to afford a $1,500 course, I very well may not have had the opportunity to attend WashU.

And it’s even crazier to think that as a big law associate, you’re making like $4,000 a week.

Anna Donovan: Right, right. Yes.

Jo Gbujama: Right.

Anna Donovan: Right.

Jo Gbujama: Yeah. So particularly for those who are in big law, or just anybody who believes in the mission or has the means — any level of support is very much appreciated. You can donate at bridgingthegapscholarship.com/donate. We’re excited to see where this can go.

Anna Donovan: Yeah. We are excited too. We are so proud to have you as an alum. This is super, super awesome. Thank you for taking time out of your workday to do our podcast. We’ll push this out on our various social media, and we’ll make sure to link everything up to Bridging the Gap. So thank you for being here.

Jo Gbujama: Oh, thank you.

Anna Donovan: All right. Bye.

Jo Gbujama: Bye.