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History

Bringing the Legal Outreach Legacy to New Jersey

NJ LEEP was founded in 2006.  Executive Director and founder Craig Livermore, a graduate of Columbia Law School, developed the project after working for Legal Outreach, Inc. in Brooklyn.  Legal Outreach has successfully worked with urban youth from underserved neighborhoods in Harlem and Brooklyn for twenty-three years.  Using law to attract middle school and high school students to academic programs that inspire and motivate them, Legal Outreach has helped disadvantaged youth build the skills, confidence and character they need to achieve their goals. 

Legal Outreach graduates annually a successful college bound class whose members have been part of the program for four years.  As of 2005, 100 percent of these graduates have attended college.  More than half of the program’s graduates have matriculated to top-ranked colleges and universities.  The list of schools which have been attended by recent Legal Outreach graduates includes Harvard, Yale, Duke, Columbia, Swarthmore, NYU, Smith, Wesleyan and many more.

Legal Outreach Co-Founder and Executive Director, James O’Neal, has decided to join Mr. Livermore in forming NJ LEEP.  Mr. O’Neal and Mr. Livermore, both residents of Essex County, New Jersey, have felt the necessity to bring the Legal Outreach model to the recognized need for empowerment in Newark, Irvington, Jersey City and East Orange.