Documentary celebrates success of UofL/Central HS law partnership

As a young boy, Brandon Rudolph, '19, and his older brother had a dream.

“We were going to be partners in a law firm – Rudolph and Rudolph,” he said.

Fortunately for Brandon, as a teenager he had access to a program that helped put him on the path to fulfilling that dream of becoming a lawyer – Central High School’s Law and Government Magnet program and its partnership with the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. The focus of the program is to give more diverse and underrepresented students a view of the legal profession where diversity has historically been lacking.

“Lawyers are leaders, and diversity in leadership is critical to democracy,” said Laura Rothstein, a former Brandeis School of Law dean and now dean emerita. “In 2001, when Central High School Principal Harold Fenderson invited me to create a partnership between the Brandeis School of Law and the Law and Government Magnet program, I recalled the influences from my own high school days.

"The stories and statistics over the past 23 years make this partnership a win for Central High School, the law school, the university, and the city of Louisville as Central students become lawyers, professionals in other fields, and leaders in the community. Other communities can use our program as a model -- a Kentucky to the World example.”

Rothstein has been the main driver for a new documentary film celebrating the success of the UofL – Central partnership. “A Pathway Forward” will premiere to an invitation-only crowd Oct. 9 at 6:30 p.m. at Bomhard Theatre in the Kentucky Center for the Arts. The film will then open to the public at Louisville's International Festival of Film, Oct. 10-12. A trailer for the film can be found on the Kentucky to the World website.

Since it began in 2001, nearly 700 Central High School graduates have participated in the partnership, with many of them going on to attend law schools in 15 states. Since 2007, those Central magnet students were not only taking classes from Joe Gutmann, the long-time teacher at Central, but also from UofL law students who have taught Street Law and Marshall Brennan Constitutional Literacy classes to law and government magnet students. To Rudolph, a 2009 Central graduate who is Black, having law school students, some of whom looked like him, teaching classes enhanced his love for the law and gave him the confidence he needed to keep law school as a goal.

“Talking to UofL students who weren’t too much older than me was easier and more comfortable,” Rudolph said. “I could ask them ‘Is law school attainable? Can I do it?’ and they would assure me it was hard but attainable. The UofL students, Dean Rothstein and Mr. Gutmann inspired me.”

And Rudolph eventually became one of those UofL law students teaching the next generation of legal and civic leaders at Central High School. After getting an undergraduate degree from the University of Kentucky and taking a good paying job in manufacturing, Rudolph refocused on his goal and was accepted into Brandeis School of Law. In his second and third years at UofL’s law school, he taught Street Law to Central sophomores and constitutional law (Marshall Brennan class) to seniors. He calls it a rewarding learning experience for both him and the high school students.

“It was only right that I give back,” Rudolph said. “Students would say ‘he looks like me and dresses like me, it’s not so far-fetched that I could do that.’ Those are the same things I thought as a Central student.”

Rudolph is now a practicing attorney with Wimberly and Associates PLLC in Louisville.

As for his brother, he took a different path, graduating from Central High and Eastern Kentucky University and becoming a successful personal trainer. The dream of ‘Rudolph and Rudolph – Attorneys at Law’ is gone but Brandon’s lifelong goal of becoming a lawyer has been realized with a hand from the partnership between Central High School and the UofL Brandeis School of Law.

Story and photo furnished by Jefferson County Public Schools