Jauregui Wins Diversity Scholarship

April 12, 2006
Contact: Andy Faught

Eddie A. Jauregui, a 1998 graduate of Occidental College, is one of the first winners of a Latham & Watkins Diversity Scholarship. The $10,000 award is given to second-year law students intending to practice in a global law firm. It also recognizes students’ successes at overcoming obstacles or challenges faced in pursuing the legal profession.

Jauregui, of New York, was one of four scholarship winners chosen among 315 applications. Applicants for the inaugural award represented more than 100 American law schools. Jauregui, a student at the Columbia University School of Law, is a Los Angeles native and first-generation American of Mexican descent. He is the first and only member of his family to attend college.

“Latham & Watkins is one of the nation's premier law firms. For it to take up the charge of increasing diversity in the legal profession is momentous,” Jauregui said. “Unfortunately, people of color are drastically underrepresented in law schools and in the law profession, particularly in the top firms. As such, it is important that persons of diverse backgrounds are incorporated into and excel at these firms.”

Jauregui earned a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. At Columbia, he was awarded best oral argument and best written brief in the moot court competition, was a semifinalist in the school’s honors court moot competition, and presently serves as academic chair of the Latino Law Students Association. Jauregui developed an early interest in politics and law due to his parents’ labor union membership, and he has worked as an organizer for the national AFL-CIO and the Hotel Employees Union. An openly gay man, Jauregui has advocated for gay and lesbian civil rights and worked as a legal intern last summer for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. His primary interests in law are litigation and land use matters.

Latham & Watkins is a global law firm with more than 1,800 attorneys in 22 offices. For more information on the firm, click here.