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Putting the power of the law back into New Yorkers’ hands through a legal education movement for youth
Image of Diana Imbert in black and white

Winner

Diana Imbert-Hodges

Putting the power of the law back into New Yorkers’ hands through a legal education movement for youth
Image of Diana Imbert in black and white

Website

defyinglegalgravity.org

Year

2024

Organization

Defying Legal Gravity

Sector

Civics

Borough

Manhattan

Neighborhood

East Harlem

Diana founded Defying Legal Gravity to teach NYC high-school students first-year law courses, empowering them to advocate for justice.

Struggling to balance the responsibilities of a full-time job, school, and teaching at a non-profit in her community, Diana began to fall behind in her first year of law school. Desperate for extra study time and hoping to reinforce the material for …
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“Democratizing the law means lifting the voices of individuals who have been harmed by the legal system.⁠”
Diana Imbert-Hodges
2024 David Prize Winner

Update from winner

NYC Teens Are Becoming Community Lawyers
@davidprizenyc
Every week New York City high school students gather at Fordham Law to learn the required legal courses studied by every lawyer in America.

Publication

The New York Times

A Student’s Wisdom Helped This Teacher Win $200,000

By James Barron
September 10, 2024
The brainstorm that led to Defying Legal Gravity came when she was teaching a Saturday program for seventh-graders in Harlem…

Publication

Fordham Lawyer

Teaching Teens the Power of the Law

BY PAULA DERROW
June 2, 2025
Every Saturday morning at 10 a.m., 20 students file into Room 4-08 at Fordham Law School to learn the fundamentals of a legal education— contract law, constitutional law, torts, civil procedure, criminal law, and…
1.8M
self-represented litigants annually in NYC

Source: New York City Bar Association

“Diana is a do-er, not just a dreamer. There is the rewarding of people who have great dreams, but with Diana there is actual action behind the dream and she knows how to make it happen.⁠”
Tanya K. Hernández
Fordham School of Law
2023–24 Defying Legal Gravity Cohort
To all winners