Many law students are content to spend three years with their noses buried in books. Kim Baker and Janae Torrez will never be counted among them. Co-chairs of the recently revived USC Street Law program, the second-year USC law scholars have spent a sizable chunk of their USC schooling bringing practical legal education to high school students in the University Park area.

Baker and Torrez have been involved with the program since the start of their USC careers. In fact, its presence at USC was a factor for both of them when deciding which law school to attend.

“That really put [USC] at the top of my list,” Baker said.

Each had extensive mentoring and educational outreach experience as undergrads - Baker at Stanford University and Torrez at San Jose State University - and each wanted an environment that further fostered that sort of community outreach.

When the two were elected co-chairs of USC Street Law last March, it fell to them to revitalize the program’s presence in high schools. Former USC Law School Associate Dean Karen Lash had started the program in 1992 to expose neighborhood students to the law profession, using classroom time, mock court trials and mentoring sessions as teaching tools.

The program had languished in recent years until law student Eli Palomares (JD ’03) revived the mentoring element in 2002. But Torrez and Baker had to develop a whole new classroom syllabus for the two participating schools, Manual Arts High School and Crenshaw High School.

The result is a curriculum titled “Homicide: Life on the Streets,” an homage to the television program of the same name. Its goal, Torrez said, is “to engage youth in thinking about problems in their community.”

Torrez, Baker and 15 other student volunteers enter the classrooms in pairs on a biweekly basis to talk to 11th and 12th graders about the legal questions surrounding such issues as police interaction.

Baker and Torrez believe these classroom sessions are crucial: “We really try to be flexible whenever we begin to work with students,” Baker said. “We always tell them, ‘This program is for you, we want to come here for you, and we want you to tell us what you want to learn about, what’s important to you.’ We really try to cater to what they want, what they need and what they’re interested in.”

When students at Manual Arts complained about security at their school, for example, Baker and Torrez brought in a police officer and a security guard to speak to them.

“It was kind of like bringing together the two sides and having them meet,” Torrez said. “There were some kids,” Baker added, “who were really hostile to us. But when they came out of that session, they knew more, and they knew what their rights were.”

Along with the revived classroom program, Torrez and Baker oversee USC Mentor Day, the other major component of Street Law. Several times a semester, students from Manual Arts and Crenshaw, as well as Dorsey High School are invited to the University Park campus to take part in tours, workshops and a mock law lecture.

Baker described it as an “opportunity for the students to be exposed to a four-year campus.” It also gives the visitors a chance to forge connections with older counterparts: During lunch, as many as 40 USC law student volunteers talk to them about their own educational experiences and offer themselves as mentors.

The goal of Street Law is to impart valuable life skills.

“They learn how to listen to different views from people [and] how to express their ideas in such a way that people are willing to listen to them,” Torrez said.

“They are learning to be more effective communicators, not only among themselves, but also with law enforcement and with authority,” said Baker, a Los Angeles native.

When the Street Law co-chairs step down after the spring semester (elections for the new administrators will be held in March) Baker and Torrez hope to stay on in an advisory role.

As they look ahead to graduation — Baker aims to enter child welfare law while Torrez has her eye on juvenile-delinquency work — they give credit to the Street Law experience for keeping their professional ideals intact.

“USC Street Law gave us a really tangible connection to our vision of where we see ourselves as professionals,” Baker said. “It’s very easy to get caught up in the rigamarole of law school and the competition and forget why you came.”