Law School Survival Kits Raise Spirits and Membership at UNLV Student Chapter

At a meeting in the spring of 2026, our executive board of the JRCLS University of Nevada Las Vegas Chapter (“UNLV Chapter”) discussed goals and a vision for our organization. The Board unanimously agreed that we wanted to help make the incoming law school class at UNLV feel welcome and supported. Among many good ideas–including a new mentoring program that we implemented this year between new students and upperclass JRCLS members–we decided to reserve a table during our law school’s club recruitment event. Our chapter signed up for the first available day to have a display table during the first week of law school, hoping to attract students’ attention before they became too busy or burned out to care about student organizations.

To help attract new members to our chapter during the event, we also decided to distribute something exciting: law school survival kits! We believed these pre-packaged kits would be a fun, friendly gesture of goodwill while simultaneously giving our organization exposure at the law school. 

The kits included several school “essentials”: a highlighter marker; snacks; lemon drink mix, hand/surface wet wipes screen wipes (our laptops get dirty in law school!); and a non-denominational inspirational quote. We also included an invitation to our Interfaith Student Mixer event in September, which our chapter plans with the Jewish Law Student Association, the Christian Legal Community, and the UNLV Interfaith Group. We put together 120 kits, one for each member of the incoming first-year class.*

On tabling day, we sent an email early in the morning inviting all first year law students to stop by and grab their kit! We also had a few extra items and snacks to share with interested second- and third-year students, too. Our chapter board members volunteered to staff the table in 90-minute hour shifts from 9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m., peak times for students passing by as they were coming and going from class. 

While our main focus was on distributing the kits and cheerfully welcoming the incoming class, the JRCLS mission statement served as a backdrop for the table to help all students know who we are and what we represent. We also had informational flyers about the JRCLS available on the table along with membership sign-up sheets and flyers for local Institute classes offered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The time and effort our Board members put in to assemble and distribute the kits paid off because the items were well received and helped attract positive attention to our organization. This contributed to a 40% increase in new members joining the UNLV Chapter over previous years, largely due to those who joined the chapter the same day we distributed the kits.  Excitingly, the total number of first-year students who signed up represented 25% of the incoming class, and some upperclassmen also signed up who had missed us their first year. We are so glad they found us now! 

Best of all, we had students sign up from various faiths, including Christian, Jewish, Muslim and agnostic.

If your student chapter is interested in providing law school survival kits, we recommend assembling them as a team because assembly takes longer than you think! Also, having board members and other JRCLS representatives take shifts staffing the table ensures that no one person sits there all day. 

It was so fun to serve our law school community in this way so we recommend your chapter does it, too!

*Most of the supplies for the law school survival kits were purchased with funds received from private donations to the UNLV Student Chapter. These were accepted with approval of the Student Bar Association (SBA) at the University of Nevada Law Vegas Law School. 

If you are a student chapter leader at a law school-based chapter, we encourage you to check with your faculty advisor to find out if funds are available for your chapter through the Student Bar Association (SBA) or other organizations supporting student clubs. 

If your student chapter is not affiliated with a law school, consider contacting your local attorney chapter to discuss options for how to welcome new law students to school and recruit new members.