Over the last decade and a half, she and 100 others who attended the New York University School of Law received that support from a scholarship program that paid their full tuition and also gave them access to a network of luminaries including federal judges, law firm partners and even Supreme Court justices.

Graduates, who typically are the first in their families to seek a professional or graduate degree, have gone on to jobs at elite law firms such as Davis Polk & Wardwell or Shearman & Sterling, as well as public interest jobs. The scholarships — which each provide about $175,000 for three years of legal education — are for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, said the program’s founder, Anthony Welters, a 1977 N.Y.U. law school graduate who is executive vice president of the health care company the UnitedHealth Group.

“The program aims at economic diversity,” said Mr. Welters, 60, an African-American who grew up in Harlem and was the first in his family to pursue an advanced degree. After stints as a Capitol Hill aide and securities lawyer, he made his fortune when AmeriChoice, the Medicaid services provider he founded, later merged with UnitedHealth.

“It’s not just giving cash,” he said of the program, which he and his wife, Beatrice, a former American ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, founded in 1998. They called it AnBryce, a name derived from the first initial of each family member’s name. “It’s more than academic credentials. It takes a hell of a lot to become a successful lawyer. These students can compete; they just have to know the rules of the road.”

Those rules are crucial to securing jobs at premier law firms, which can pay their partners salaries in the millions of dollars but where varied personal backgrounds can often be missing. African-American and Latino lawyers are scarce at the coveted partner level, hovering around 2 percent for each group. Ms. Hernández is joining a select group since about a few dozen Hispanic women are partners at firms that have 500 to 700 lawyers each.