(NAME-MCE) Law School Admissions Lag Among Minorities

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Law School Admissions Lag Among Minorities

By TAMAR LEWIN  January 6, 2010  New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/education/07law.html

While law schools added about 3,000 seats for first-year students from 1993
to 2008, both the percentage and the number of black and Mexican-American
law students declined in that period, according to a study by a Columbia Law
School professor.

What makes the declines particularly troubling, said the professor, Conrad
Johnson, is that in that same period, both groups improved their college
grade-point averages and their scores on the Law School Admission Test, or
L.S.A.T.

“Even though their scores and grades are improving, and are very close to
those of white applicants, African-Americans and Mexican-Americans are
increasingly being shut out of law schools,” said Mr. Johnson, who oversees
the Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic at Columbia, which collaborated with
the Society of American Law Teachers to examine minority enrollment rates at
American law schools.

However, Hispanics other than Mexicans and Puerto Ricans made slight gains
in law school enrollment.

The number of black and Mexican-American students applying to law school has
been relatively constant, or growing slightly, for two decades. But from
2003 to 2008, 61 percent of black applicants and 46 percent of
Mexican-American applicants were denied acceptance at all of the law schools
to which they applied, compared with 34 percent of white applicants.

“What’s happening, as the American population becomes more diverse, is that
the lawyer corps and judges are remaining predominantly white,” said John
Nussbaumer, associate dean of Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s campus in Auburn
Hills, Mich., which enrolls an unusually high percentage of African-American
students.

Mr. Nussbaumer, who has been looking at the same minority-representation
numbers, independently of the Columbia clinic, has become increasingly
concerned about the large percentage of minority applicants shut out of law
schools.

“A big part of it is that many schools base their admissions criteria not on
whether students have a reasonable chance of success, but how those L.S.A.T.
numbers are going to affect their rankings in the U.S. News & World Report,”
Mr. Nussbaumer said. “Deans get fired if the rankings drop, so they set
their L.S.A.T. requirements very high.

“We’re living proof that it doesn’t have to be that way, that those students
with the slightly lower L.S.A.T. scores can graduate, pass the bar and be
terrific lawyers.”

Margaret Martin Barry, co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers,
said that while she understood the importance of rankings, law schools must
address the issue of diversity. “If you’re so concerned with rankings,
you’re going to lose a whole generation,” she said.

The Columbia study found that among the 46,500 law school matriculants in
the fall of 2008, there were 3,392 African-Americans, or 7.3 percent, and
673 Mexican-Americans, or 1.4 percent. Among the 43,520 matriculants in
1993, there were 3,432 African-Americans, or 7.9 percent, and 710
Mexican-Americans, or 1.6 percent. The study, whose findings are detailed at
the Web site A Disturbing Trend in Law School Diversity, relied on the
admission council’s minority categories, which track Mexican-Americans
separately from Puerto Ricans and Hispanic/Latino students.

“We focused on the two groups, African-Americans and Mexican-Americans, who
did not make progress in law school representation during the period,” Mr.
Johnson said. “The Hispanic/Latino group did increase, from 3.1 percent of
the matriculants in 1993, to 5.1 percent in 2008.”

Mr. Johnson said he did not have a good explanation for the disparity,
particularly since the 2008 LSAT scores among Mexican-Americans were, on
average, one point higher than those of the Hispanics, and one point lower
in 1993.

Over all, Mr. Johnson said, it is puzzling that minority enrollment in law
schools has fallen, even since the United States Supreme Court ruled in
2003, in Grutter v. Bollinger, that race can be taken into account in law
school admissions because the diversity of the student body is a compelling
state interest.

“Someone told me that things had actually gotten worse since the Grutter
decision, and that’s what got us started looking at this,” Mr. Johnson said.
“Many people are not aware of the numbers, even among those interested in
diversity issues. For many African-American and Mexican-American students,
law school is an elusive goal.”