Diversity as a Law School Survival Strategy

More Transparency, Please

“…Taylor found that Black and Hispanic students were more likely to attend schools with lower median LSAT scores, which tend to be less prestigious. 61 Whereas White and Asian students were more likely to attend more prestigious schools with higher LSAT median scores. 62 Taylor told the National Jurist that "[t]his affects long-term outcomes, career trajectories and payoffs from law school investments.…”

Professional apartheid: The racialization of US law schools after the global economic crisis

“…Mertz also suggests that this aversion to social contingency disproportionately affects students from ethnic and racial‐minority groups—those from the social peripheries most likely to recognize the social embeddedness of norms and procedures born of the power centers. Building on that, contemporary legal sociologists (Deo ; Taylor ) document racial exclusion and inclusion in the law school sector but leave aside significant interpretive lessons that might explain what inequalities mean to the people affected by them.…”

“…This model worked for about a decade, when the for‐profits evaded regulatory scrutiny and grew exponentially. By 2017, as the law school enrollment crisis entered its seventh year with no clear end in sight, the model characterized as “diversity as survival strategy” (Taylor ) had spread across much of the fourth tier. One illustration of this is in the Alternative Admissions Model Program for Legal Education (AAMPLE), through which several dozen fourth‐tier schools have been able to reject low‐indicator applicants but sell them additional prelaw training before conditionally admitting them at full price.…”

“…The economic crisis would only exacerbate these inequalities. Facing declining enrollments, so‐called fourth‐tier law schools saw a market‐based solution: to increase their marketing to ethnic and racial‐minority communities and to style this as a mission to diversify legal services (Taylor ; Tejani ). The suggestion appeared to be that US ethnic and racial minorities—long limited in their ability to access the justice system (Herrera ; Rhode , )—can benefit merely from greater representation in the legal profession, if largely at a lower level of prestige and opportunity.…”

A Deeper Look at Bar Success: The Relationship Between Law Student Success, Academic Performance, and Student Characteristics

“…In addition to changed incoming credentials, legal education has also seen a marginal increase in student diversity (McEvers ; Nance & Madsen 2014; Taylor ), with students of color representing 26 percent of law students in 2014 compared to just 21 percent in 2004 (Taylor ). Taylor () is careful to note that this change is mostly attributable to a decline in the enrollment of white students rather than an increase in the number of underrepresented students. While it certainly represents progress, it may be more of an artifact of declining enrollment than an indicator of increased access and opportunity, and he reminds us that students of color remain “profoundly underrepresented” within law schools across the country (Taylor :4) .…”