Law School Admissions and Race

By: Leland C. Abraham, Esq.

For the past decade, law schools have become increasingly interested in raising their national rankings. The primary way to accomplish this is demanding higher Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) scores. This is a trend that researchers are seeing across the country. However, these law schools are seeing a significant decrease in terms of racial diversity as fewer black applicants are accepted.

The number of first-year black enrollment peaked in 1994 at 3,432. Recently, that number has dropped 13% to 2,975 according to the data from the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), which is the same organization that administers the LSAT. In direct contrast, Asian and Hispanic enrollments have increased: Asians by 44% to 3,759 and Hispanics by 26% to 2,610.

Black applicants are increasingly getting denied at the gate. The main reason for this decline is because law schools are concerned more with the LSAT scores. The average law student’s LSAT score has increased from 154.3 in 2001 to 157.3 in 2005. As a group, black applicants have consistently scored around 10 points lower than the national average. Because there is an increased focus on this one particular area of the application process, black applicants are receiving a big portion of the rejection letters.

There are inherent failures with law schools focusing heavily on the LSAT as a predictor of law school entrance. One thing the statistics do not state is that the LSAT is not an indication of how well an attorney that individual will become. In fact, the LSAT is not a good indicator of how well a law student the individual will become. The LSAT score fails to consider factors such as life experience and how hard an individual is willing to work. A major portion of a student’s success in law school hinges on how hard a student is willing to work.

This trend is detrimental to the law profession and to society as a whole. Blacks make up roughly 13% of the US population, but they are just 6.8% of the 135,000 law students. While the US population is becoming more diverse, the profession that led the effort in breaking through racial barriers (via landmark cases) is becoming increasingly underrepresented by blacks.

Some have indicated that the decrease in the numbers of black law students is due to the fact the blacks are not pursuing law. This could not be further from the truth as the number of black applicants to law school has increased from 8,648 to 10,674 between 2001 and 2004. The number of applicants from all ethnic groups has increased in recent years, yielding record numbers of applicants to law school. This has forced the law schools to be more selective in the students who are admitted. Unchecked, the law school admissions process is mainly focusing on the LSAT as that measure.

Previously, the checks and balances system that law schools employed was to use “race” as one of many predominant factors in the admissions process. However, in 2003, the US Supreme Court held in two landmark cases, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger that the use of race in admissions must be limited to prevent racial quotas in admissions.[1] If any law schools’ admissions program appears to use racial quotas for admissions of minorities, the current US Supreme Court will likely prevent its use.

To address this growing crisis, the chapters of the National Black Law School Associations (NBLSA) are inviting high school students to campus to discuss the possibility of obtaining the law degree. This is a measure that will get potential students interested in law early in the process. Perhaps by employing this measure, students will begin to seek LSAT prep courses early enough in the process to be competitive with their white counterparts. Jessica Green is a former Black Law Student Association President at the University of Kentucky. Her association invited high school students to the campus. When asked why she decided to employ such a measure, she replied, “Something has got to be done to increase these numbers. If you have a race and criminal justice course and there are no black students in there, I’m concerned about how telling the discussion can be.”

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[1] See Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003). See also Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003).