Law Schools, Minority Issues

When 'Diversity' Means Helping Low-Ranked Schools Take Advantage Of Students

What's wrong with black people?

By  
on

We mentioned earlier this week that a new study showing the percentage of black and Hispanic students attending law school is going up, except at the best law schools. So, while white people have figured out that going to law school is a risky bet, students of color haven’t gotten the memo. Great.

I say unto the crappy law schools of the land, let my people go.

The National Law Journal summarizes the findings of Aaron Taylor, a professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law:

He found that law schools at the bottom of the prestige ladder—those with the lowest median LSAT scores for incoming students—have relied disproportionately on African-American and Hispanic students to fill their classes. That shift may have served as an economic lifeline for law schools during a difficult period, but bolstered the racial stratification that already existed. Elite law schools with higher median LSAT scores actually saw a proportional decrease in African-American and Hispanic students between 2010 and 2013, Taylor found…

Despite his concerns, Taylor credits lower-tier law schools with helping to improve the overall diversity of the legal profession, which remains significantly whiter than the population as a whole. Elite law schools should do their part by admitting a larger number of African-American and Hispanic students, he said.

Look, minority students have the right to get screwed over just like anybody else. But let’s not act like that’s a good thing. Exploiting minorities by charging them a lot of money for a diploma that isn’t worth the paper it’s scrawled on is just as bad as exploiting anybody else.

Or maybe it’s worse. Teaching young people how to avoid financially ruinous credit decisions is kind of a point of emphasis for minority empowerment. If you are trying to raise yourself out of poverty, having the law school salesman come along and trick you into debt-financing legal education before you even learn what Equifax is feels predatory.

But my big question is: why haven’t black and brown students gotten the memo that poorly ranked law schools are a bad bet? I have a couple of theories, but no facts. Nobody is studying it. Or at least, nobody is studying it in a way that doesn’t devolve into: “Well, clearly having lots of melanin in your skin seeps into your brain and make you dumb, duh.”

Sponsored

But when have facts stopped me before? Some conjectures:

  • Maybe minority students who are raising themselves up from hardscrabble upbringings are particularly resistant to the arguments about pedigrees? The case for top law schools isn’t about pedigree, it’s about ROI, but it sounds like an argument about being born into the right circles, and maybe lower income minorities have no time for that?
  • Maybe minority law students are over-represented among the “true believer” crowd? Most people like money, but some people really want to do good in the world. “No no no, I really just want to represent people who fall down at the Walmart.”
  • Maybe minority students are just less likely to have the proper modeling to know that they can do better than the bad deal the poor law schools of the world are offering? This seems to me the most likely — and most horrible — possibility. Maybe they don’t have people to tell them, “Dear God, let me tell you about Cooley.” Maybe they don’t have people to tell them to take the LSAT again, or that the investment in a prep course is entirely worth it. Maybe minority law students are the least likely people to read and be exposed to… people like me? I mean, more people know me on campus at Georgetown than at Howard… which is WEIRD, from a certain point of view.

I don’t know the answer. But I know that it’s an important question. This study tells me nothing about the effectiveness of diversity programs. But it tells me a whole lot about the effectiveness of pre-law programs for minority students.

Sponsored

Topics

, ,