Law School “Mismatch” is Worse Than We Thought

I didn’t intend for this to read as one long paragraph.

At most law schools, the undergraduate grades (UGPA) and median LSAT scores of enrolled Black students were two standard deviations below those of white students at the same school. Outside of a handful of “Historically Black” institutions (where racial preferences were minimal), Blacks in law school were not faring well. They were failing out of school at more than twice the white rate; half of those who did graduate had grades in the bottom 10th of their class; and Blacks were six times as likely as whites to take the bar exam multiple times but never pass.

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Our findings are even stronger than we expected. A student’s degree of mismatch in law school is by far the strongest predictor of whether he or she will pass a bar exam on a first attempt. In 2005, I estimated that mismatch could account for half of the bar-passage gap between Blacks and whites, with the rest caused by lower average pre-law-school preparation levels among Black students. Our findings indicate, however, that mismatch can account for two-thirds to three-quarters of the Black-white gap, as well as more than half of the Hispanic-white gap. Importantly, we found that when one fully controls for mismatch, LSAT, and UGPA, race-specific effects completely disappear. Many critics of mismatch had argued, without evidence, that poor minority performance might be caused by “hostile” environments in law school or “stereotype threats” faced by underrepresented students. Our results flatly contradict such claims.

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2023 is an important time to get across this message. The Supreme Court is preparing to issue opinions in cases brought by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Most observers expect the Court to significantly restrict the legal scope of racial preferences. If it does, universities may dramatically reduce the size of current preferences. But they may, instead, deemphasize traditional measures of academic ability (like the LSAT) in favor of highly subjective factors (like essays) that allow them to continue to use preferences under the radar. Or they may simply ignore the Court, as many law schools have ignored state-level bans on racial preferences. What we can be sure of is that university leaders will be talking with one another and with their admissions officers. A clear showing of the enormous harm done by large preferences could help steer them to the straight and narrow.

Maybe if they could take the Bar exam using ebonics? Or maybe just leave the lawyering to our ChatGPT overlords.

I really hope Amy Wax prevails against the University of Pennsylvania this year

Any relation to Ruby?

I used Amy Wax on my genitals. Smooth as a baby's bum.

How many white students are legacies or got in because their parents are rich?

And I bet Jewish students do better than Christian ones but I bet conservatives like OP won't mention that

Enough!

Perhaps the lower score students of ANY color were pushed into law by overzealous parents, overly generous scholarships solely based on the color of their skin, and students distracted by partying or social activities once they left home and had more personal freedom from parents.

We have to come to realize this kind of reporting and analysis is only going to become more granular, and reveal it has less to do with wealth or race, and more to do with healthy study habits, drive and lapsed focused attention to study. To continue to blame racial disparity isn’t helpin anymore.

Not everyone is cut out for law, and that’s ok. I’m pretty sure plumbers and electricians are going to be making much more than lawyers once AI has been implemented by law firms!

OP linked to a right-wing think tank

I was an A/B student, took honors English class, and when it came time to think about college, my mother absolutely refused to sign or submit paperwork or consider sending me away. It really was terrible, I left home at 15, blew through my last year of high school with terrible grades, and took a job at a department store. My family was white trash, and the truth is my upbringing, household and living situation WAS NOT CONDUCIVE to being successful in college. As hard as it was to admit today, my mom was right, I would’ve likely FAILED OUT and be left with an albatross of a loan around my neck. It’s my one regret I didn’t go, but I didn’t have the much needed support or examples of other family members that attended college.

I had to live on my own for a year to be able to file for student loans, wound up becoming a hairdresser.

Jewish students do better than whites as a whole. I think Catholic students might be over represented as well, something about the culture of Catholics compared to other sects of Christianity. My friend who was raised Catholic got his JD from Stanford. He says Catholicism is a very “intellectual” religion compared to other denominations.

But you’ll notice that the Supreme Court Justices are disproportionately Jewish and Catholic.

As for legacies and children of rich donors, I guess if anything, those are white kids that black students can blend in with and other stand out as much when they finish at the bottom.

[quote]They were failing out of school at more than twice the white rate; half of those who did graduate had grades in the bottom 10th of their class; and Blacks were six times as likely as whites to take the bar exam multiple times but never pass.

We often hear about how AA is unfair to other groups, but this is a reminder of how poorly served unprepared black students are by a program that’s supposed to help them. Israel by contrasthas had success in upping Arab numbers at elite schools through boot camp programs designed to train academically unprepared students. Enrollment increased and dropouts fell dramatically.

R10 I was raised Catholic and this is true. There's a reason that Catholic schools are famously "good school."

I had no idea the concept of systemic racism was so hard to grasp.

"I think Catholic students might be over represented as well, something about the culture of Catholics compared to other sects of Christianity. "

Think that would depend upon primary and secondary education under which order staffed or at least otherwise influenced school in question.

Certain orders such as Jesuits are famous for producing high quality graduates of both primary and post secondary education.

"We often hear about how AA is unfair to other groups, but this is a reminder of how poorly served unprepared black students are by a program that’s supposed to help them."

Is admitting dumb, rich white kids unfair to them?

R15 Jared Kushner would have been fine if he dropped out of law school. This is less true of other students who wasted time and accumulated debt when they should have either never gone to law school or gone to a less demanding program.

R15, how bad were Jared Kushner’s credentials if he still graduated from Harvard with honors?

If blacks aren’t performing as well as whites, then blacks need to work harder. Particularly the rich blacks, who are most of the blacks who go to Ivies. If rich blacks still need affirmative action in order to get into the Ivies, what’s their excuse?

Do you see whites blaming anti-white racism for the reason why whites don’t perform academically as well as Asians?

Historic Black Colleges produce excellent lawyers and medical doctors. They have a well-rounded liberal education and are very knowledgeable of History, so we are not doomed to repeat the bad shit.

Law schools that admit unqualified minority students know that they will drop out but make their recruitment numbers look good.

Now, up until now, I never felt the need to protest. I mean, nothing in the 60's really bothered me. None of the guys I knew went to Vietnam. They all went to law school. And, actually, I have always found protesters rather pushy and whiny.

Rudy Giuliani went to law school and was a lawyer. There is a bar, but it is low.

There are many bad law schools in the USA, where their law graduates cannot find jobs.

R22

So was Richard M. Nixon (Duke Law)

there are so many struggling lawyers out there.

R19, maybe there was something to “separate but equal?”

At any rate, separate but equal may be preferable to integrated but unequal.

Nixon was a smart man, R24. Don’t confuse ethics with intelligence/ability.

Be less conferenced with law school affirmative action and more with medical school affirmative action.

Unfortunately, the bar is a test you have to study for and there isn’t an essay section where you can say the reason you don’t know the answer to the questions is because of white people and microaggressions.

oops

- conferenced

+ concerned

But R29, the essay portion on the Bar Exam deals with white people problems!

Yo! The whole practahce of law ahs a whahte person thahng. How does ya expect ebony peep ta does well ahn aythahng desahgned for whahte peep? Law ahs racahst!

This is exhausting.

[quote]This

This ... what r32?

R28 This pro AA article admits that black students at the low end of GPA and MCAT scores are much more likely to be accepted to med school than comparable whites, but hand waves it away on the basis that there’s a low chance of anyone getting with low GPA and MCAT.

The argument here, again so focused on “cheated” white students, pays no attention to what happens to admitted black students. By his own calculation, eliminating a race preference would cut black med school acceptance in HALF. Without looking it up, I’m guessing we see med school dropout stats similar to law school stats in the original post.

R34, if we didn’t have race preferences, we actually might have more black doctors, ironically. People do better in environments where they’re more evenly matched.

My husband was the chair of his department and found that students from HBCU’s accepted into the graduate program needed tutoring help in writing and statistics.

Once upon a time I sat in an Intro To Psychology class and the teacher looked around to make sure there were all white faces in there. Then she said that Blacks routinely scored 10-20% lower in IQ test scores but they never talked about it. I was shocked then, but it was in the South-Muzzeruh.

[[R36]] Statistics? You are a racist and a liar, though not a very good one.

Law school is easier to get into, but harder to stay in. Med school is harder to get into, but you should be able to finish once in.

Also, Catholics make great lawyers because they fucking argue about every fucking thing. It's exhausting. All of them: micks, spics, dagos, frogs... very loud.

Oh! Slavs too!

The Polish... you know, they're nice.

"My husband was the chair of his department and found that students from HBCU’s accepted into the graduate program needed tutoring help in writing and statistics."

And no white students ever needed tutoring before, apparently

"Law schools that admit unqualified minority students know that they will drop out but make their recruitment numbers look good."

What about law schools that admit unqualified white conservatives?

There are a lot of stupid lawyers, it's shocking how dumb some of them are but never mind that.

This is yet another motherfucking troll thread.

Fuck you, OP. Die in a greasefire today.

The top law schools can skim the cream of the black undergraduates, and they will be brilliant and do fine. There are sufficient brilliant blacks to fill the top 10 law schools.

But there are not enough qualified African American blacks to fill the middling schools.

The middling law schools that want to have a lot of black students who go on to graduate and pass the bar should recruit from black countries, not the USA. Or from 1st and 2nd generation black immigrants to the USA.

- is this the crux of the issue?

The situation described in R44 isn't unique to the USA. Many countries have a historically oppressed ethnic group, or two or three, in an underclass. And in compulsory education, it is revealed these underclasses can produce a limited number of brilliant star pupils with high IQ, and a large number of middling types who are also damaged as students, and thus don't compete effectively with the middling kids from the privileged classes. Terribly difficult to solve. Painful to witness. Not fair. But reality. It's revealed in University where all the lacking skills are no longer hidden away or overlooked. If you think it's bad in USA, it's worse in Europe. Because many European universities run on a culling method, the opposite of American colleges. Good to great American colleges want to graduate their freshman admits.

It you want professional education to maintain standards, USA should probably stop hesitating about flunking kids out of college when they are not equipped to succeed.

If you want American colleges to main standards, then High Schools should stop passing students for doing nothing. Flunk the kids out of academic tracks and shift them to vocational schools. Remember them? Bring them back.

The idea that every kid should go to college is hogwash.

The most important part of the linked analysis was in the graph at the end. What it showed was that when black students attended non-elite law schools, their first time pass rate on bar exams was very high even with relatively low LSAT scores. 79% vs. 22%. That got my attention. In theory, elite schools should be preparing ALL their students to pass the bar exam. But clearly, they focus on the students who are already well-prepared academically, and basically ignore the ones who might need some remedial work. So what's the point of elite schools? Clearly, it's that they give people a leg up on desired clerkships, eventual judgeships, political careers. So, the next question is, what serves the black community the best ? To have a large lawyer contingent which has passed various state bars and allows the possibility of working in the field, albeit in less prestigious law firms and without the connections leading to advancement in their careers, or to have a large group attending elite schools but not being given the attention they need to pass the bar exams at the end of their schooling?

Exactly, R46.

Also, you do not need to go to Harvard or Stanford or Yale to be good lawyer or have a good career. Look at Johnny Cochrane.

Some of the lawyers who get the biggest jury verdicts only got their JDs from middling law schools.

Another thing, if you graduate from Harvard but you finish at the bottom of your class because you were under-qualified, when you have Harvard down as your alma mater and you’re seeking employment in elite firms, it’s a kind of false signaling you’re presenting. There might be smarter people from lower ranking schools who are actually more qualified than you but who chose to go to a lower ranking school for financial reasons.

r46 I forget -- are you a lawyer?

Great points, by the way.

No, I'm not a lawyer. But I like to argue....LOL

I’m just going to say it…the numbers will drastically change based on the breakdown of these Black law students.

Separate the first generation Black students from the African/Black-American ones and the difference will be stark.