For Blacks in Law School, Can Less Be More?

[Obloquium]

Posting in SLAM to discuss on the validity of Sander's research. Here's his analysis (links to the Chambers et. al. rebuttal and his reply), and a decent enough Google search to get you familiar with the debate.

For Blacks in Law School, Can Less Be More?
By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: February 13, 2005


NE would have thought, given the decades of ardent debate over affirmative action in higher education, that the main axes of the dispute had been established. Defenders of racial preferences say that they compensate for historical wrongs, ensure vibrant and varied campus discourse and help create minority role models and leaders. Opponents say preferences are nothing but a reverse form of discrimination that stereotypes and stigmatizes minority students.

But a recent study published in The Stanford Law Review by Richard H. Sander, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, has found a new way to inflame the debate. In fact, the study has ignited what may be the fiercest dispute over affirmative action since 2003, when the Supreme Court found some forms of it to be constitutional.

Professor Sander's study tests a simple, but startling, thesis: Affirmative action actually depresses the number of black lawyers, because many black students end up attending law schools that are too difficult for them, and perform badly.

If black law students were accepted to lesser law schools under race-blind admissions, Professor Sander writes, they would receive better grades and pass the bar in greater numbers. Even accounting for the many black students who could not attend any law school without affirmative action, the ultimate number of black lawyers would still increase, he concludes.

That assertion, which is based on a great deal of data, along with inference and speculation, has provoked an outpouring of written critiques from law professors, economists and social scientists. Several will be published in The Stanford Law Review's May issue.



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[AdmiralKanos]

Note that this thesis is only true if you assume that law school is sufficiently difficult to make it impossible for underqualified students to make it through the program, which I quite frankly doubt. With all due respect to Stravo et al, I don't see how it can be anywhere near as difficult as, say, third-year engineering calculus. It just doesn't strike me as one of those "brutally cut down and eliminate people whose academic skills are found wanting" courses.

Not that I'm particularly interested in what our latest ban-evading gangsta-wannabe moron has to say; he's obviously one of those stock-issue right-wingers who spends his life reading right-wing websites and quoting whatever they have to say as gospel truth.

[Jalinth]

Makes sense given the lawyers I know.

I know a number of the better law firms (Canada) essentially use marks as a "pre-screen. If you get below X, you are simply removed from the selection process unless you have some serious edge to overcome it.
The really top notch ones tend to be school selective, but other ones (good, solid regional firms that are good experience if you want to go into corporate/commercial work) aren't nearly as picky. Most Canadian law schools are at least decent, so they focus on marks.

In accounting (my field), the Big 4 (used to be Big 6) use marks as a screen. They try to recruit locally, so they'll go to all the local universities. But they get so many they also prescreen using marks. The bar isn't ridiculously high (they generally use around 80% before they look at the rest of the package), but does exist.

Even the smaller firm I'm at now, we try to avoid people just scraping by on the reasonable assumption that if you are having problems getting through school, you'll have problems getting through the professional exams.

Sounds like another instance of the law of unintentional consequences

[AdmiralKanos]

Makes sense given the lawyers I know.

How? The logic is seriously flawed. They are saying that not only do 100% of underqualified students flunk out (a questionable assertion), but in fact, more than 100% of underqualified students must flunk out for their claim to be true because they say it's actually lowering the number who make it through.

[Wicked Pilot]

Most colleges have remedial courses, ie English 100, for those who aren't up to snuff. Extensive tutoring is also available. It is possibly to be so unprepared educationally than one can't hack it even with said help, but it's been my experience that those who flunk out do so for discipline/responsiblity problems, not aptitude ones.

[brianeyci]

First Year, writing an essay/studying for test based on readings takes several days. Preparing for a math test takes several weeks.

Second year. Writing an essay/studying for a test based on readings takes maybe a week. Preparing for a math test takes months.

If this trend continues onto third and fourth year, I can safely say that the majority of my workload will be working towards the mathematics part of my degree.

Brian

[The Third Man]

How? The logic is seriously flawed. They are saying that not only do 100% of underqualified students flunk out (a questionable assertion), but in fact, more than 100% of underqualified students must flunk out for their claim to be true because they say it's actually lowering the number who make it through.

Bizarre. Maybe they are trying to say that the flunking-out of the underqualifieds impacts the morale of suitably-qualified black students to such an extent that they too flunk out? This would be very hard to prove or put numbers to, and presumably would rely on the "inference and speculation" mentioned in the last quoted paragraph.

I've posted in favour of "affirmative action" before, but I have to admit that although AA is a powerful tool, if not applied correctly it is useless or worse. It could be argued that "setting someone up to fail" is a mis-application, and I have some sympathy for that view. That is, of course, not necessarily what is happening in this case.

[Jalinth]

Makes sense given the lawyers I know.

How? The logic is seriously flawed. They are saying that not only do 100% of underqualified students flunk out (a questionable assertion), but in fact, more than 100% of underqualified students must flunk out for their claim to be true because they say it's actually lowering the number who make it through.

Note - my reference to "makes sense given the lawyers I know" is based on the hiring practices at these particular law firms. While they don't necessarily hold for the whole industry, these lawyers believe (correctedly or not) that most similar firms have similar methods of articling.
In Canada, articling is required to be admitted to the bar, so not being hired=not being a practicing lawyer. I don't believe this holds true in all parts of the United States.

[Edi]

Getting a law degree is a matter of rote learning for a great part, though you will have to be able to pick the relevant facts and base an argument on those to actually win cases. However, in a system where you can file any kind of bullshit until the heat-death of the universe, even underqualified schmucks will be able to bluster their way through the bar exam if it isn't rigorous enough, and they will pollute the profession.

Getting an engineering degree requires a thorough understanding of the subject and far greater skills at applying that knowledge to a problem where you do not necessarily know all the parameters initially but have to actually work out what they are before you can begin to solve the problem.

I don't know how well the Finnish law school system is comparable to the one in US and Canada, but they have pretty fucking rigorous entry level exams that cut out something like 80-95% of applicants and only admit those who already show a good grasp of the basics and how to apply them to solve problems (identify facts, then present an argument based on them using applicable law). But the people I know who got into law school were smart for the most part, and while there are crooked lawyers here as well, I have gotten the impression that incompetent hacks are pretty uncommon.

Edi

[CelesKnight]

How? The logic is seriously flawed. They are saying that not only do 100% of underqualified students flunk out (a questionable assertion), but in fact, more than 100% of underqualified students must flunk out for their claim to be true because they say it's actually lowering the number who make it through.

I believe that the point is not that the students are underqualified to be lawyers, but that the students are underqualified for the school that they're at. The underlying assumption of the article appears to be that even if a person who is qualified for (say) the law program at the University of Pick-Your-Nose Arkansas, he might not be qualified for Stanford. And a person who is qualified for Standford might not be qualified for Harvard. So, if Harvard accepts the underqualified student, that student is more likely to drop out than if he went to Stanford (where he's more qualified).

Assuming that one accepts the above (of which I myself have no opinion), the conclusion that AA is depressing the total number of graduates is probably correct.