[NOTE: This post has been UPDATED]
According to a report in the National Law Journal yesterday, the State Bar of California “is finalizing a proposal that calls on U.S. News to adjust its formula so that diversity accounts for 15% of the overall law school rankings.”
“The deans care dearly about where they rank,” said Craig Holden, a partner at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith and the chairman of the council, which is spearheading the proposal. “The rankings are a real driver for change — everybody recognizes that — and when you make diversity a sidebar rather than a component of the rankings, you’re sidelining the issue.”
Making diversity a factor in the rankings would create a solid incentive for law school administrators to bolster their diversity efforts, Holden said. Law firms and legal clients have recognized the benefits of diversity among attorneys, but law schools need to do more to create a supply of minority lawyers, he said.
….
“Diversity assessments should not be limited to admissions and student body demographics,” the proposal reads. “Instead, diversity should also be measured by the support and resources provided by the institution to foster an inclusive culture and climate in which students from diverse backgrounds can excel.”
A real driver for change? Can anyone point to a law school, any law school, that is not already tripping over admissions standards to promote more “diversity”?
But wait. Isn’t this the same California Bar Association that refuses to release privacy-protected data on the success of “diverse” law students on the bar exam?
Judge Curtis E.A. Karnow of the California Superior Court for San Francisco County ruled last week [article dated March 30, 2010] that the state bar is not legally obliged to release the data sought by Richard H. Sander, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, and Joe Hicks, a former governor of the California state bar who is involved in a consortium of affirmative-action researchers organized by Mr. Sander. The two men were joined by the California First Amendment Coalition in their lawsuit, which seeks state-bar data on law students broken down by race and ethnicity.
Apparently the California Bar Association wants U.S. News to judge law schools on the basis of everything they do for “diverse” students … except how well they educate them.
UPDATE: Researchers Appeal
Richard Sander and Joe Hicks, the lead plaintiffs against the California Bar Association, are appealing to the California Supreme Court.
The lead plaintiff in the suit, filed last month, is Richard H. Sander, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles and the author of a controversial 2004 study arguing that race-conscious admissions policies hurt many black law students, by setting them up to perform so poorly in law school that they have less chance of entering their chosen field….
Mr. Sander has sought since 2006 to get the state bar to voluntarily produce data on students’ exam performances, but, at the urging of various interest groups and some law-school deans, the state bar has refused. Mr. Sander’s lawsuit argues that the bar-exam results are public records that can be released with redactions to protect the privacy of individual law-school graduates.
The state bar, however, argues that students taking the test were assured that their personal information and results would not be released to third parties.
I have discussed the Sander research and lawsuit too many times to cite all of them (if you’re interested, type “Sander” in the search box), but this is one that links to a bunch of others.
