Yes. In case you were wondering, a new study — by Aaron Taylor, an assistant professor at the Saint Louis University Law School — really has determined, as the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s title of its article on the study puts it, that “Less-Prestigious Law Schools Enroll More Minority Students, Report Says.”
“As expected,” Professor Taylor writes, “increases in students of color, both in terms of proportions and actual numbers, were inversely tied to quintile median LSAT score,” and “[t]he average LSAT score for black test takers is … the second lowest average among all of the racial and ethnic classifications.” [Puerto Ricans are a bit lower.]
Professor Taylor may not have been surprised by his findings (who would be?), but he is not pleased. “Schools that can ensure good career prospects aren’t making diversity a priority,” he said to the National Law Journal. “There seems to be much more of a focus on the [LSAT and grade-point average] numbers.”
More academically selective law schools remain, well, more selective. And, as Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor have demonstrated in their discussions of “mismatch,” merely admitting more minorities does not “ensure good career prospects” to the mismatched students who cluster at the bottom of their classes and disproportionately drop out or fail the bar exam. There is no reference to “mismatch” in Prof. Taylor’s study.
But all is not bleak. As the National Law Journal reported, “Harvard added eight diverse law students between 2010 and 2013, Taylor found.”
I’m not sure how a law student can be “diverse,” but by Prof. Taylor’s logic a law school whose students were 100% “people of color” would be 100% “diverse.”
