By: Jeffrey Evans Stake
For decades, the Law School Admission Test has played a key role in
the admissions process at many law schools. Pressures from the
rankings published by U.S. News & World Report
(“USNAWR”) have increased its importance in recent years, to the
point that few schools deny admission to many students with LSAT
scores above the school median. The emphasis on LSAT in admissions
has narrowed the range of LSATs at many schools. This
stratification could have negative effects on the law school
experience for students and may have already decreased the number
of minority students admitted. The future looks worse.
Now that schools have nearly maximized their LSATs for a good
portion of the class, they will turn their attentions to the
undergraduate grade point average (“UGPA”). If schools maximize
both the UGPA and the LSAT, there will be fewer minorities, and
especially fewer blacks, at the law schools ranked in the top half
of the USNAWR rankings. This Article predicts that minority and
black representation in law schools will diminish unless something
is done to reverse the forces currently in play. A partial solution
to this admissions problem would be for U.S. News & World
Report to shift its formula from relying on the UGPA and LSAT
medians to the 75th percentiles. Another solution would be for the
LSAC to construct, the ABA to collect, and USNAWR to incorporate,
an index made from the UGPA and LSAT rather than using the
two
criteria separately. Only through using one of these alternatives
can law schools avoid admitting fewer and fewer minorities and
ultimately ending diversity in the legal profession.