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Unpublished Paper
Painting Beyond the Numbers: The Art of Providing Inclusive Law School Admissions To Ensure Full Representation in the Profession
ExpressO (2011)
  • Paula Lustbader
Abstract
The issue of increasing diversity in the profession and the law schools is still timely. In his column for the March 2011 American Bar Association Journal, the ABA President calls for more “to be done to make the legal profession more fully reflect the communities it serves.” In addition, the Society of American Law Teachers is currently preparing to proposal to make to the ABA Accreditation Committee regarding the use of Law School Admission Tests scores and minimum Bar Passage Rates requirements. Many law schools and other institutions of higher learning are wrestling with the issue of diversity and admissions practices. Many schools are intrigued by the promise of a diverse student body but unsure how to achieve it without sacrificing their rankings, endangering their accreditation, and subjecting students of color and those from poor families to a high risk of failure. Current reliance on numerical indicators such as UGPA and LSAT score disproportionately disqualifies otherwise meritorious candidates from underrepresented groups while impoverishing the public who lose the opportunity to be represented by those aspiring lawyers. Although the importance of diversity and the fairness of the law school admissions process have been examined in other scholarship, this is the only article that brings together the threads of the discourse about diversity, adds more of the human elements to the discourse, and offers useful strategies. This article fully discusses the complexity of the various components that impact this issue. Moreover, it is the only article that examines the issue through the lens of academic support programming, and it is the only article to offer detailed prescriptions for an inclusive admissions process without compromising quality or rankings.
Keywords
  • access to law school admissions,
  • public policy,
  • race
Disciplines
Publication Date
March 15, 2011
Citation Information
Paula Lustbader. "Painting Beyond the Numbers: The Art of Providing Inclusive Law School Admissions To Ensure Full Representation in the Profession" ExpressO (2011)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/paula_lustbader/1/