Law students entering school in 2023 are the most racially diverse group yet, continuing a multi-year trend.
Jermaine Cruz
While diversity in law schools continues to grow, it has failed to keep pace with demographic representation within the U.S. population. Over the last three years, Black law school applicants have made up roughly 7.8% of all applicants, and, according to the American Bar Association, Black lawyers only make up 5% of all practitioners. Latinx law school applicants made up 9.4% of applicants in 2023, and only 5% of all lawyers in the country.
“Lack of diversity in the legal profession can mean that important needs and perspectives are not adequately reflected in decisions that shape the economy or socioeconomic opportunity,” says Krinsky. “Studies show that criminal defendants often see more negative outcomes if they do not have access to legal representation with whom they feel a connection. And lack of diversity in the legal profession can have a negative impact on individuals seeing law as a career option, which only exacerbates the ongoing lack of diversity.”
In April 2024, researchers Richard R. W. Brooks, a professor at New York University Law School, Kyle Rozema, a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, and Sarath Sanga, a professor at Yale Law School, released a study that examined the law school enrollment impact of statewide bans on the use of race in admissions. Looking at law school enrollments since 1980, the team found that, at the 22 law schools within the 12 states that had banned affirmative action, racial diversity was decreased by 20%, and the majority of those impacted were Black and Latinx students.
“The impact is immediate and persists for at least a decade after the ban is adopted,” wrote Brooks, Rozema, and Sanga. “The effects are larger when the ban is passed directly by voters as a ballot measure, and they are larger at highly selective law schools. At top-20 law schools, minority shares decrease by 35%, compared to 15% at other law schools.”
However, despite this finding, Brooks, Rozema, and Sanga believe that the U.S. Supreme Court’s nationwide expansion of an affirmative action ban might not directly translate into an immediate diversity disaster, as they posit some less selective schools would be able to benefit by taking in students who had been excluded by the ban. They also add it will depend on how schools are able to consider a student’s race should it be mentioned in personal statements.
