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UnTesting Lawyers

Inside Higher Ed has reported that the ABA ?May Drop LSAT Requirement.? Donald J. Polden, dean of the law school at Santa Clara University and chair of the ABA committee studying the standards, said dropping the LSAT as an accreditation requirement would provide ?greater flexibility for schools to achieve diversity goals in their admitted classes....?

But why stop there? Since promoting ?diversity? seems to be such an important goal for the ABA, why doesn?t it recommend that law schools eliminate grades? That would neatly solve the problem of preferentially admitted minority student being clustered at the bottom of their classes. As summarized by Gail Heriot of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the research of UCLA law professor Richard Sander

demonstrates that in elite law schools, 51.6% of African-American law students had first-year GPAs in the bottom 10% of their class as opposed to only 5.6% of white students in 1992 (the year for which Sander was able to find national data).... At mid-range public schools, the median African-American student's first-year grades corresponded to the 5th percentile among white students. For mid-range private schools, the corresponding percentile was 8th, and for lower-range private schools it was 7th. With disappointingly few exceptions, African-American students were grouped towards the bottom of their class. Moreover, contrary to popular lore, the performance gap did not close as students continued through law school. Instead, by graduation, it had gotten wider.

Getting rid of grades would completely eliminate this rampant racial stratification.

But why stop with grades? In his study of graduates of the University of Michigan law school, Prof. Sander testified that ?black graduates of the law school [were] about eight times as likely as white graduates of the law school to fail state bar examinations on their first attempt.? Since state bar exams have such a disparate impact on minority applicants, shouldn?t the ABA recommend their elimination as well in order to promote more ?diversity? in the legal profession?

Surely there must be at least one Libertarian on the ABA committee who could explain that officially imposed barriers to entry into a profession, such as strict licensing requirements and exams, are an offense against economic freedom and that the market would rid itself (eventually) of incompetent practitioners.

Full post as published by Discriminations on January 16, 2011 (boomark / email).