Thread: Is affirmative action hurting minorities in Law School?

There is a bunch of press on the news right now on Affirmative Action causing unqualified people to be admitted only to be rejected later on..

Do you agree?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,301722,00.html

"Currently only about one in three African-Americans who goes to an American law school passes the bar on the first attempt and a majority never become lawyers at all," says UCLA law professor Richard Sander.

In an article published in the Stanford Law Review, Sander and his research team concluded several thousand would-be black lawyers either dropped out of law school or failed to pass the bar because of affirmative action.

Known as the ‘mismatch’ effect, Sander claims students who are unprepared and whose academic credentials are below the median are admitted to law schools they are unqualified to attend. If those same students instead were to go to less elite or competitive schools, more would graduate, pass the bar and become lawyers.

"This is a serious issue and we need to see more research in the area of mismatch," argues Gail Heriot, a professor of law at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "What we need now is more cooperation from the California Bar" Association.

"If those same students instead were to go to less elite or competitive schools, more would graduate, pass the bar and become lawyers."

Nonsense. It's not the competition that keeps minorities from passing the bar - it's basic skills. Competition matters in law school because everything's graded on the curve. The bar exam isn't. Period. Either you understand the legal issues and can write about them or you can't.

Too many law schools, wanting a "diverse" population, admit minority students who don't have the necessary skills in writing and analysis. Professional school is not the place to learn how to write; if you didn't learn that in college, you're going to be in trouble all through law school. You may graduate - someone has to be at the bottom of the class, after all - but you won't be able to pass the bar, which is graded blind. The exam readers don't care about your race or your background and they don't know your name.

Admitting students with low LSAT scores and low college GPAs does them no favors, especially when they take out huge loans that will take them years to pay back while working as something other than lawyers.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the California Bar is graded on a curve and the number that is allowed to pass is limited.