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Affirmative Action

(if you can't find a pause button above, you can click on the icon or mute your speakers.)

If you've been around for a while, you know I like to memorialize Dr. King's birthday. Sometimes I talk about Dr. King's work, other times about the civil rights movement, and occasionally about the degree of anti-Yankee bias still present in some parts of the south.

Ha-ha? No. If there's affirmative action left out there anywhere, I don't know it. Although I'm a great fan of the new "diversity" concept, as I explain in my "Jelly Donut" model of law school admissions, it does little to answer the Supreme Court's challenge in Grutter v. Bollinger (a/k/a/ "the Michigan case") that we fix something in the next generation. As universities cut budgets and use what little money they have to chase USNews rankings, there's virtually no resource available for educating minorities. CLEO lost significant Federal funding, and minority outreach is expensive.

I had hoped to be able to announce a new program of my own, and I may yet pull something together, but on a smaller scale than I had intended. In the meantime, there are programs that any college or law school can initiate.

• Use work study funds to pay tutors for reading and writing skills, problem-solving skills, and LSAT prep.
• Urge law students to set up student groups dedicated to minority outreach and education. We can even make a national network, like the Federalist Society: "Meet the Challenge" established by Grutter.
• Make the presence of such activities a significant factor in evaluating applicants in the discretionary range, and announce this prominently in your application materials.
  • Require or suggest that one recommendation or evaluation be from the applicant's supervisor at a public interest activity or internship. Set up a hierarchy of jobs: Teach for America, minority, poverty, elementary education, domestic violence, etc. All good work is good work, but all does not equally apply to the challenge of Grutter.
  • The best thing about this "discretionary application priority" is that schools need not change their presumptive admit or deny ranges at all; they need not admit minorities with lower test scores than they'd like. All they need to do is make Habitat for Humanity more important than Model U.N. in their discretionary reading.

And why now? Because the economy demands it.

Changes in Applications Demographics

Here's the picture of the law school world as of January, 2012:

• Applications are down 15% or more nationally for a second year. (as I pointed out on Nov.25th, this decline is not uniform, but the overall picture is of a sharp decline.)
• LSATs administered in June, October and December are at least 15% lower than last year's test on all three occasions.
• Every region of the country reports sharp declines.
• Law schools are being bashed in the media right and left.
  • In some instances, they're earning that bashing by reporting false data to the ABA and the applicants.
• Law schools have less financial aid available as their budgets have been cut or re-allocated toward wooing people with high LSATs (as I discuss above).

How does this affect minorities?

When the economy declines, poor people (who are often minorities) are less likely to continue in school.

• Their families need them to bring in an income;
• Their perception (ever-more-often accurate) is that schools don't have enough grant money to help them over the financial hurdle;
• They believe that even if they succeed, there may be no jobs for them.

People whose families have resources worry less about cost and loans, and more often believe (and more often correctly) that their family's connections will keep them afloat. So, although many people are hurt by a tough economy, the poor are hurt disproportionately, and the poor are disproportionately minorities.

Other Admissions News

None.

At least, not in the sense of what any school is doing or when. The biggest news is that nothing's happening. Apps are down, LSATs are down, schools are hiring new recruiters and fancying up their web pages, and most of us are waiting to see what happens. If we're still waiting in February, I might treat you to an old Hank Williams song titled "Waiting," but one song per update is enough.

Feb. 2 is Groundhog Day. Let's see what pops up then.