Newly released data reveals that, although students of color are steadily making up a higher percentage of those receiving law degrees, racial diversity in law school admissions, and attendance remains relatively stagnant. Some measures of academic success also declined for law students of color in 2023.
AccessLex Institute, a nonprofit organization that advocates access to legal education, released its biannual summary of demographic, financial, and academic data about U.S. law students and applicants. AccessLex found that in 2023, the proportion of law degrees awarded to students of color was the highest recorded — 31% of degree recipients were non-white.
Tiffane Cochran
“We know that that attrition measure isn't just picking up on academic attrition,” said Tiffane Cochran, AccessLex’s vice president for research. “It also includes attrition for other reasons — so that could be financial reasons, that could be, ‘I'm having financial or health or family difficulties that just don't allow me to persist at this point in my legal education.’ And those issues tend to disproportionately affect students of color and their experience.”
Angela Winfield, vice president and chief diversity officer for the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), said the jump in attrition rates demonstrates why “it's not just about getting [students of color] in the door, it's about ushering them through.” Access is important, but law schools must also focus on supporting students of color along their academic journeys, she said.
Law school admission rates for applicants of color remained low and stagnant between 2022 and 2023, with just 47% of Black applicants, 57% of Hispanic applicants, and 53% of Indigenous applicants receiving at least one law school admission offer in 2023, compared with 79% of white applicants. On the other hand, 69% of Asian applicants received at least one offer, nearly on par with the average for all applicants, which was70%.
Low acceptance rates for minority students are heavily influenced by two main factors, Cochran explained. First, Black and Hispanic students, on average, earn lower LSAT scores than their white and Asian peers. Second, they tend to apply for law school later in the rolling admissions cycle, after many spots have been filled.
“If you're a first-generation student, or if you're someone who doesn't have the navigational capital, the cultural capital to know that,” Cochran said, “then you will look at those deadlines…and take them as given, thinking that as long as you're applying ahead of that deadline, you are in good shape. But we know that's just not the case.”
Meg Terrel, 28, from Houston, applied to law schools in February and is starting her first year at St. John’s University in Queens this month. Terrel, who is a first-generation law student, said she thinks aspiring Black lawyers like herself must often lean on members of their own community for help navigating the labyrinthine legal education system.
“[The law school application process] was definitely very intimidating,” Terrel said. “Thankfully, I have friends from undergrad, other black attorneys, who really held my hand and guided me through the entire process. But as far as institutional assistance, no. [None of] the schools I talked to [were] like, ‘Oh, we can help you with this.’ There was none of that.”
Systemic disadvantages are why it’s important for schools and organizations like LSAC and AcessLex to reach prospective law students of color early, Winfield said. The banning of race-based admissions (RBA) through the Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard have only made early intervention more critical.
Angela Winfield
In service of those goals, the organization, in partnership with 34 law schools, offers a preparation and mentorship program for those who plan to apply for law school but face structural barriers. Similarly, AcesssLex offers a post-baccalaureate program designed to prepare aspiring law students for the academic and financial demands of legal education.
Cochran and Winfield said ongoing racial disparities in law school admissions, attendance, and completion represent a daunting barrier to creating a more just and equitable legal system. However, there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the future, Winfield said. Among them is the fact that the prohibition of RBA has not had a chilling effect on the diversity of law school applicants. In fact, according to LSAC data, the reverse has been true — law school applications are up this year, and a higher percentage of applicants are people of color.
As of Friday, there were 5.7% more current-year U.S. law school applicants and 2.6% more current-year applications submitted than at the same time in 2023, according to LSAC’s application tracker. As of July 28, about 47.9% of 2024 applicants identified as people of color, up from 47% at the same time last year, said Javier Maymí-Pérez, LSAC’s communications director.
“Systemic inequities, socioeconomic and educational opportunity, all of these things compound over years and over someone's lifetime to create these disparities,” Winfield said. “So, we're not dealing with just one issue — it's a series of them, and it's a very complex challenge. But that doesn't mean it's insurmountable.”
