New Law School “Mismatch” Data from UCLA Lawprof Richard Sander

In a new post, Sander recounts the history of his work on “mismatch” (the incoming academic qualifications gap between students who are favored in admission because they contribute to ‘diversity’ and the student body as a whole) in law schools. After noting that it’s been extremely difficult to acquire additional data,

Robert Steinbuch (a colleague at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock) and I eventually secured the public release of data from 12 cohorts of law students at four law schools, covering about 6,500 students in all. And after a multi-year review process, the Journal of Legal Education—the official organ of the Association of American Law Schools—has now agreed to publish the first set of our results in its next issue.

Our findings indicate that mismatch can account for two-thirds to three-quarters of the Black-white gap.

Our findings are even stronger than we expected. A student’s degree of mismatch in law school is by far the strongest predictor of whether he or she will pass a bar exam on a first attempt. In 2005, I estimated that mismatch could account for half of the bar-passage gap between Blacks and whites, with the rest caused by lower average pre-law-school preparation levels among Black students. Our findings indicate, however, that mismatch can account for two-thirds to three-quarters of the Black-white gap, as well as more than half of the Hispanic-white gap. Importantly, we found that w

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Article from Reason.com

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