Abstract
Legal education scholars have argued that law schools strategically use Students of Color for enrollment management purposes; they can admit more to meet admission targets, but they should not enroll so many that they need to open new course sections. As law school applications decline, we analyze enrollment panel data reported to the American Bar Association. We find that examining the intersection of race and gender matters for understanding the ways that law schools are strategic about diversity in enrollment management. For each group (e.g., Black women, White men), law schools balance higher enrollment in one year with lower incoming enrollment of that same group in the subsequent year, thereby working against the racial diversification of legal education and the legal profession. In some instances, higher enrollment in one group (e.g., Hispanic women) also leads to higher enrollment in the subsequent year among incoming students with the same race but different gender (e.g., Hispanic men). This analytical approach—informed by intersectionality—reveals that differential race x gender patterns would be overlooked in analyses that solely focused on race while not considering gender. Moreover, the results are generally robust across models examining both the number and percentage representation of incoming students. Finally, we find evidence that these balancing dynamics are sometimes more pronounced at law schools with higher median LSAT scores, which are typically most selective. We discuss implications for equity in legal education and future research directions for graduate and professional education.
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Notes
We use the term Hispanic to align with terminology used by the U.S. Census Bureau, as well as the American Bar Association (ABA) to collect the data we analyzed for this study. According to Salinas and Lozano (2023), Hispanic is a commonly used pan-ethnic label in the United States. It is gender neutral.
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Appendix Descriptive statistics for all variables
Appendix Descriptive statistics for all variables
Variable | Mean | Standard Deviation |
|---|---|---|
Natural log % of incoming Asian women | 1.26 | 0.70 |
Natural log % of incoming Black women | 1.53 | 0.75 |
Natural log % of incoming Hispanic women | 1.84 | 0.72 |
Natural log % of incoming White women | 3.44 | 0.55 |
Natural log % of incoming Asian men | 1.03 | 0.63 |
Natural log % of incoming Black men | 1.16 | 0.63 |
Natural log % of incoming Hispanic men | 1.61 | 0.67 |
Natural log % of incoming White men | 3.42 | 0.58 |
Number of incoming Asian women | 7.62 | 9.00 |
Number of incoming Black women | 10.46 | 15.56 |
Number of incoming Hispanic women | 15.06 | 19.34 |
Number of incoming White women | 61.77 | 32.45 |
Number of incoming Asian men | 5.10 | 5.88 |
Number of incoming Black men | 5.66 | 7.15 |
Number of incoming Hispanic men | 10.87 | 12.89 |
Number of incoming White men | 60.41 | 30.22 |
Natural log % of current Asian women | 1.26 | 0.62 |
Natural log % of current Black women | 1.59 | 0.69 |
Natural log % of current Hispanic women | 1.79 | 0.68 |
Natural log % of current White women | 3.40 | 0.57 |
Natural log % of current Asian men | 1.06 | 0.55 |
Natural log % of current Black men | 1.25 | 0.54 |
Natural log % of current Hispanic men | 1.62 | 0.60 |
Natural log % of current White men | 3.47 | 0.58 |
Natural log % of Faculty of Color | 2.68 | 0.57 |
Natural log of total student enrollment | 6.22 | 0.47 |
% grants/scholarships < 50% of tuition/fees | 37.72 | 15.51 |
% grants/scholarships ≥ 50% of tuition/fees | 30.46 | 15.80 |
Full-time in-state tuition and fees (thousands) | 35.98 | 16.82 |
Cost of off-campus living expenses (thousands) | 21.98 | 4.36 |
Size of first-year classes | 60.06 | 17.86 |
Median LSAT score | 155.93 | 6.95 |
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Bowman, N.A., Fernandez, F., Fenton-Miller, S. et al. Strategically Diverse: An Intersectional Analysis of Enrollments at U.S. Law Schools. Res High Educ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-024-09787-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-024-09787-6