The Most (and Least) Representative Law Schools for Gender, Race, and Ethnicity

Abstract

To what extent do U.S. law school demographics concerning gender, race, and ethnicity reflect the same demographics of their applicant populations? This is a preview (highlighting law school rankings) of a forthcoming paper that attempts to answer the question by developing a measurement of demographic representation with a single index. It derives this measure for law school and baseline populations with various demographic dimensions (the boring technical stuff in Appendix A, page 16). It then ranks law schools against various demographic baselines, including the U.S. population as a whole and the state populations in which each school operates (the more exciting “does-my-school-rank-higher-than-your-school” stuff in Appendix B, page 21). The results let individual law schools know how close their student populations are to their overall target populations with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity. The ultimate conclusion of the forthcoming paper is that the baseline a law school uses to establish its degree of representation matters significantly to the results.