As the U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearing on the ABA's "diversity" requirements last month, the ABA's representative stated that no law schools had ever been denied accreditation for failing to meet "diversity" requirements. Even if that statement was true then, it's not true now. The ABA has denied Charleston Law School provisional accreditation, in part because the ABA is not yet satisfied with its commitment to "diversity." The law school, its future on the line, will now do the only sensible thing under the circumstances, and admit wildly underqualified minority applicants who will go on to fail the bar exam in wildly disproportionate numbers. But there is a saving grace: thanks to the ABA, which condemned the law school for relying too heavily on electronic resources, while they are in law school they will be able to read cases in the official reports, rather than rely on identical PDF files from Westlaw. Makes me proud to be a member of the ABA.
Related Posts (on one page):
- More Evidence of ABA Lies re Accreditation and "Diversity":
- Getting the ABA Out of the Law School Accreditation Business:
- ABA Denies Provisional Accreditation, in Part Because of "Diversity" Concerns:
- Peter Kirsanow on the ABA's "Diversity" Standard for Law Schools:
Then resign. When I found out, right out of law school, that the ABA granted every new graduate a free membership for one year (which, an ABA insider confided to me, accounted for a significant percentage of their claimed membership), I immediately contacted them and demanded to be taken off their rolls.
What? Only certain kinds of minorities count?
You'd think, given those factors, that the ABA would grant some kind of exemption or at least a provisional accreditation. What reasonably qualified black kid would want to enroll in an unaccredited school when some of the best schools in the country is beating down his door because he's a qualified law school applicant?
Also, not being a lawyer, why is the bar exam so closely tied to graduates of accredited schools (I mean, assuming it's not merely a device by which the legal industry keeps its numbers down in order to help with billing rates)?
Let's see, I'll start with Divagator... 1) "more geared to public service." This quote brings up an interesting paradox. More schools that are geared toward "public service" seem to fairly expensive preventing graduates from taking low paying "public service" jobs. It seems most those graduates become P.I. and Civil Litigation attorneys just to pay the bills and have a roof over their head. (this is just an observation and does not relate to the topic at hand). 2) "qualified black kid" going to "unaccredited school". This is true. I don't think any reasonably qualified person would goto an unaccredited school. So what type of person goes to these schools?! 3) "Bar exam" and "Accredited Schools" This can fill volumes of books with the arguments for and against. I will not address this now, but I think there should be debate on this in the future.
Now to the crux of the problem, and yes I have to drag the ABA into this. The problem is lack of "minority" representation in the "legal field." This is not as simple statement as it sounds and of course there will be people that challenge this statement no matter how this is defined.
"Minority" can mean "under-represented minorities" (URM) which is fairly vague. If you live in Texas, Hispanics may not count since lawyers of hispanic descent are fairly represented, but if you are in North Dakota, hispanics may be underrepresented. URM usually excludes Asians. It could mean "traditionally discriminated minorities"; this is just as vague as URM. This could include gay/bisexual/lesbian, hispanics, russian, etc. Or it could mean anyone not a Caucasian Male (which it more than likely means).
"Legal Field" can mean an number of things also. Public interest groups, government, private firms, etc. It probably means private firms, since government and P.I. groups have a health amount of minorities (non-"caucasian males")
So the real problem is the lack of non-"caucasian males" representation in private firms.
Is this statement true? Maybe... looking at the NALP forms, large private law firms like Skadden, Cravath, Latham, and Wachtell have roughly 20% "minority" representation (ignoring the gender of the associate/partner). Not bad. But at the Partner level that percentage drops to roughly 6%.
So why did I go through all this pain?! Because the issue is non-"caucasian male" representation at the partner level in private law firms. Does it really require the ABA to force law schools "diversify"? I would say no. I am a supply-side economist, but I don't think increasing the supply of "minority" lawyers is the most economically efficient way of solving the "problem" (if you think it is a problem). It takes a long time and a lot of billable hours to make partner at a large law firm. I think it would be better to encourage superior work and professional excellence among "minorities." I don't think you do that with (here we go) quotas. The ABA needs to rethink what it is trying to do and how best to get there without taking 10+ years, hurt feelings, lowering standards to get there.
I thought about that myself when I read the article and saw the price tag for Charleston Law (over 25K), but the school can't get state-level funding to lower tuitions b/c of the accreditation problem, so chicken and egg...
I don't believe for a minute that the law schools' diversity drive is related to law firm diversity in this way...it's more likely rooted in the same impulse throughout the rest of academe, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that you're right. The only thing "a long time and a lot of billable hours" gets you at a large law firm is, at best, a lower-tier 'service partner' tag. It's all in who you know, not necessarily what you know. Now the corporations might lean on their law firms to field more diverse partner teams, but that really does nothing to address the underlying dynamics of business relationships.
Plus, in the near future, you're probably going to see more big firms evolve into a multiple-tier partnership structure, and one thing this will accomplish is it will allow them to take in a lot of non-rainmaking minority lawyers (incl. women) into the partnership ranks (in order to "make numbers") without totally f**king up the metrics used to measure profitability. So a mommy-track lawyer can make partner and money roughly equivalent to an 8th-year associate and call herself partner...is this what the ABA had in mind? Does anyone care?
One thing I believe--if you can make rain, you can make gravy, too, no matter race, sex, etc.
Law Schools do not teach what it means to provide good service to clients. Law schools teach service to the “people” and that corporations are tools of the “man” (bourgeoisie or whatever) to oppress the people. (Typical socialist/communist ideology.) Most minorities buy into that line of thought, and when they enter the real world, they are incapable of relating and dealing with clients. Needless to say, they usually stick their foots in their mouths or some sort of related analogy. And of course, that is not good rain-making technique. Hence (thereby /therefore / or some other legal sounding word), minorities are not well represented in the partnership ranks.
Now, some may say that intelligent minorities can learn rain-making/networking skills. Well, that is arguable. The vast majority of minorities in law school (at least the ones I’ve seen) are card carrying members of the communist party (yes, the communist party is alive and well in law school; sorta like bell-bottom jeans, they keep coming back into style). I don’t know if I want a partner that doesn’t believe is serving a capitalist corporation and I would be suspicion of a “reformed” communist/socialist. This leads me to a crazy assertion… admit only moderate or conservative minorities into law school (of course there are only 10 in the whole nation, but it’s worth a shot.)
Why am I writing all of this?! Well... because there is nothing on tv currently.
This cannot be stated enough. It is the root of the problem with the ABA's anti-capitalist, anti-American, pro-minority diversity policy. The ABA knows this fact every bit as well as SouthernJD does, and they're intentionally trying to foment proletariat revolution. I don't see why Article 3 of the Geneva Convention should apply to them.
Suppose a bunch of white supremacists want to start a law school to educate lawyers sympathetic to their cause. Suppose that their school otherwise offers sterling teaching from well qualified faculty that results in higher than usual bar pass rates (or would if their students were allowed to take the bar). Should they be denied accreditation, meaning their graduates will never be able to practice in most jurisdictions, because of their social and political views?
Since most states use ABA accreditation as a gatekeeper through which passage is required to practice law, it seems to me this has major First Amendment implications. White supremacists are just as entitled, it seems to me, to their political opinions as are the rest of us.
Does this conflict with Title VII? If a law school makes an extra effort to recruit Asians and Africans (as opposed to Europeans), is it in violation of Title VII?