Law School Admissions Lag Among MinoritiesMeanwhile, lawyer Mark Greenbaum complains in the LA Times that, by his estimate, there are 50% more law school grads each year than are needed to fill legal jobs:
by Tamar LewinWhile law schools added about 3,000 seats for first-year students from 1993 to 2008, both the percentage and the number of black and Mexican-American law students declined in that period, according to a study by a Columbia Law School professor.
What makes the declines particularly troubling, said the professor, Conrad Johnson, is that in that same period, both groups improved their college grade-point averages and their scores on the Law School Admission Test, or L.S.A.T.
“Even though their scores and grades are improving, and are very close to those of white applicants [not true], African-Americans and Mexican-Americans are increasingly being shut out of law schools,” said Mr. Johnson, who oversees the Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic at Columbia, which collaborated with the Society of American Law Teachers to examine minority enrollment rates at American law schools.
However, Hispanics other than Mexicans and Puerto Ricans made slight gains in law school enrollment.
The number of black and Mexican-American students applying to law school has been relatively constant, or growing slightly, for two decades. But from 2003 to 2008, 61 percent of black applicants and 46 percent of Mexican-American applicants were denied acceptance at all of the law schools to which they applied, compared with 34 percent of white applicants.
“What’s happening, as the American population becomes more diverse, is that the lawyer corps and judges are remaining predominantly white,” said John Nussbaumer, associate dean of Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s campus in Auburn Hills, Mich., which enrolls an unusually high percentage of African-American students.
Mr. Nussbaumer, who has been looking at the same minority-representation numbers, independently of the Columbia clinic, has become increasingly concerned about the large percentage of minority applicants shut out of law schools.
“A big part of it is that many schools base their admissions criteria not on whether students have a reasonable chance of success, but how those L.S.A.T. numbers are going to affect their rankings in the U.S. News & World Report,” Mr. Nussbaumer said. “Deans get fired if the rankings drop, so they set their L.S.A.T. requirements very high.
“We’re living proof that it doesn’t have to be that way, that those students with the slightly lower L.S.A.T. scores can graduate, pass the bar and be terrific lawyers.”
Margaret Martin Barry, co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers, said that while she understood the importance of rankings, law schools must address the issue of diversity. “If you’re so concerned with rankings, you’re going to lose a whole generation,” she said.
The Columbia study found that among the 46,500 law school matriculants in the fall of 2008, there were 3,392 African-Americans, or 7.3 percent, and 673 Mexican-Americans, or 1.4 percent. Among the 43,520 matriculants in 1993, there were 3,432 African-Americans, or 7.9 percent, and 710 Mexican-Americans, or 1.6 percent. The study, whose findings are detailed at the Web site A Disturbing Trend in Law School Diversity, relied on the admission council’s minority categories, which track Mexican-Americans separately from Puerto Ricans and Hispanic/Latino students.
“We focused on the two groups, African-Americans and Mexican-Americans, who did not make progress in law school representation during the period,” Mr. Johnson said. “The Hispanic/Latino group did increase, from 3.1 percent of the matriculants in 1993, to 5.1 percent in 2008.”
Mr. Johnson said he did not have a good explanation for the disparity, particularly since the 2008 LSAT scores among Mexican-Americans were, on average, one point higher than those of the Hispanics, and one point lower in 1993.
Over all, Mr. Johnson said, it is puzzling that minority enrollment in law schools has fallen, even since the United States Supreme Court ruled in 2003, in Grutter v. Bollinger, that race can be taken into account in law school admissions because the diversity of the student body is a compelling state interest.
“Someone told me that things had actually gotten worse since the Grutter decision, and that’s what got us started looking at this,” Mr. Johnson said. “Many people are not aware of the numbers, even among those interested in diversity issues. For many African-American and Mexican-American students, law school is an elusive goal.”
From 2004 through 2008, the field grew less than 1% per year on average, going from 735,000 people making a living as attorneys to just 760,000, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics postulating that the field will grow at the same rate through 2016. Taking into account retirements, deaths and that the bureau's data is pre-recession, the number of new positions is likely to be fewer than 30,000 per year. That is far fewer than what's needed to accommodate the 45,000 juris doctors graduating from U.S. law schools each year.Of course, a lot of people who graduate from law school never pass the Bar Exam, including about 40% of black law school grads and 53% of all blacks who start law school, according to Richard Sanders. I don't believe there is affirmative action grading on Bar Exams, so that test traps a lot of blacks who have taken out huge students loans to attend law school. Why is the NYT pushing for playing that kind of dirty trick on blacks who are even less likely to pass the Bar Exam?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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73 comments:
Why is the NYT pushing for playing that kind of dirty trick on blacks who are even less likely to pass the Bar Exam?
Because the NYT doesn't care about black people.
Why is the NYT pushing for playing that kind of dirty trick on blacks who are even less likely to pass the Bar Exam?
Coming up on the NYT OpEd page: Let's throw out the Bar Exam.
"“What’s happening, as the American population becomes more diverse, is that the lawyer corps and judges are remaining predominantly white,”
Hard to believe, when so many of the profession are Near Eastern Asiatics.
But perhaps someone called Tamar Lewin wouldn't see it that way?
Why not have AA law school admissions? What's wrong with the US having dumber lawyers?
Feature not bug.
Re NYT: are they a "news"paper or do they just use semi-facts as an excuse for editorials?
Related: "Data shows racial gaps in Colorado public-school suspensions"
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_14122916
As usual the riff-raff commenters show more knowledge and sense than the highly paid and ever-so-edumacated professional crazies*.
And: "Thirty-five years pass, and we're still asking why."
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_14137917
*Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting different results.
I feel embarassed about admitting to having read the Denver Post - it was only because the paper was lying around in a Burger King. The article I mentioned above was front-page with a big graphic, i.e., THIS IS IMPORTANT!
Why is the NYT pushing for playing that kind of dirty trick on blacks who are even less likely to pass the Bar Exam?
Because: Diversity is Strength!
excellent, thanks for this
"However, Hispanics other than Mexicans and Puerto Ricans made slight gains in law school enrollment."
This kind of undermines the premise of the NYT article.
And, I see that Jews (or Asians) are not mentioned, are they not distinguished from "whites"? Jewish attendance at law school is possibly quite high for a minority.
Sooner or later every affirmative action student has to go out into the real world and face reality. Unless, of course, he finds an affirmative action job that shields him from the consequences of his incompetence. Barack Obama has managed to ride the affirmative action wave all the way to the presidency, and we are all paying the consequences.
Why is the NYT pushing for playing that kind of dirty trick on blacks who are even less likely to pass the Bar Exam?
Because it's not about helping blacks or anybody else. It's primarily about making liberals feel good about themselves. I'm sure I, a racist blogger, care more about blacks than Conrad Johnson does.
I don't believe there is affirmative action grading on Bar Exams.... Why is the NYT pushing for playing that kind of dirty trick on blacks who are even less likely to pass the Bar Exam?
Just a hunch here, but perhaps because AA grading will be the next Big Thing the left will campaign for?
Is any data available on *average* LSAT scores at law schools? I think not, but I'm interested.
What is used in the magazine rankings is the 25th and 75th percentile LSATs. These in effect ignore the affirmative action admits (tho limiting them to 25%). As a result, the NYT suggestion that concern for rankings has reduced affirmative action is wrong.
"Why is the NYT pushing for playing that kind of dirty trick on blacks who are even less likely to pass the Bar Exam?"
Well I guess I could point out that this NYT article is consistent with a politically correct commandment, "Thou shalt not pass up an opportunity to cause guilt and self-loathing in white, Northern European males."
However, that misses the more subtle "benefit" of having tens of thousands of minority individuals who don't have any of the advantages of a professional legal career(including a code of ethics, income, and a stake in the economy), but instead have acquired enough legal knowledge to make them irresponsibly dangerous.
A second comment. I looked at the linked Sailer article, and it has data on average LSAT scores by race overall (as opposed to school by school).
An interesting project would be to estimate how the US News rankings would be affected if they were done using the average LSAT at a school instead of the 25th and 75th percentiles (they average those two, or something like that--- I believe their index formula is public).
This would involve something like the following. Take the average of the 25th and 75th percentiles to get an estimate of the average white-Asian score at the law school. (This would be too low, because the white average would be closer to the 60th percentile than the 50th, but it's ok for a first cut). Call this M.
Calculate the national black/white LSAT score ratio and call it R. Our estimate for the average black score at our school will be RM.
Find the black percentage at the particular school, which is probably public info, and call it P.
The estimate for the school average would then be A = PRM + (1-P)M.
(This ignores Asians, Hispanics, etc. and special admits due to money and political influence.)
Then rank the schools by A instead of by M, and then see how using A instead of M would affect the US News rankings.
What would be especially interesting would be one last step: see how many rankings a school could jump if it switched to P=0 by ending affirmative action.
The anguish over this has been ongoing on for the last 50 years and will continue for the next 50. You'd think fatigue with the subject of minority academic lag would have set in by now, but no, every new generation has to reinvent the wheel and puzzle over this. It's overdue for the egghead missionaries to butt out and let some "common sense" take over. Face the facts: a black can't be transformed into a white. Not only that, the vast majority of blacks don't want to be imitation white people. They just have little interest in academia, it's not high on their value system. Sure, there's exceptions that everybody points to but they're just that, exceptions. It's all a white thing, primarily.
Steve this is off topic, but on that other thread a very good suggestion was made:
_
Eric said...
Unless for every one kid the high IQ lady has, the ''guest'' worker, while she's here, has one - or two or .... little baby American citizens.
No problem. Allow only high IQ guest workers.
__
I would humbly say that the people in power in the USA, the people that run the republican party and the democratic party, and the majory NGOs and foundations and think tanks and corporations, I mean the vast majority of the high IQ, highly educated, high paid people in our society, the people that make policy, the VAST majority of these people depend on a the availability of low wage labor to make their wives happy.
I mean, all the men on this blog may yearn for a return to a time in which women marry young and tend home, without the help of a latino nanny or cleaning woman, but it just ain't going to happen.
My own experience, spending time talking politics with a huge number of cognitive elite people, is that ending the immigration of NAMs just gets no traction at all, and when you get down to it it is just self interest. They see NAMs as their supply of nannies and gardeners.
We believers in HBD can't keep banging our heads against the wall. Just about every member of the elite in the US feels they need access to cheap domestic labor.
May I humbly suggest something new? Everyone on this blog knows that if you go to the poorest and most backward villages in North China and move the young women of that village to the USA, and then you fast forward 50 years you will see the grandchildren of those chinese young women going to medical school and engineering school and paying a hell of a lot more in taxes than they consume in services.
If the elite absolutely insists on importing peasant girls who will work for very little money as domestic help, why not import all these domestic helpers from China instead of Latin America.
In my humble opinion, this is the best compromise we believers in HBD can possibly get - we have to accept that the elite men want to import millions of domestic workers (in order to satisfy the wives of the elite men who need the domestic help) But we can get chinese young women instead of Latin young women.
And for all the people on this blog that really care about increasing the number of white people in the USA, just cross off "china" and insert "Ukraine" above.
Let me repeat that, I think the USA has it within its power to import a few million poor Ukrainian peasant girls to work as cleaning ladies and nannies, instead of importing latin Americans.
In sum let me say the oft repeated goal of the people on this blog of ending immigration of low skill immigrants is completely unrealistic. Shift to something realistic, like importing the domestic workers from a population like China or Ukraine that will eventually produce successful grandchildren, not from Latin America
"For many African-American and Mexican-American students, law school is an elusive goal.”
That good news. There's one land-shark for about every 262 people in the US, and enough is too much.
These articles seem to focus on law schools rather than science (real science - not sociology or climatology) or engineering because:
- law school is a lot easier to bullshit your way through.
- lawyers use the "force of government" to control other people, which liberals love to (try to) do; scientists and engineers merely make things better.
The Mexican-American students seem awfully low in number. I wonder if many smarter hispanics just self identify as white.
It’s obvious that race plays an enormous role in the law school admissions process. Last year I scored in the 81st percentile on the LSAT. Regardless of their economic status, blacks who score in the 80th percentile can usually write their own ticket as far as law school is concerned, while whites have to score in at least the 90th percentile to even be considered at any of the Ivies.
I’m shocked by this article. Minority students should be flooding law schools. They receive special treatment admissions and so long as they can graduate and pass the bar they can take advantage of the diversity programs offered at all the top law firms and secure a great job.
Do 40% of blacks really fail the bar? I’m a little skeptical of that number. In most states the bar exam is really not that hard, the exceptions being New York and California.
When is America ever going to deal honestly and truthfully with the reality of racial differences in intelligence?
Steve
I am a liscensed attorney who graduated from law schoo about 5 years ago. When I was in school approximatly 80% of the bottom 10% of the class were black. At my school all students on grade probation were required to go to one teacher for advisment. Guess what, he was black. If you look at most law schools the grade probation counselor will be black. Most of the black students came from majority black high schools and went to majority black colleges. When the got into law school they were ill prepared and most of them struggled. A very, very, low percentage actually have a high enough lsat to get in and are given special admission. That is why it is almost impossible for whites to get in on special admission.
Our school allowed 80% of applicants in on the index (a mathmatical formula including your gpa and lsat score) if this added up above a certain number you were automatically admited. The other 20% were special applicants where other things such as life experiences were taken into account, this is where most of the blacks gained admission.
Now for the kicker. Steve I have to say that you are dead wrong on one point. Hardly any blacks take out big loans to attend law school. They all recieve scholarships. I know for a fact the even though they made up 20% of my class and were generally in the bottom of the class rankings (not a single black was on law review during my tenure) they recieved over 80% of the scholarship money the school offered.
Simple solution. Set Jewish admission to law schools at 5%--which would still be 2.5x their representation in the overall population--and set aside the rest of the percentage that Jews occupy now to blacks, Hispanics, and poor whites. Thus, if Jews now make up 40% of admission to top law schools, let them have 5%, let blacks have 15%, Hispanics 15%, and let poor dumb whites have 5%.
This would be good for the Right since it would reduce the number of highly skilled Jewish lawyers(most of them liberal or leftist) and expand the number of less talented black and Hispanic lawyers. It's better for us if inferior black and Hispanic lawyers than smart Jewish lawyers represent the Left. Just look at the mess Gonzalez made in the Bush Jr. department. Imagine liberal lawyers being a whole bunch of Gonzalezes. Better that than liberal lawyers being a bunch of Dershowitzes.
Also, it is a COMPELLING STATE INTEREST to reduce the power of the Jews. Why should a people who make up only 2% of the population--and happen to so overwhelmingly leftist and even anti(white)American--have so much power in the legal profession that affects us all? It's also a COMPELLING STATE INTEREST to reduce the number of Jews in the media. Why should Jews own 90% of the media? Why should half the reporters at places like TIME or NEWSWEEK--supposedly National magazines--be Jewish? Isn't Slate.com mostly a liberaljew.com? If the media are the fourth estate, does it make sense to have them controlled by a fifth column? Wouldn't people be alarmed if 90% of media were owned by and if 50% of top journalists were Mormons, Arab-Americans, Chinese-Americans, or Mexican-Americans? So, how come no one expresses alarm by the near total ownership of the media in the hands of the liberal(and some neocon)Jews. That is the 900 lb gorilla in the room.
"Diversity" is a red herring. By promoting 'diversity', we are told that there will be a fairer sharing of power, but as long as Jews are included as whites, 'diversity' will hurt whites, not Jews. Affirmative action against 'whites' hurts the less intelligent whites, not the smartest whites--who happen to be Jewish. Since Jews are the smartest(and richest and best connected) people in America, they will be affected less by affirmative action that poor and middle class whites who, though smarter than blacks and Hispanics, aren't as smart as the Jews. Thus, 'diversity' is just a means by which liberal Jews are undermining white power so as to forge an alliance with blacks(like Obama) and Hispanics(like Sotomayor).
If white Hispanics--indeed, many are white--count as a separate group, then Jews should count as a separate group. If whites must make concessions via affirmative action to less intelligent blacks and Hispanics, Jews--and rich liberal wasps--must make concessions to middle class and working class whites.
Because Jews are counted as whites, Jewish power and overrepresentation are regarded as an excess of 'white' power, but nothing could be further from the truth. Most Jews--who are liberal--are for undermining white gentile interests and power. And, as long as Jews are included with the 'whites', affirmative action will reduce the power of conservative working class and middle class whites, not the power of 'white' Jews who are smart enough to surf above the waves of 'social justice'.
In short, Jews are counted as 'whites', thus whites are said to have too much power. Therefore, does it mean there should be fewer Jews admitted to top schools? NO, it means there should be fewer non-Jewish whites admitted. Not because affirmative action guidelines spell it out this way but because that's just how things work out given the fact that Jewish whites are smarter than non-Jewish whites. And of course, Jews know all about this in private while yammering about equality about races in public.
All lawyers & judges should be black.
Meanwhile, Mr. Johnson announced his astonishment that, while he calls his cat Fido, it continues to meow. "I suspect sinister forces at work,' he itoned.
“We’re living proof that it doesn’t have to be that way, that those students with the slightly lower L.S.A.T. scores can graduate, pass the bar and be terrific lawyers.”
That's fine, of course. But that also includes white and asian students with lower LSAT scores. But they ALSO don't need to go to Yale Law or Boalt Hall. This is about making elite whites feel better about themselves. I'd like to compare the bar passage rate of black ivy league law graduates with the bar passage rates of whites and asians from fair to middling law schools. My understaning is that--surprise, surprise--this is closely guarded data.
"“What’s happening, as the American population becomes more diverse, is that the lawyer corps and judges are remaining predominantly white,” said John Nussbaumer, associate dean of Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s campus in Auburn Hills, Mich., which enrolls an unusually high percentage of African-American students. "
Fascinating. I for one doubt that a dean at Cooley law school (notable for being the worst law school in the US) could live with himself unless he had some sort of self-justification.
It appears that his is diversity. It doesn't matter if none of his graduates have jobs to pay off their crushing debt - his graduates are more diverse.
The profession of law may become even more unattractive in the near future. Just last year the received wisdom was that all salaries in the private sector should be determined by market forces alone. This last year the radical Obama administration has set a precedent for the government to set the compensation of corporate executives by fiat.
Obama and the Democrats could get away with capping corporate salaries and benefits because currently the heads of big organizations are not in favor. But this precedent may very well be seized by conservatives when as appears likely they return to power in the next couple elections.
The Republicans are already running on the idea of health care reform means tort reform. We can expect Republicans to demonize lawyers just as Democrats have demonized CEOs.
If compensation is to be determined by popular attitudes we should consider which groups are popular and which are perceived as overpaid.
The first group that comes to mind is probably baseball players. You always hear griping about how some current utility infielder makes more money than Mickey Mantle. Expect congressional hearings on ball player salaries.
How are lawyers regarded? In terms of popularity they seem to rank right around serial child molesters. I don't think it would be very hard to introduce legislation to cap attorney's fees. It might not be that blatant and obvious but a cap on contingency fees - which is easy to sell to the public - does much the same thing.
We always hear about how "racist" firefighter and police exams are, but seldom ever here how "racist" the Bar exam is. Why is this?
Until the justice system cleans up its act and stops being "racist" to NAMs, they have no business telling various police and fire departments to stop making their tests so "racist".
Deal?
Here we go....
The current weak economy makes it all the more vital for the United States to enact comprehensive immigration reform that legalizes undocumented workers.
From the Center for American Progress. Can't download the full report though.
FIRST POST OF THE THREAD: The article I mentioned above was front-page with a big graphic, i.e., THIS IS IMPORTANT!
Yet again, the LIFO stack rears its ugly head?
Related.
"Why not have AA law school admissions? What's wrong with the US having dumber lawyers? Feature not bug."
post of the goddamn day
affirmative action in law school? let's see what the tribe thinks about that...
How about changing law school rankings to account for diversity?
Law school does practically nothing to prepare one for the bar. I should be able to take the bar in any state without attending law school, but I can't thanks to barriers to entry put up by rent-seeking lawyers and law schools.
Also, related to my prior post that law school should not be mandatory to take the bar, why is the US the only (?) country where law school is a graduate degree and lawyers are afforded the bogus title of juris doctor?? As far as I know, in most of the world, a law degree is a bachelor's degree.
Back in the 1920s, the world's greatest golfer, Bobby Jones, dropped out of law school at the half-way point, passed the bar exam, and rose to the top of his profession, arguing dozens of cases before the Supreme Court.
It was a different world back then.
It was a different world back then.
Sigh...
Look, could we go easy on the nostalgia around here?
The modern world is difficult enough to deal with as it is, without being forced to realize how much better our grandparents and great-grandparents had it.
Face, meet mud; now rub yourself in it.
Only a bit OT: For an amusing account of a black lawyer's conception of being a race victim, check out a 1999 book called "The Good Black." Ivy-league law grad goes to work for bankruptcy powerhouse Weil Gotshal. After 5 yrs. he's told he doesn't work hard enough, and he agrees. They give him a year to find other work, and he lands at big Chicago firm's D.C. outpost. He specializes in exceedingly narrow niche of insurance insolvency, getting work from firm's superstar trial man. Latter leaves firm to go solo, causing D.C. office to close. Author goes to Chicago bosses and says, give me some work and make me a partner. When they say no, D.C. federal jury finds race discrimination. D.C. Circuit overturns verdict.
If half of black law grads can't pass a state bar exam, perhaps like the Chicago Police Sergent's exam, it should be abolished. Big deal if the legal profession suffers. Mostly what it engages in is theft and persecution. This post makes me recall something from the time I lived in Chicago. I'm not sure if this is true but I heard somewhere that anybody could run for municipal judge -- even someone without a law education! It was entirely up to the electorate whether they got an ABA qualified official, which is why all the traffic and night court judges were elected from the South Side.
"Also, related to my prior post that law school should not be mandatory to take the bar, why is the US the only (?) country where law school is a graduate degree and lawyers are afforded the bogus title of juris doctor?? As far as I know, in most of the world, a law degree is a bachelor's degree."
Because Americans are very good in credential-inflation. Similar to the J.D.'s, pharmacists are given a Pharm.D title, and nurse-practitioners will soon be getting "Doctor of Nursing" degrees.
The author of the article lamented how lawyers, unlike doctors, are not restricting the number of professional schools. Not quite true. Although the MD schools have not increased much, the number of osteopathic schools (which award the D.O. degree) have exploded in the past 20 years. D.O.'s are still physicians, and get paid the same, despite the uncomfortable fact that they are students who couldn't get into any MD school.
she spun around,
Great comment.
You rightly note the major element of mainstream discourse that obscures the truth and is used to advance certain policies like affirmative action.
It would be like constantly pointing to Tiger Woods and saying that Asians dominate men's golf and that something must be done to increase the presence of non-Asians in men's golf, reduce the power of Asians in men's golf, etc.
What gets me is that blacks make up about 10 percent of society and 7.3 percent of law school admissions. That's pretty darn good.
In fact, 30 percent of whites hold a college degree or higher versus 17 percent of blacks. So when you cruch the numbers, black college graduates are actually far MORE likely to be admitted to law school than whites.
Why did the NYT fail to mention this?
The anguish over this has been ongoing on for the last 50 years and will continue for the next 50.
Dont bet on it. Blacks and mexicans have not been able to throw out qualifying tests because they did not have the votes to impose their will. What happens when blacks and mexicans become the majority of the American population?
Steve, I'm a little upset that you don't call out the resentful comment-ers who blame all their failures on Affirmative Action.
Some of the anecdotes they share strikes me as not-believable.
Thank you.
Good for minorities.
Oh, wait, this is supposed to be a bad thing?
The good news for blacks is: Those who gain admission, graduate and pass the Bar are guaranteed jobs as diversity hires.
"We believers in HBD can't keep banging our heads against the wall. Just about every member of the elite in the US feels they need access to cheap domestic labor...."
Great, so we'll convince Mr. Yuschenko and Mr. Jintao, each of whom with a declining population and a surplus of young males, to give us millions of "high IQ" Chinese and Ukranian women, who will become "gardeners"* and "housekeepers"*. Then they will have high IQ children who will become successful Doctors and Engineers, thus needing...uh...gardeners and housekeepers!
Now that's faulty, but the truly faulty part is that for some reason, you think the elites do not like things the way they are. Just because you have a problem, does not mean that a millionaire in a gated community does.
*(Ostensible Playthings for HBD nerds who can't get American girls)
"Hardly any blacks take out big loans to attend law school. They all recieve scholarships."
And your IQ was measured at what again?
"I should be able to take the bar in any state without attending law school,"
In southern states, up until about the Vietnam war, this was how bar entry was handled. The Bar simply chose people (from the "right" families of course) to take the bar; and of course they would not fail. This is an example of the reason we have A.A. programs today.
"So when you cruch the numbers, black college graduates are actually far MORE likely to be admitted to law school than whites."
Yes, and fare LESS likely to attend ANY other "private sector" (any one in which the odds of getting a private sector job are greater than a public sector one) graduate program.
"As far as I know, in most of the world, a law degree is a bachelor's degree."
In Anglosphere countries, a law degree is only a "bachelors degree" by the smallest technical sense of the term. In Canada, Britain, etc., one must have about 90 undergrad credit hours in advance to applying for law school. Many fourth-tier law schools in America actually admit students without BAs. So after six years one is awarded an L.L.C degree.
"Some of the anecdotes they share strikes me as not-believable."
"not-believable" Now that is the kindest, most PC characterization anyone has used on you gentlemen in quite a while.
This person must be an excellent Christian.
The discussion here shows why some can't accept that groups may differ in average traits.
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2010/01/average_brain_size_for_the_thr.php
What’s happening, as the American population becomes more diverse, is that the lawyer corps and judges (not to mention the media pundits and billionaires) are remaining disproportionately jewish.
"More diverse" has always meant less White, not less jewish.
Is any data available on *average* LSAT scores at law schools? I think not, but I'm interested.
Yes, see here
OT but read this by Jim Manzi - even though I linked to it through the trashy times: http://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/keeping-americas-edge
Manzi is totally oblivious as to why you cannot have economic dynamism and an egalitarian society, even though it is staring him in the face. That is to say, our wonderful diversity is crushing us.
How about changing law school rankings to account for diversity?
Cooley did that and got their rating up to 10. They also count number of chairs in the library.
The bottom 80% of lawyers jobs in USA and UK will be / have been outsourced to India
So the black lawyers will be offshored
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/10/AR2008051002355.html
U.S. Legal Work Booms in India
New Outsourcing Industry Is Growing 60 Percent Annually
The industry offers an attractive career path for many of the 300,000 Indians who enroll in law schools every year. India and the United States share a common-law legal system rooted in Britain's, and both conduct proceedings in English.
"Ninety percent of a lawyer's work is legal research and drafting, and all this can now be offshored to India," said Russell Smith, who worked in a Manhattan law firm called SmithDehn before moving to India to set up an outsourcing company in 2006. "A large portion of our fees in the U.S. is because of office rent. It is often a big decision to hire one attorney in the U.S. In India, we can hire 10 at a time and train them all at once."
I just scanned through the 53 comments here, and it looks like someone has not made this point I'm about to make, but I apologize if it was made and was just buried in the 50+ "Blacks are too dumb to be lawyers anyway" comments.
There is a big unemployment problem among lawyers because law schools are graduating far too many people than there are jobs in law firms.
This means that if we kicked every African-American out of law school tomorrow, we would be doing them a favor. Its a dead end career. We are getting to the point where you can make more money as a golf instructor, selling crack, whatever than as a would-be lawyer.
Funny that no one on this site or the NY Times has picked up on this.
I don't see the point in analyzing a news story like this qua news story, it's like analyzing Tamar Lewin's belch after eating a salad for lunch.
These people begin with the conviction "women and minorities hardest hit"; it's remarkable that they even understand the famous Onion headline is a joke. So Tamar Lewin's editor wants him to write a "women and minorities hardest hit" story, and he's walking around and sees a lily-white lawyer shamelessly lawyering his way around Manhatten, makes the connection and presto, a news story.
Now maybe it didn't happen that way, maybe the editor specifically asked for a story about minorities and law school admissions, maybe this is the story Tamar Lewin has been yearning to write since he was a child, who knows, but to act as if this story is part of some planned propaganda campaign, or a coherent argument that deserves a coherent answer, or anything but one more example of the diversity hammer finding that this, too, looks like a nail...is absurd.
Concerning this: http://www.vdare.com/sailer/100106_climate_gate.htm
You accuse Malcolm Gladwell of ad-hom-ttackking you.
How so?
He pointed out, RIGHTFULLY, and TRUTHFULLY that you believe blacks to be intellectually inferior.
How is that an ad hom? It's a statement of fact.
To the guy who badly wants to flood the country with Chinese and Ukrainian female immigrants. Stop mixing public policy with your can't get a date with anyone not in need of a green card hopelessness. It's this variety of comment that really lowers the quality of comments.
The lackof aprobation for the idea of allowing Ukranian and Chinese peasant females to come to the USA to work as nannies and cleaning women is very telling.
What it shows is how out of touch the readership of this blog is with reality.
Respectfully, how many of the readers of this blog are even members of the cognitive elite?
How much time do you actually spend with the men in the cognitive elite? Have you ever discussed the #1 priority of the wives of the cognitive elite (of both political parties) That #1 priority is domestic help
There is a a concensus that cuts across the entire cognitive elite that their wives can not do housecleaning themselves.
I don't know the heroes of the men on this blog are, who you guys look up to, who you admire. Perhaps Kevin MacDonald, George Borjas, Rush Limbaugh, Ron Paul. I just pick out those four not to endorse their views but to point out that they are all members of the cognitive elite in one way or the other. I would bet that their wives don't want to clean the house or raise kids without the help of nannies either.
You (the people on this blog) completely alienate your natural allies, you alienate every single forward thinking, patriotic member of the elite from HBD by not arranging it so the wives of the elite can have a cleaning woman and a nanny that cost almost no money.
How can I put this any more simply. The elite of the US insist on cheap domestic labor. They have always always had access to cheap domestic labor - for the entire history of this country. The wives of the elite do not clean house and they never have.
Every single damn person on this blog including me wants an end to low IQ immigration, the only way to make that happen is to import millions of females with very high genetic IQ (from Ukraine or China) but who are eager to work cleaning houses for their lifetime, secure in the knowledge that their grandchildren will become doctors and engineeers.
There is not affirmative action grading and the bar exam is genuinely hard. That said, states with lots of blacks and politically powerful blacks--such as Georgia with its Atlanta elite--noticeably require lower scores on the standardized MBE portion of the exam. This is a combo knowledge and skill test, and it seems pretty G-loaded. (I rocked it both states I've taken and also rocked the LSAT, even though my essay scores were only say 1SD above average in TX and FL where I took the bar, the MBE helped cushion me both times). There have been disparate impact in many states on the MBE issue, where the minimum scaled score required to pass rangees from about 115 to 135 which represents about 25 to 45 percentile respectively.
To Steve Sailer:
your jealousy of Malcolm Gladwell is so palpable, right out of the page (or LCD screen!)
you should never mention him again because it makes you look like an angry resentful/jealous freak.
"In Anglosphere countries, a law degree is only a "bachelors degree" by the smallest technical sense of the term. In Canada, Britain, etc., one must have about 90 undergrad credit hours in advance to applying for law school."
I can't tell you anything about Canada, but in Britain the application process for a law degree is the same as any other undergraduate degree. You apply through UCAS, which is an acronym for University & Colleges Applications Service. Like any other undergraduate degree you will be considered on the strength of your secondary education and no prior university experience is required.
You may be thinking of the post-graduate Legal Practice Course that is required to become a solcitor since this is the real 'law school' in this country or the Bar Vocational Course (soon to be the Bar Professional Training Course) for barristers. These courses are a year long and probably are the closest thing to your JD. Both courses require either a law degree or another undergraduate degree with a law Common Professional Examination pass. After the LPC a soliciter needs to complete a two year training contract with a firm to be qualified while a barrister needs spend a year in pupilage at a chambers before he can got out for himself.
Like the United States our system does generate a surplus of half-qualified lawyers. Many can't secure a training contract or pupilage after their LPC/BVC. IIRC most of those who pass the BVC do not get pupilage and it's been suggested that minimum standards be raised since it's generally the BVC students with a 2:2 from an ex-poly who either fail or can't get pupilage. But at the moment the various providers in the Bar School benefits from the extra fees.
To the guy who badly wants to flood the country with Chinese and Ukrainian female immigrants. Stop mixing public policy with your can't get a date with anyone not in need of a green card hopelessness. It's this variety of comment that really lowers the quality of comments.
I was thinking the same thing.
At one time the Pharm.D degree was a real doctorate, now it is a professional degree needed by association fiat (the states all kowtow to the pharmacists' union) to be a pill cop.
And a pill cop is exactly what a pharmacist in any store pharmacy is.
I would bet that their wives don't want to clean the house or raise kids without the help of nannies either.
I and others have said this before - the real elite dont want second rate domestic help. They arent using hispanic nannies. They want British nannies, French cooks, Swedish au pairs etc.
Anyone who has a Mrs demanding domestic help and that help comes from non-white 3rd world sources is not a member of the elite.
He pointed out, RIGHTFULLY, and TRUTHFULLY that you believe blacks to be intellectually inferior.
How is that an ad hom? It's a statement of fact.
You don't understand the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem. The point is that it's invalid to argue that something is false simply because of who is making the argument.
Gladwell' argument is that Steve's arguments are wrong because they are made by someone who "believe[s] blacks to be intellectually inferior". That argument is invalid regardless of whether Steve holds the elief ascribed to him.
The vast majority of barred attorneys do not actively litigate, prosecute or defend, that is to say, they are not trial lawyers. Attorneys who serve as lead cousel in any substantial civil or criminal matter are a small subfraction of the attorneys ad along with certain legal specialists are the only ones that need to really be high IQ and highly verbal.
Lawyering is thus like painting cars: it's five percent highly skilled work and 95 percent scutwork, billed at the highly skilled rate. We should break the legal profession into solicitors and barristers, as the Brits did.
In an ideal world, the bench would be populated not with promoted lawyers but people with an entirely different career and educational path.
He pointed out, RIGHTFULLY, and TRUTHFULLY that you believe blacks to be intellectually inferior.
How is that an ad hom? It's a statement of fact.
What's your point? You're not coming right out and stating that ad hominems cannot be true, but you're implying it. Sorta the way the typical ad hom implies an argument.
It matters not whether ad homs are RIGHT or TRUE or FACTUAl, they're still fallacies.
To Steve Sailer:
your jealousy of Malcolm Gladwell is so palpable, right out of the page (or LCD screen!)
you should never mention him again because it makes you look like an angry resentful/jealous freak.
Right to the point of the ad hom fallacy, again; it doesn't matter if Steve is jealous of Gladwell or not. I suppose all of us who aren't rich are jealous of Gladwell. Less so because he's rich for being an uber-sycophant, but still jealous. I'm jealous, and he's an ass. Where do you go with that?
Diversity is our strength = diversity is more important than anything.
Lip service is still paid to standards, but, when the rubber hits the road, having more NAMs around is Job One. They must be included. Period. No arguments allowed.
No matter what, NAMs must be equally represented among police (Chicago is considering scrapping police testing altogether, to get more NAMs included); among law students (see NYT story); among schoolchildren; among teachers; among physicians (see Obama's health plan); among soldiers (fait accompli); in neighborhoods (various churches ardently importing Nigerians and Hmung to please God); in management; in football coaching; etc. Name any area of society, and you will find that the push there is for more blacks or Hispanics to be inserted into it - no matter what has to be done to accomplish this, no matter the cost, no matter what. It MUST BE DONE.
The urge of this society - the only religious impulse that is genuine nowadays - is: get more NAMs involved. Inclusion is our God - standards, freedom, sanity can go entirely by the wayside if they get in the way. And naysayers are destined for hell. They're sinners, "racists."
Anyone staggering out of "The Blind Side" gets (or should get) it: blindess is a virtue. We are to grind out our eyes to achieve an a priori moral goal.
Who laid down this version of a moral goal? Who came up with this religion? You can't call it Christianity, exactly, because Christians of previous eras didn't behave this way. (Although the Transcendentalists and Abolitionists were an early version of it.)
Steve, are blacks who pass the Bar then worthy of your respect? Or are they Gladwell black outliers but still below an average white?
>Good for minorities.<
Reading comprehension: F.
"[A] lot of people who graduate from law school never pass the Bar Exam, including about 40% of black law school grads and 53% of all blacks who start law school, according to Richard Sanders. I don't believe there is affirmative action grading on Bar Exams, so that test traps a lot of blacks who have taken out huge students loans to attend law school. Why is the NYT pushing for playing that kind of dirty trick on [different] blacks who are even less likely to pass the Bar Exam?"
Trolls are idiots.
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