Ronald Roach from Diverse Online published an interesting story last Thursday, indicating that American law schools have been admitting fewer African-American and Mexican American students despite an increase in capacity over the last 15 years. According to research done by Conrad Johnson, director of the Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic at the Columbia University Law School, in 1992, “there were 176 accredited U.S. law schools and by 2006 that total had increased to 195 accredited schools, offering a gain of nearly 4,000 first-year seats for law school students,” yet at the same time, “while African-American and Mexican American applicants have endured falling admissions rates, their undergraduate grade point averages and Law School Admission Test scores have improved during the same period.”

John Nussbaumer, associate dean of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School echoes Professor Johnson’s comments regrading the disproportionate acceptance rateof minority group applications, noting that “from 2002 to 2007, 62 percent of African-American and 4 percent of Mexican American applicants to law school failed to gain admission to any ABA-approved institution, while just 34 percent of 363,360 White applicants were turned away from all the schools to which they applied.”

Both Nussbaumer and Johnson agree that this problem stems from an overreliance on LSAT scores by admissions committees in the application process, “this overreliance and trend has played out in a number of ways. One is the decrease of inclusivity of African-Americans and Mexican Americans and that’s reflected in their numbers and percentages within entering classes but also in the shut-out rates as you compare different ethnic groups.” However, law schools such as Thomas M. Cooley have faced pressure from the ABA accreditation committee to limit the number of lower-tier LSAT scores taken into consideration during the applications process. Furthermore, opponents of diversity initiatives and affirmative action have argued that affirmative action policies harm, rather than help minority groups in the long run.