I’ll let you in on a little secret: The toughest part about law school isn’t getting through it but getting in.
Any reasonably intelligent educated person who is willing to put up with three years of b.s. from professors, thousands of pages of boring reading, and gunner classmates in law school then study enough to pass a bar exam can make a perfectly fine attorney.
Heck, look at me. If I could do it so could most of you.
It ain’t brain surgery or even as one recent radio show caller called it, “rocket surgery.”
But on the day set aside to celebrate the accomplishments of Martin Luther King for a more just society, none other than the Right Wing Wall Street Journal notes a disturbing trend in our law schools—fewer minority applicants are getting in.
An excerpt from their Law Blog Newsletter that I receive:
Study Shows Grim Outlook for Minority Law-School Enrollment
Law-school enrollment of African-Americans and Mexican-Americans has fallen by 8.6% in the past 15 years, according to a Web site created by Columbia Law and the Society of American Law Teachers. And with anti-affirmative action admissions measures gaining traction around the country, the numbers could get worse, according to an NLJ story.
The decline has come as applications to law schools among those minority groups have remained constant and law school enrollment overall has risen since 1992.
Let me be frank about this. Does South Dakota or the United States need still more middle class, white, male attorneys like me? No. Do we need more attorneys who come from the minority and disabled communities? Yes.
Why do I say this?
Who is more likely to return to their community and work for justice? Some Indian kid who grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation or some white boy like me? Who is more likely to return to the Third Ward in Houston? Some black kid who grew up in public housing or White Bread Todd?
I think we all know the answers to those questions.
Even in the early days of the civil rights movement, it was the few black lawyers like Thurgood Marshall and my fellow Washburn Law alums like Charles Scott who took on Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.
And again,frankly, most of the white students look at law school as a means to an economic end. Even here in South Dakota, most end up working for corporations or large law firms and become the tools of the capitalist class.
And, there’s nothing wrong with that.
But if you want lawyers who understand the struggle for civil and human rights, you’re more likely to get that from the Mexican kid from S.Sioux City, NE who got followed around in a store because the clerk thought they would steal something versus the rich white kid from across the river in Dakota Dunes whose biggest problem was deciding what video game to buy at Best Buy.
My law school experiences were greatly enhanced at my law school alma maters—Washburn and Houston—because of my interactions with Native American, Black, Hispanic, LGBT, and other minority students. I came to understand their concerns and perspectives. They were a breath of fresh air from most of my overly competitive white colleagues.
For the civil rights movement to advance and for those who have not always shared in the American dream to get their chance, we need to make sure there are spots for those smart kids with lower LSATs who will make perfectly good—even great—attorneys.
Then, someday, can the full effect of Dr. King’s dream be realized.