FYI, the New York Times business section had an article in Wednesday’s edition about gender imbalances in law schools and the legal profession. If I recall correctly, it described the disadvantages that women incur in the profession from the beginning, being underrepresented at top law schools and thus in the most prestigious jobs. My take-aways from the article were:
The most elite jobs are available to alumni/ae of top law schools--i.e., where you go to law school matters for some jobs.
Law school admissions is heavily numbers-based.
Law schools that have gender imbalances are trying to correct them; Washington U. in St. Louis was featured in the article.
Women also have a harder time getting on law review. No one is sure why, but women tend to score lower on the write on. I was part of the team at my school tasked with figuring out why and how to correct it. Unfortunately, due to the nature of law review, there were no long-term data collection efforts. All the top schools just shoot into the dark and hope.
I don’t think women are underrepresented anymore though. I recall most top schools being pretty close to 50-50. Less law review definitely hurts, since many employers and clerkships require it.
I will acknowledge–and everyone can remind me of this in the future–that the article supports assertions that law school admissions are based disproportionately on LSAT scores, and there are quotes from admissions committee personnel (such as one from Wake Forest) stating that applicants’ numbers are very important since they affect the schools’ rankings. If I summarize correctly, that’s what Demosthenes has been saying.
(The article doesn’t say that numbers are all that counts, though.)
I was making a follow-on point to your #1. Where you go to law school matters. Whether you do well matters. Whether you get on law review matters. As to the last, women tend to do more poorly. No one knows why.
Demo, was your LR write-on only? Several of the T14 use a combo of grades+write on, no?
HLS LR even uses holistic factors…
Regardless, back to the article. I love the comments: women comprise the majority of grad school spots…perhaps they are making informed decisions?
Correct. And men tend to do better on the top of standardized tests. So, it should be no surprise that they maybe over-represnted at schools where a 17x is the first threshold, if one does not have a 3.9x GPA.
@bluebayou: We used the same methods as HLS. Write on only, combo with grades, and a diversity selection. The diversity selection is usually around 10% at most of the top schools I know of. It helps a bit, but 10% is still only a couple of people.
I’m also unsure why we think women are all that underrepresented at top law schools. Yale is 48% female, HLS is 51%, Columbia is 46%, UChicago is 46%, Penn is 50%, Boalt is 59%, Michigan 46%, Cornell 44%, and Georgetown 53%. There are outliers either end, but even at the extremes we’re still looking at about half the class.
I think that the the article was emphasizing the point that in proportion to men, women are lagging behind. Because women are getting the majority of the college degrees the percentage applying to law school is not keeping up. Did you guys miss that? Yes, women have made a huge dent in successfully graduating from law school but not in the realms of the makers and shakers so to speak. If this were to happen, we might see some things change in those spheres and perspectives.
What about the fact that women comprise the vast majority of grad students (~58%) and that women complete the majority of doctorates (~53%)? Perhaps women are making a different career choice by voting with their feet? Or, it is a matter of men “not keeping up” in applying to grad school? Why not a an article on THAT?
Yes, Law, particularly Big Law, is not for those looking for work-life balance, but then what should one expect when the starting pay is $180k for someone who may have never had a previous job in their lives.
