<p>
[quote]
MIT-cheerleader hot
[/quote]
Oxymoron. :p</p>
<p>Tell that to molliebatmit!</p>
<p>I saw a photo of bikini-clad MIT girls posing in front of the stolen CalTech canon. Am I the only one who would go to MIT for the females?:D</p>
<p>I've seen the photo. Georgetown girls, from what I've seen, are significantly hotter. </p>
<p>Seriously though, I was kidding about the oxymoron thing. Sheesh.</p>
<p>Aesthetically, yes. Intellectually, no. I prefer the latter:)</p>
<p>Ariesathena,</p>
<p>Maybe we should go back to the old days of lawyer education, i.e. the Abe Lincoln method; apprenticeships.</p>
<p>LakeWashington,</p>
<p>You can still qualify for the California bar exam through through individual study in a law office. One or two people a year gain admission that way.</p>
<p>Well, some states (see Greybeard's post) allow apprenticeships to sit for the bar; however, many do not, and there is a lotof snobbery in the legal profession. </p>
<p>As a practical matter, I don't think that anything on the law school level is really going to help the issue of underrepresentation of minorities in the legal profession. The pipeline simply is not there, even though a higher percentage of African-American college grads apply to law school than Caucasian college grads. The problem, IMO, is really rooted in the K-12 arena. </p>
<p>Furthermore, just me, but wouldn't apprenticeships reduce the number of minority lawyers? Those who are well-connected would get good apprenticeships, while those without the connections would be hung out to dry. At least under the current system, those with talent can get into a good law school.</p>
<p>What are the causes of higher numbers of African Americans college graduates applying to law schools than caucasian college graduates?</p>
<p>I do not know for certain.</p>
<p>I can speculate, however. I think that some of it might be that talented whites and Asians go into other fields (engineering, medicine, business, i-banking) at significantly higher rates than blacks. So a lot of them are being siphoned off before law school applications are even in mind. (Law school, in a lot of ways, attracts the "best of the mediocre" people. There are some really freakin' brilliant legal minds out there, but the majority of the people don't have any particular aptitude for the subject.)</p>
<p>Gee, I would like to believe that people apply to law school because there is still some prestige linked to the profession, diminishing though it may be.</p>
<p>Many folks whose lives have been dramatically and specifically impacted by major laws also are motivated to attend law school; for Black Americans, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Community Reinvestment Act, etc. come to mind.</p>
<p>Finally, despite shows like the "The Practice" that depict struggling lawyers (not to mention starving legal aid attorneys) the allure of the $$$ for corporate lawyers guarantees that there'll be plenty of applicants to the elite law school for years to come.</p>
<p>Yes, there is prestige in the profession; however, I cannot help but think of my law school's dean on the first day of class. He made a crack that, in all likelihood, no one in the room had passed organic chemistry. </p>
<p>'Nuff said.</p>
<p>I cannot speculate if African-Americans are more attracted to law school for social causes... makes sense, but I'll let someone else make that assumption. :) (I do want to avoid the stereotyping of "Boys go to law school to be corporate litigators; girls go to be family lawyers; and blacks go to help poor people." Patronize us all, why don't ya?) </p>
<p>I just don't have hard stats as to why people of different groups apply to law school, which was really the question. I do know that the white/black ratio is higher in i-banking, medicine, and engineering than in law, so I assume that's where the white students head. It's undeniable that, for many, law is a second choice.</p>