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A Critical Race Inquiry of African American Female Law Students\u27 Educational Experiences at a Racially Diverse Law School
No full textThe purpose of this research is to examine how African American female law students’ educational experiences have been impacted by institutionalized racism. Using Critical Race Theory, we analyzed data from a focus group comprised of five, 3rd-year black female law students attending a racially diverse campus in the Mid-South. Results indicate that systemic racism and sexism affects all aspects of law school experience for black females. Nonetheless, the strong presence of an institutional honor council, mentors, and minority professors served as protective factors to assist participants navigate a racist and patriarchal legal system
Analyzing Law School Choice
No full textThe contemporary crisis in law school enrollments presents a timely opportunity to evaluate a subject that has received little academic attention: student choice in legal education. In order to address the present lack of understanding about what motivates post-Recession law students to enroll in law school, this article examines several of the factors that bear on the choice to attend law school from the results of an original survey distributed to current law students at a four law schools—a private elite law school, a public flagship law school, a public regional law school, and a private new law school—in the 2017–2018 academic year. This article analyzes the salience of location, information, opportunity cost, and cost sensitivity in the context of a law student’s decision to enroll in law school. The results from this survey indicate that legal education is a highly stratified market for consumers on the basis of their preferences. It is hoped that these results will shed greater light on and knowledge of the most understudied group in professional graduate education—law students
Perceiving Discrimination: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation in the Legal Workplace
No full textUsing quantitative and qualitative data from a large national sample of lawyers, we examine self-reports of perceived discrimination in the legal workplace. Across three waves of surveys, we find that persons of color, white women, and LGBTQ attorneys are far more likely to perceive they have been a target of discrimination than white men. These differences hold in multivariate models that control for social background, status in the profession and the work organization, and characteristics of the work organization. Qualitative comments describing these experiences reveal that lawyers of different races, genders, and sexual orientations are exposed to distinctive types of bias, that supervisors and clients are the most frequent sources of discriminatory treatment, and the often-overt character of perceived discrimination. These self-reports suggest that bias in the legal workplace is widespread and rooted in the same hierarchies of race, gender, and sexual orientation that pervade society
Framing Diversity: Examining the Place of Race in Institutional Policy and Practice Post-Affirmative Action
No full textThe University of Georgia has operated under a voluntary “race-neutral” admission policy for the past 2 decades. Using frame analysis theory, we examine university documents and interview data from 11 campus administrators responsible for diversity efforts to understand how diversity is framed at the institutional and individual levels post-affirmative action. We compare our findings to the broader sociolegal discourses around diversity to present points of convergence and divergence among frames. We find official university framing of diversity has broadened over time to include numerous characteristics, while administrators hold divergent frames depending on their functional area, philosophy, and personal experience. We conclude that divergent frames may reflect and contribute to the challenge of advancing a coherent set of diversity efforts in a post-affirmative action context, where the place of race in institutional policy is muted. As more institutions consider admissions policy devoid of race to avoid protracted legal struggles, it may be especially important for institutions and administrators responsible for diversity efforts to be explicit with one another and with those whom they hire about how they will continue seeking racial equit
Graduate and Professional Education for Students with Disabilities: Examining Access to STEM, Legal, and Health Fields in the United States
No full textThis study examines the enrollment transition from undergraduate to graduate and professional education and how specific factors at the culmination of a baccalaureate education may play a role in disproportionate access to graduate and professional education for students with disabilities. For example, people with disabilities experience additional costs of living (Mitra, Palmer, Kim, Mont, & Groce, 2017), possibly creating a greater sensitivity to the affordability of graduate education among this population. Moreover, there is evidence that students with disabilities view themselves more negatively (Wright & Stimmel, 1984), and may feel less supported during undergraduate education (Hedrick, Dizen, Collins, Evans, & Grayson, 2010; Moriarty, 2007) or even discouraged from pursuing certain fields of study such as STEM (Nepomuceno et al., 2016), which could lower their expectations for further education (Shandra & Hogan, 2009). Therefore, in addition to examining their representation overall in this transition, we investigate whether in the U.S., there are predictors of graduate and professional education enrollment that operate differently for students with disabilities than for other students. Moreover, we investigate the enrollment transition from undergraduate to graduate and professional education in three post-baccalaureate fields of study: a) science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), b) legal education, and c) health fields. (p. 3
Ringing Changes: Systems Thinking About Legal Licensing
No full textThe bar examination is a significant topic of conversation among regulators, bar examiners, the courts, legal educators, law students, and practicing lawyers. We seek to move beyond recent debates by proposing a new framework for conversations about the system of legal licensure, not merely the bar exam. In setting forth our framework, we build upon discussions from the Florida International University College of Law’s Summit on the Future of Legal Education and Entry to the Profession