Want some depressing law school news? Your chances of getting an A or A- in your first year of law school (of vital importance for a lot of prestigious opportunities like law review, clerkships and Biglaw) are improved if you look like your professor. According to a new study looking at law school grades, when the gender and race of a law prof matches that of the student the student is more likely to achieve top marks in the subject. So, white male students with a white male professor are, yet again, at an advantage. Great.
As reported by Law.com, the study (based on data from an anonymous private law school in the top 100 of the U.S. News & World Report ranking), was conducted by by Boise State University professor Christopher Birdsall, American University professor Seth Gershenson and Virginia Tech University professor Raymond Zuniga and funded by AccessLex, and found that 1Ls were 3 percent less likely to get an A or A- when the class was taught by someone of the opposite sex. Students with law professors of a different race fared even worse — they were 10 percent less likely to receive an A or A-. The issue was compounded for female law students of color. In a year long classes of the same subject,having opposite-sex or different-race professor in the fall also had a negative impact on the student’s spring grade. The only good(ish) news is that this demographic mismatch did not have an impact on a student’s chances of getting a grade lower than a B-.
The reason behind the numbers? Something called the role model effect or stereotype threat. That’s when students feel pressure to achieve past the perceived stereotypes of their identity group. This effect has been studied before, but only on the elementary, high school and undergraduate levels. Looking at the phenomenon in law schools is pretty new:
“These results provide novel evidence of the pervasiveness of role-model effects in elite settings and of the graduate-school education production function,” according to the paper, titled “Stereotype Threat, Role Models and Demographic Mismatch in an Elite Professional School Setting.”
The perception has long been that at the elite law school level, the role model effect would no longer be detectable. But the study disproves that theory and shows just how important faculty diversity is for law students:
“Student-instructor demographic mismatch continues to harm the academic performance of even elite law school students, whom we might falsely deem impervious to such threats, given that they are college graduates who successfully navigated the law school application process,” the authors wrote.
While the difference in grades for students with demographically mismatched professors may seem small, it is still statistically significant and has a meaningful impact on the grades — and opportunities — of law students:
“While small in magnitude, recall that these are course-specific effects that might add up to nontrivial differences in cumulative GPA that preclude underrepresented students from prestigious internships or alter the class rankings in ways that affect initial job placements and starting salaries,” the paper reads.
Once again we see that diversity is more than just an esoteric, liberal goal — it has measurable, direct repercussions for law students and the legal profession as a whole:
“These results suggest that diversity in the legal profession, and the status of women and people of color in the legal profession, would be improved by increasing the diversity of law school faculty,” the paper reads.
Hopefully, this data will support efforts to increase the diversity of law school faculties.
The Depressing Secret To Getting Good Law School Grades curated from Above the Law
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