Racial disparities in admissions, scholarships remain in law schools, AccessLex Institute study says
White law school applicants are more likely to receive at least one admission offer, receive scholarships and stay in law school compared with students of color, according the AccessLex Institute’s Legal Education Data Deck released Tuesday.
The report, updated twice annually, found 79% of white law school applicants for the 2024-2025 school year received at least one admission offer—the same percentage as for 2023-2024—compared with 45% of Black applicants, down from 47% in 2023-2024.
“The best schools have been working toward trying to create more equity and opportunity in legal education,” says Tiffane Cochran, vice president of research at AccessLex, “but these are indicators that are important for us to watch and to follow, particularly since law schools can no longer consider race and ethnicity and admissions.”
Students of color receive a disproportionately lower percentage of full-tuition scholarships, with white students receiving 70% of them; Hispanic students received 9% and Black students received 6% of full-tuition scholarships.
And students of color comprised 35% of first-year enrollees but 48% of withdrawals after the 1L year. White students made up 58% of enrollees but 47% of withdrawals, the research shows.
Reliance on LSAT scores for admissions might account for the differences in acceptance and scholarship awards, with more than 40% of white and Asian students hitting LSAT scores of 160 or higher while less than 20% of Black, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Natives did so, according to the report.
The Legal Education Data Deck pulls information from a variety of federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Labor; and organizations including the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, the Law School Admission Council, the National Conference of Bar Examiners and the National Association for Law Placement. For 2024 data, the ABA removed the nonresident alien category, making the AccessLex study’s comparisons to previous years not as clear, Cochran notes.
While the number of overall applicants to law schools increased to 64,800 in 2024 over the year before, up about 3,400 students, the number of matriculants increased by about 2,000 to 39,600.
“I want to be optimistic and believe that means that people who are applying to law school really, really want to go and there’s very little that’s stopping them from going once they have the opportunity,” Cochran says.
Gaps between male and female applicants continue to grow. Though the share of the applications between men and women were about even in 2013, last year, 40% of applicants identified as men and 57% as women, the study shows.
“The thing that I find most interesting is that it’s widening so quickly,” she adds. “Why is it that we’re seeing … fewer and fewer men applying? Are they just not interested in the legal profession to the extent that they used to be? Or is this also a function of just seeing fewer and fewer men graduating college?”
In 2024, 72% of male applicants were admitted, compared with 68% of female applicants.
The percentage of law graduates who borrowed money increased from 71% in 2016 to 75% in 2020, though the average cumulative amount of graduate debt among those who borrowed decreased by more than $5,000.
The full study can be found on the AccessLex Institute website.
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