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June 2022 Cover Story - Reflections on Elitism in the Law

by Oscar D. Teran

I recently participated in two conversations about how to best support young people interested in becoming attorneys. In one conversation someone commented that our efforts should be focused on helping students get into “good” law schools. In the other conversation someone praised students who, despite facing adversity, “managed to get into a good law school.” Both of these comments were offhand in nature, quick snippets in otherwise in-depth and nuanced dialogues. I don’t think the people that offered these comments had any malice in them or even thought much about their choice of words. Yet, both comments reminded me that the profession of law is characterized by hierarchies that reflect judgments of value and worth that exalt some and exclude others based on factors other than merit.

I remember when I decided to go to law school. I was a full-time college student who was balancing school with a full-time job to cover my living expenses and the portion of my tuition not covered by financial aid. I came from a working-class, single-parent household and my mother had recently survived a battle with ovarian cancer. I had no one to help pay the thousands of dollars needed to purchase an LSAT prep class, study materials, and exam fees. To cover LSAT expenses, I got a second job at night as a waiter. And so, I studied for the LSAT while going to school full-time, working two jobs, trying to help my mother at home, and not sleeping very much. I was trying to do a “good” job balancing everything, but it was incredibly difficult. What I didn’t know at the time was that the challenges I faced were not unique to me. My experience is reflected in studies that have shown that first-generation college students work more while attending college than their non-first-generation peers, have fewer financial resources, and often struggle academically as a result. Nicole M. Stephens et al., Unseen disadvantage: How American universities’ focus on independence undermines the academic performance of first-generation college students, 102 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1178, 1178–97 (2016).

When I received my LSAT score, I felt disappointed–it wasn’t as high as I wanted. I wondered what it meant for the type of law school I was going to get into. I already was judging myself based on how that score ranked me and the rank of the law school it tracked me towards. Of course, at that stage in my life I was unaware of the fact that the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) has shown that LSAT scores correlate heavily with the educational attainment of test takers’ parents, and that the LSAT, while designed to be a predictor of first-year law school performance, is of little value in predicting longer-term outcomes, such as bar exam performance and career success. Law School Survey of Student Engagement Survey, LSSSE Annual Results 2016: Socioeconomic Background and Economic Inequity (Part 3), LSSE Understanding Legal Education: Blog (Apr. 28, 2022, 10:04 AM), https://lssse.indiana.edu/blog/lssse-annual-results-2016-socioeconomic-background-and-economic-inequity-part-3/.

Once I was in law school, I was intimidated to find that so many of my peers had parents who were lawyers and judges. These students seemed to know a whole other language that was being spoken in the classroom that was completely foreign to me. It seemed to give them an advantage and a confidence that I could only dream about. I have since learned that the rate of “occupational inheritance,” that is, children following the professional paths of their parents, is significantly higher in the law than for other prestigious professions, like doctors or accountants. Center on the Legal Profession Harvard Law School, Following in Their Footsteps: What the data says about multigenerational lawyers, 7 The Practice (Apr. 28, 2022), https://thepractice.law.harvard.edu/article/following-in-their-footsteps/#. This indicates that the first year of law school is inherently easier for those who come from privileged backgrounds, an advantage that is amplified when exams are graded on a curve.

Once again, I felt disappointed when my first-year GPA and resulting class rank was not as high as I had hoped. When it came time to participate in my first on-campus interviewing (OCI) program, I felt inadequate when I saw that many of the participating law firms, and all of the most prestigious, had grade requirements for the students whom they would accept as applicants. Notations after these firms’ names that read “Top 10% preferred” or “Record of outstanding academic achievement required” reminded me that there was a hierarchy that determined access to professional opportunities and that there were certain employers to whom I was invisible. I wondered if I had enough to offer. What I did not know until later was that national employment data for law school students shows that first-generation law school students (and students of color, who are overrepresented in the first-generation student population) have worse job prospects than their peers who have lawyer parents and are less likely to land the most prestigious professional opportunities, such as federal clerkships. Karen Sloan, Having lawyer parents boosts job prospects, salaries for law grads, Reuters (Apr. 28, 2022), https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/having-lawyer-parents-boosts-job-prospects-salaries-law-grads-2021-10-20/#:~:text=That%20employment%20rate%20was%20just,grads%20with%20a%20lawyer%20parent.

Despite my insecurities about feeling “good” enough in law school, I persevered. After graduation, I passed the Texas and California bar exams, and achieved my long-held dream of becoming a practicing attorney. I began working for Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and later California Rural Legal Assistance. In these jobs, I represented rural poor people and migrant farmworkers who feed the nation through back-breaking labor that is often undervalued and exploited. On my office wall, next to my diplomas, there was a picture of my grandmother and my great-grandfather working as farm laborers in Northern California in the 1940s—a reminder of my connection to the clients that I served.

During my time in practice, I helped workers secure safe working conditions, I helped families avoid homelessness, I helped disabled individuals secure access to life-saving medical care, I helped disabled veterans access the benefits they earned through service, and I helped victims of domestic violence obtain protective orders to keep them and their children safe. I am extremely proud of my work as a lawyer and what I was able to achieve on behalf of my clients. Now I am proud of my current work as an educator, supporting and empowering law school students as they work toward their professional dreams.

Of course, “good” and “bad” are value judgments that convey notions of merit, worth, and inherent value. If there are “good” law schools, then necessarily there are “bad” law schools. As much as I can tell, when lawyers talk about “good” schools they are generally referring to rankings like the U.S. News rankings, which create a hierarchy of law schools based upon factors like LSAT scores and undergraduate GPA of incoming students, bar pass rates, employment rates of graduates, and peer reputation. Yet, as studies show and my own lived experience confirms, LSAT scores, GPA, class rank, and career outcomes are all heavily influenced by factors that are beyond the control of most students. Where you are born, the color of your skin, the educational attainment of your parents, and how much money is earned by the household in which you are raised have a predictive relationship with factors used to distinguish “good” schools.

A higher ranked law school, it appears, is a law school with a higher percentage of people who happen to come from privileged backgrounds. In our society, in which socioeconomic advantages correlate heavily with race, this also means that “good” law schools are schools with proportionally higher rates of white students. This is backed up by data that show that Black and Hispanic students are disproportionately enrolled in lower-ranked law schools with lower bar passage and post-graduation employment rates. Miranda Li et al. Who’s Going to Law School? Trends in Law School Enrollment Since the Great Recession, 54 U.C. Davis L. Rev. at 613 (Dec. 2020).

A mentor of mine once observed that the impartial rule of law is the fundamental promise of democracy. At its best, law offers us the opportunity to be heard on equal footing with anyone else in our society regardless of our wealth, our identities, or the station we were born into. In this sense all lawyers are guardians of democracy and have the opportunity to protect our highest aspirations as a society. Yet, this vision of the law can only be fully realized when lawyers themselves come from diverse backgrounds and bring all of the different perspectives, orientations, and life stories that are the product of that diversity into the practice of law. Put simply, the law cannot help us achieve a more just and democratic society as long as it idolizes status-quo hierarchies that exclude so many.

Of course, I am not naive enough to think that the law is perfect or that it doesn’t embody the same contradictions, shortcomings, and compromises that exist in our society as a whole. I understand all too well the ways that law in the United States has historically been used to exclude some people. However, I still believe that the law is a noble profession because it has a unique power to self-examine, self-critique, and ultimately create the conditions necessary for true equity and social justice. If you believe in this best version of our noble profession too, then please think twice the next time you talk about whether or not someone went to a “good” law school. I also encourage you to question how notions of law school prestige or academic achievement factor into your hiring decisions if you are in a position to hire attorneys.

If we aspire for law to be a tool for democracy and social equity, then we cannot allow hierarchies of judgment and exclusion to stand within the institutions that train future lawyers. We also cannot allow these hierarchical judgments to live in our own minds and color the way we approach hiring and interacting with co-workers (or clients!). All lawyers and students working to become lawyers deserve our respect, and we will be mistaken if we think that the conventional markers of prestige give an objective indication of that person’s skills or professional potential.

Oscar D. Teran is Director of Career Develop­­ment at Western State College of Law. The views and experiences expressed herein are his own. He can be reached at oteran@wsulaw.edu.