Law Schools

Will Employers Model Their Post-Affirmative Action Hiring After These Two Law Schools?

How do we keep the effects of Bakke without the process?

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Affirmative action chessThe worst part of it is the fact that it’s coming. The second? The damned waiting. As today’s released Supreme Court decisions didn’t have Harvard or University of North Carolina as any of the named parties, affirmative action in higher education is safe for at least another few days. And as nice as that is, not knowing when the second shoe will drop is dreadful for planning how you will go about structuring your student body. While the obvious parties of interest would be fellow academic establishments, businesses that are scraping for answers on how to make sense of a post-affirmative action world may benefit from looking at the University of Michigan Law School and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law for answers. Despite Michigan and California doing away with affirmative action, both of these schools have found ways to increase minority attendance rates. From Reuters:

[The Universities’ strategies] range from participating in pipeline programs that introduce college students to legal careers to looking at applicants’ family income and whether they are the first in their families to attend college.

Thinking historically, these proxies for race make sense — minority families don’t tend to have many lawyers in their families (because there just aren’t that many minority lawyers), tend to have lower incomes, and are much more likely to be first generation college attendees. While it is obvious that these aren’t 1:1 racial correlates — there are a couple of broke first generation white law students thirsting for rank in FedSoc, after all — there is an understandable amount of overlap when you Venn diagram the qualifications out.

Time will tell how businesses will adapt the techniques schools use to select students for grabbing employees. It is not uncommon for firms to have carveouts for applicants that are first generation — will they double down resources for such programs? There isn’t much of a issue with figuring out how businesses can curtail diversity in hiring; there’s a long history of employers throwing out resumes with names that are a little too ethnic that drives that point home. But how will firms hire with equity in mind without affirmative action as a go-to strategy? Will the replacements themselves pass constitutional muster? Either way, the pressure is on to figure it out sometime between now and the time the Court leaves for summer recess.

If Affirmative Action Is Struck Down, These Law Schools May Point To The Future [Reuters]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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