Racial Gaps in Bar Passage Force Reckoning With Legal Education

Paving a path for minority lawyer candidates needs to start well before law school to tackle long-standing racial disparities, attorneys said.

“The pipeline begins with the legal profession playing a role in addressing inequality in the education system—K through 12,” said Dayna Bowen Matthew, dean and Harold H. Green professor of law at the George Washington University Law School.

The law profession, still struggling to diversify its ranks, faces new data showing significant gaps between White law graduates and minority law graduates—most notably, at the bar level. An ABA survey, released Tuesday, found that White law school graduates ...