Advocates for a more inclusive legal profession are worried about the decline in Black law student enrollment

By Ronald Roach

As a Black, first-generation college student contemplating law school, Jomaire Crawford has grown determined this summer to learn as much as she can about the legal profession. A rising junior at St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y., Crawford has interned over the past several weeks in a program that has allowed her to observe judges, prosecutors and other court officials at work in the Queens courts.

“It’s helped me to see that the legal profession is not beyond my reach,” she says.

Crawford is one of 35 rising juniors participating in the Ronald H. Brown Pre-Law Summer Program at St. John’s University School of Law. The program is open to rising juniors and seniors who are either underrepresented minorities or considered members of socially disadvantaged groups. Participants must attend either St. John’s or a public New York City college.

Next year, Crawford says she plans to return to the law school to participate in the intensive, eight-week Law School Admissions Test preparation course offered to seniors in the program.

“I’ve known that I would need to take a LSAT prep course, and the pre-law program makes it convenient for me,” she says.

Advocates for a more inclusive legal profession are worried about the recent decline in enrollment of Black students in law school. According to the American Bar Association, Blacks were 7.4 percent of all law students in 1994. By 2005, that percentage had fallen to just 6.6.

Several law journal articles have suggested that the schools themselves are one driving force behind the slumping enrollment. As the schools seek to improve their rankings by admitting students with higher LSAT scores, more Blacks are missing the cut. The ABA has also been named as a culprit. Many diversity advocates say the ABA, which is sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Education to handle the accreditation of law schools, has unduly pressured schools to raise minimum LSAT scores.