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Some Perspectives
on Minority Access
to Legal Education
LEON LETWIN
Professor of Low
UCLA Low School; Director,
Los Angeles CLEO Program, 1968
Reprinted from
EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
May 1969 • Volume II • Number 2
Some Perspectives
on Minority Access
to Legal Education
LEON LETWIN
Professor of Low
UCLA Law School; Director,
Los Angeles CLEO Program,‘ 1968
•o[!] MoRE THAN 5,000 students are currently enrolled in 14 accredited
law schools in California.’ Fewer than 200 of these, as well
as can be determined, are black or Mexican-American. These figures
can be viewed from several perspectives. On the one hand, this does
represent a substantial increase over the past few years-an increase
of perhaps five– or tenfold-but only because of the abysmal base
of comparison. A more relevant perspective would be to compare
the proportion of black and brown law students to their proportion
in the community at large, or to the critical and unfilled community
need for minority attorneys. A judgment reached from these points
of view would show fairly wide agreement that legal education has
failed to meet its obligations. This failure, of course, is not confined
to California law schools or to legal education. It is nation–wide,” and
1 California Legal Education Opportunity Program.
• The 1967 totals were: Berkeley 767; Davis 157; Hastings 1,006; UCLA
603; Cal Western 186; Golden Gate 381; Loyola 674; McGeorge 489; USC
506; San Diego 397; Santa Clara 234; University of San Francisco 360; Stanford
441. This totals 5,031 and includes day and evening divisions. An additional
3,000 students, roughly, were attending unaccredited schools. The
number probably increased in 1968. [20 Journal of Legal Education 179– 80
( 1968) .]
• There were only about 1,250 black students enrolled in law schools
throughout the nation during 1968, according to a recent estimate. About
500 of this total were enrolled in the Howard Law School and in the other
traditionally black law schools. So there were only 700 to 800 black students
1
2 EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
it is shared by most branches of higher education, professional and
academic.
The underpinnings of the consensus about the need for rapid
acceleration in minority group enrollment in legal education may
vary with the observer, but it will probably include the following
considerations:
1. Law schools are now more willing to accept institutional responsibility
for bringing about meaningful change. It no longer
seems adequate merely to bemoan the profound social inequalities
which have in effect barred minority students from legal education.
2. The infusion of minority students into law schools is increasingly
seen as a way to improve the quality of education for the
entire student body. Recognition is developing that there are values
to be served by making it possible for students-and faculty as
well-to come to grips with the sharply divergent attitudes and
perceptions of minority students, and with the problems generated
by racism. So viewed, a change in student composition is not merely
a way of helping “disadvantaged” black and brown students. It is
a way of helping combat a severe form of educational disadvantage
suffered by the predominantly white, middle-class student body and
faculty that constitute the principal constituencies of the law schools.
3. There is a clearly recognized need for expanding the number of
minority attorneys.
To be sure, there are other factors that contribute to this consensus.
Pressures from minority students and other members of the
minority community, reflecting their manifest unwillingness to
accept the status quo, have contributed markedly to the present
openness to change. Whatever the reasons for it, the will to change
exists. The problem now is how to implement it.
Problems of Implementation
As law schools have become concerned with developing appropriate
programs for change, various characteristic problems have
arisen: How can a sufficient number of applicants be attracted,
given the historic inaccessibility of law schools to minority students?
in all the remaining American law schools covered by the survey. With respect
to the Mexican-American, there were only 180 enrolled throughout the
entire United States-compared to a population of about 5,000,000-and
this 180 probably represents a sharp improvement as compared to a year or
two ago. [Newsletter of the Association of American Law Schools, No. 68-3
(October 7, 1968).]
PERSPECTIVES ON MINORITY ACCESS 3
Assuming the schools’ willingness to depart from present admission
criteria and techniques, what criteria and techniques should replace
them? What special forms of academic support-e.g., tutorial and
counseling programs-will students admitted under these new
techniques need? What type of financial aid program is required:
what are the appropriate levels of support, bow should such a program
be administered, and, above all, how can it be financed?
The Special CLEO Summer Program
It may be useful to discuss some of these problems in the context
of an experimental law school program, designed at least in part to
deal with each of the problems. In the summer of 1968, three law
schools in the Los Angeles area– UCLA, Loyola, and USC-in an
unusual act of cooperation jointly sponsored a summer institute for
some 40 pre-law students, black and brown. The instructional staff
consisted of three faculty members drawn from the regular staffs of
the sponsoring schools, six or seven law students currently in
attendance at these schools, and several practicing lawyers. The
institute ran full time at the UCLA law school during an eight-week
period from June 24 to August 26. Students admitted were granted
a stipend of $600 to $700 to replace lost summer earnings. Most of
the students, prior to the Summer Program, had already been
accepted for admission to law school in the fall of 1968 and had been
promised substantial financial aid over the three years of their law
school careers. This scholarship aid was made available out of a
$450,000 national Ford Foundation grant.
The academic objectives of the Summer Program were to give
minority college graduates an opportunity for advanced orientation
work, a “headstart” before beginning their formal legal studies, and
to encourage a number of college post-juniors who had not yet made
career choices to consider law as a possible career. The Program was
one of four sponsored by the Council on Legal Opportunity
(CLEO)’ which was established in January, 1968, by the Association
of American Law Schools, the American Bar Association, the
National Bar Association (an organization of black lawyers), and
the Law School Admission Test Council, whose present chairman
is Professor Frank Sander of the Harvard Law School.
‘The other three were located at Harvard, Emory, and Denver Universities.
All were funded out of a grant of about half a million dollars by the Office of
Economic Opportunity.
4 EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
It might be noted that two CLEO summer programs or institutes,
in somewhat altered form, will operate in California during the summer
of 1969, one in Los Angeles available to the five law schools in
the southern part of the State, and one in San Francisco for the nine
northern California law schools. Each will accommodate about 60
students. Admission will be restricted to college seniors or persons
otherwise eligible for admission to law school in the fall of 1969.
Stipends to compensate for lost summer earnings will again be available,
through the extent of scholarship aid to be provided the students
once they are in law school is uncertain at this time.
Applicants to the Summer Program
Is there an adequate pool of minority group college seniors to
provide the base for a major expansion in law school enrollment?
In a little over two months-from mid-March to mid-May, 1968-
well over 300 applications were received, shattering the widely held
myth that minority applicants would be hard to come by. The
number of potential applicants is presently large and growing rapidly
because of the recruitment policies of many colleges in recent years.
The barriers to law school enrollment are not lack of interest or
desire on the part of black and brown students; they are financial
need, traditionally rigid admission standards, and widespread
skepticism among minority students that the law schools are
genuinely committed to making changes.
The principal vehicle for stimulating applications for the CLEO
Program was press publicity, both community and collegiate, stressing
the schools’ willingness to take steps to overcome the traditional
barriers. Other major generators of applications were college prelaw
advisers and those minority students already enrolled in law
schools. With the expansion of the law schools’ minority enrollment,
it is predictable that the students will themselves become major
recruiters, a role they are eager to perform. Announcements of the
Program were widely disseminated among governmental ·officials,
bar groups, community organizations, and public and private
colleges.
Roughly two-thirds of the applicants were black, and one-third
were Mexican-American. Approximately 60 percent were seniors,
eligible for admission to law school in the fall of 1968, and the balance
were juniors. The overwhelming majority of the applicants
were from California, mostly from the Los Angeles area. Over 40
PERSPECTIVES ON MINORITY ACCESS 5
percent had attended one of three Los Angeles area colleges. Two
hundred sixty-one of the applicants were male; 53 were female. A
detailed analysis of the ethnic background, sex, collegiate standing,
undergraduate schools attended, and regional distribution of the
applicants is found in Table 1.
TABLE I
ANALYSIS OF APPLICANTS
Total314
I. ETHNIC COMPOSITION
A. Black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
B. Mexican-American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
C. American Indian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
D. Japanese-American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
E. Chinese-American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
F. Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
IT. JUNIOR-SENIOR
A. Junior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
B. Senior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
ill. LAST SCHOOL ATTENDED BY APPLICANTS FROM WHICH
THREE OR MORE STUDENTS APPLIED
A. Cal State-Los Angeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
B. UCLA ………… . . …. . .. . ………… . ….. . ….. 37
c. usc……………………………………… ... 23
D. Southern University-Baton Rouge, La. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
E. Cal State-San Jose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
F. Cal State–San Fernando Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
G. UC-Berkeley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
H. Cal State-Long Beach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
I. Cal State–San Diego . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
J. Loyola-Los Angeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
K. Cal State–Sacramento . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
L. Cal State-Fullerton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
M. Cal State–San Francisco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
N. Cal Poly, Pomona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
0. Chapman College-Orange, Calif. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
P. Occidental College-Los Angeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Q. Roosevelt University-Chicago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
R. University of Washington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
S. Livingstone College–Salisbury, N.C. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
T. Cal State-Hayward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
U. UC-Riverside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
V. Stanford University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
W. Mt. St. Mary’s-Los Angeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
X. Pepperdine College-Los Angeles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Y. Tuskegee Institute-Tuskegee, Ala. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Z. Fisk University-Nashville, Tenn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
A’. UC–Santa Barbara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
B‘. University of Arizona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
6 EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
IV. SEX
A .. Male ………………•..•………………….••• 261
1. Black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
2. Mexican-American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • 88
3. American Indian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. I apanese-American . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Chinese-American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • 1
6. Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
B. Female . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
1. Black . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . 44
2. Mexican-American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S
3. I apanese-American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • . 1
4. Chinese-American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
5. Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
· V. RESIDENTIAL DISTRIBUTION
A. Los Angeles ……………………. 159
B. Other California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
C. Louisiana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . • . . . 14
D. Washington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . • . . . . . 4
E. lllinois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • • . . . . . 4
F. Georgia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • 4
G. New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . 3
H. Alabama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • 3
I. Washington, D.C. . . . . . . . . . . . . • . • . . . . . 2
I. South Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • • . . 2
K. Mississippi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • . . . 2
L. North Carolina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . 2
M. Arizona • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . 2
N. Carribean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • . . . . . . 2
0. Arkansas . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . • . . 1
P. New Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . • . . . . . . . 1
Q. Hawaii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • 1
R. Michigan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . • . . • • 1
S. Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • • • . . . • • 1
Admissions to the Summer Program
Of the more than 300 people who applied for admission to the
Summer Program, 42 were admitted-14 Mexican-Americans; 28
blacks. Thirty-four were seniors, eight juniors. All of the seniors
and two juniors-a total of 36-had accepted offers of admission to
and subsequently enrolled in various law schools, principally UCLA,
Loyola, and USC, the sponsoring schools. This indicates the direct
impact of the CLEO Program.
The Program had an additional, indirect impact. A substantial
number of those CLEO applicants denied admission to the Summer
PERSPECTIVES ON MINORITY ACCESS 7
Program were nonetheless admitted to one or another law school.
While the precise figure is not known, it probably runs as high as 45.
Thus 80 or more minority students entered law schools, in part
because of the Program’s efforts. Some of these no doubt would have
applied to and been accepted by law schools independently of the
CLEO Program. But it seems realistic to say that the Program was a
major stimulus to minority recruitment, at least on the part of the
three sponsoring schools: It encouraged widespread minority applications
for law school admission; it acted as a clearinghouse for
applicants, putting interested students and law schools in touch with
each other; and the very existence of the Program stimulated several
law schools to embark upon more aggressive recruitment efforts
than they otherwise might have undertaken.
Several aspects of the recruitment pattern of the Los Angeles
CLEO Program deserve comment.
1. The Program was not conceived as a device for screening students.
Admission to law school was not made dependent upon the
student’s performance in the Program. As a matter of fact, each of
the senior students had been guaranteed admission to a law school
before the summer course of study even began.
2. A distinctive feature of the recruiting pattern of the Los Angeles
CLEO Program was its narrow geographic focus. This was in contrast
to the technique pursued in recent years by many of the
national schools, in which academically qualified minority graduates
have been culled from all over the country, particularly from the
historically segregated colleges in the Deep South. Primary concern
in the Los Angeles CLEO Program centered upon students from the
black and Mexican-American ghettos that constitute the backyards
of the three Los Angeles law schools. Furthermore, no effort was
made to disperse these students among law schools over a wide
geographic area. They enrolled primarily in the three Los Angeles
law schools participating in the Program. There were several reasons
for this emphasis:
(a) The three sponsoring law schools normally recruit largely
from Southern California. It seemed essential to provide
comparable opportunities for members of the minority community
in the same area. In part this was in recognition of a
condition recently emphasized by the events at Columbia
University, and commented on by John Gardner, in an obser8
EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
vation that many universities are “poor corporate citizens of
their communities,” accepting their importance in relation to
their communities without asking themselves what this
implies in the way of obligations.
(b) With their community perspective, these students gave
promise of injecting a highly distinctive and valuable quality
into the law schools.
(c) Placing a large number of minority students in a single law
school would create a more hospitable environment for the
students and would enhance the likelihood of their success.
(d) Such a concentration would also enable the minority students
to develop a more effective voice within the school on issues
of vital concern to them.
3. Recruiting efforts were undertaken jointly by the three participating
law schools. A single application to the CLEO Summer Program
could serve also, if the applicant chose, as an application for
admission to any of the three sponsoring law schools. The application
also came to serve as an application for the Law Schools
Admissions Test (LSAT), the analogue of the College Boards and
the Graduate Record examinations. The LSAT was administered
without charge in the Los Angeles area in April, 1968, by courtesy
of the Educational Testing Service. Thus, with one fairly short application
form and with no application fees whatever, the student could
apply for admission to the CLEO Summer Program, to each of three
law schools, and for a free LSAT examination.
Such joint recruiting efforts might well have been extended over
an even broader area. A single application form could be adopted for
use throughout the State of California or major parts of it. Anyone
involved in such efforts can scarcely avoid being impressed by the
need for national and regional cooperation and for brokerage services
between applicants and law schools. Without question there
are substantial numbers of minority students who wish to go to law
school and law schools that wish to admit them; but in many cases,
an effective way to bring student and school together does not exist.
The Issue of Inter-Minority Quotas
A pervasive issue in the Los Angeles Program related to the
method of allocating places among various minorities, particularly
between black and brown students. In spite of certain pressures, the
Program did not adopt a policy of inter-minority quotas. Roughly
PERSPECTIVES ON MINORITY ACCESS 9
one-third of those admitted to the Program turned out to be
Mexican American, a proportion somewhat exceeding that of their
applications.
A number of Mexican-Americans in the Program and in the community
strongly advocated a quota under which half the admittees
would be members of this group, arguing that Mexican-Americans
constitute the largest single minority group in the Los Angeles area,
that the community need for Mexican–American attorneys is acutefar
greater than that for any other group–and that the educational
and financial disabilities facing Mexican-Americans are more severe
than those that confront other minorities.
The Program’s administration felt, however, that quotas, even
though benignly motivated, tend to evoke substantial concern, and
believed that it would be more desirable for the law schools, in cooperation
with Mexican-American students, to undertake large-scale
recruiting efforts which could increase the number of applicants from
that community and tend to bring the number of admissions more
into line with community needs without the imposition of a quota.
Criteria and Techniques of Selecting
Students for the Summer Program
A substantial expansion of minority enrollment presupposes
broad, flexible standards and techniques of admission. National
CLEO policy in fact required such flexibility. The Summer Program
was reserved for students who did not possess the traditional
academic qualifications required for admission to law school. Some
of those who applied did in fact meet traditional standards; they
were admitted directly to law school without passing through the
Summer Program. Those admitted to the Program therefore were
characterized by two conditions: they had already been assured of
a place in a law school for the forthcoming academic year, and they
Jacked the paper credentials traditionally required for admission to
law school.
Admission Standards and Legal Education
When one adopts a policy of “broadening” or “altering” admission
standards, or of applying them “more flexibly,” one must sooner or
later face up to the charge that these are merely euphemisms for
lowering standards. But this seems too facile and uncritical an
acceptance of the sanctity of the traditional norms that underlie
10 EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
selection of students. In this section, an effort is made to consider
some of the student qualities that might best contribute to the development
of a sound academic environment, to suggest some criteria
other than conventional academic achievement that might legitimately
be brought to bear on the selection process, and to compare
these criteria with those presently in use.
Who Should be Eligible? The Argument of Need
The need for a vast increase in the number of black and brown
attorneys is critical. The need is immediate and intense, and ways
must be found to fulfill it sooner rather than later. If this requires
selection of students with markedly lower academic credentials than
is customary, this course is fully justified. Certainly a central function
of a professional school is to serve community needs for professionals.
There is, however, not one community but several; and the
needs of some, as we have been recently made aware, have been the
subject of notorious neglect. The minority community is entitled to
an adequate pool of minority lawyers. The law schools have the
obligation to help create it. Equally to the point, a law career in this
society is a vital pathway to positions of power. To deny effective
access to the profession is to deny totally access to judgeships and to
limit severely access to government, business, and politics.
It might well be agreed that these are sufficient reasons for departing
from present methods of screening minority students. To meet
these needs, the principal criterion for admission would not be
whether the minority applicant is as “qualified” academically as
those normally accepted, only whether he stands a “reasonable”
chance of success.
Are the Traditional Criteria Valid?
The argument thus far, it will be noted, has not put in issue customary
notions of academic excellence. It merely offers reasons why
other values might be entitled to great deference in student selection.
But it is surely appropriate to speculate about the validity both of
current notions of academic excellence and the techniques used to
measure it. This raises issues that are hard to get at and complex,
because one’s views about the appropriate criteria for selecting law
students rest ultimately on premises, often unexpressed, about the
nature and obligations of legal education, of lawyers, and of the
society in which they function. The solution is not made any easier
PERSPECTIVES ON MINORITY ACCESS 11
by the biases law professors inevitably bring to the subject. In addition
to the usual array they share with other mortals, they have a
unique bias borne of their position as academics. They have mastered
the system as it now stands. Indeed they owe their faculty status to
their outstanding success as students in the system. It has certified
them as persons of considerable distinction. They are children of the
system, and it would be a thankless child who now questioned the
very standards that proclaim his virtue. The effort nonetheless may
be worthwhile.
Central to the going standard is some notion of intellectual competence.
Measured how? At the point of law school entry, primarily
by two “objective” criteria: the scores received by the student on the
Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) and his undergraduate gradepoint
average ( GP A). Other qualities may also be taken into
account, but there is little doubt about the primacy of these two. A
principal justification for the weight attached to them is that they
prove to be excellent predictors of law school grades. In turn, grades
in law school are a reliable predictor of success in the bar examination.
These admission criteria, so the argument goes, therefore
facilitate the rational allocation of scarce resources: law school
seats.
That these predictors prove reliable should surprise no one. They
each test for many of the same qualities. If there are cultural biases
in one, they faithfully reflect those found in the others. This in itself
establishes only that the hurdles the student must surmount are
roughly similar at the various stages of his odyssey from college into
the bar, not that they are an adequate basis for determining whether
an individual embodies the cluster of qualities appropriate either to
law student or practitioner. What is needed is, first, a scrutiny of how
well the various tests, when applied to minority students, do in fact
predict success as traditionally defined; and, far more fundamental,
whether this is an adequate definition of “success.”
Existing admission standards may prove a highly inadequate way
of determining which minority students are capable of success in law
school. It should be noted that the Educational Testing Service itself
makes no exaggerated claims for the predictive validity of the LSAT.
There will be a great number of cases where prediction misses the
mark by a moderate amount and a sizeable number where actual performance
will be directly opposite from predicted performance. This
12 EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
should be a sobering lesson to anyone tempted to think that the test
scores offer an easy and complete solution to his admissions problems.15
Because the test does not measure motivation or maturity, or perhaps
for other reasons, its validity may be a good deal lower for
minority group members than, say, for white, middle-class students.
National studies of the test are presently under way. If diminished
reliability is established, this would furnish a telling argument for
departing from existing admission criteria. Such a departure would
presuppose alterations neither in the law school, its faculty, its curriculum,
its value system, nor in the legal profession. All that is put
in issue is the validity of conventional methods for predicting conventional
success.
A far more fundamental issue turns on one’s views about what
constitutes quality in the educational process and about which student
characteristics would most contribute to it. This of course raises
the most difficult issues of educational theory and policy. But surely
a process worthy of the name “education” presupposes an atmosphere
marked by challenge, skepticism, and critical inquiry. And
just as surely, the addition of black and brown perspectives would
enrich, indeed in contemporary America are indispensable to, the
process. Legal education is centrally concerned with understanding
some of the principal institutions and techniques of conflict resolution.
The perceptions of these institutions and techniques on the part
of the victims of historic discrimination are an indispensable ingredient
to better understanding of the most explosive area of
conflict in American life. The educational dividends flow not
merely from the different “views” of minority observers–that
understates the point. Minority members may not only hold different
views on issues of traditional concern, they may incline to challenge
the relevance of the issues as conventionally defined. A classic issue
of legal theory, for example, is whether certain powers should be
allocated to judge or jury. The black man’s insight may be that the
distinction is of trivial importance, so long as both are white.
To take account of the diversity in life perspectives and outlooks
in the student selection process, of course, represents no innovation
for the many academic institutions in which it has long been the
established practice to aim for diversity in geographic origin,
6 Quoted from the LSAT Handbook in Winterbottom, Comments on “A
Study of the Criteria for Legal Education and Admission to the Bar,” An
article by Dr. Thomas M. Goolsby, Jr., 21 J. of Legal Ed. 75, 78 (1968).
PERSPECTIVES ON MINORITY ACCESS 13
religious and cultural background, and so forth. Sometimes narrow
academic achievement is “sacrificed” to the interest of these institutions
in rich variation in their student input. If this is desirable in
general, it is of unparalleled importance in the case of the discriminated-
against minorities.
Another aspect of educational value should be noted: students
learn about the law, in the deepest sense, not only through their
study of formal legal mechanisms, but also from the demonstrated
concerns and values of the law school, a highly significant legal institution
in its own right. The school may profoundly and lastingly
mold student attitudes as to concerns and values appropriate to
lawyers by the example it sets. A school’s demonstration of concern
for expanding minority educational opportunity advances this
value also.
Consider now some specific dangers in over-reliance on projected
law school examination performance, the conventional method of
student evaluation, as a basis for determining law school admission.
However the skills tested for in these examinations are defined,
“issue spotting,” “analytic skills,” or otherwise, it is far from clear
that these are the only, or even the central, skills or qualities needed
in practice. In weighing the likelihood of a person’s success in practice,
skills in client counseling or in negotiating may be of critical
importance; so also his capacity for hard, detailed, tenacious, tedious
work; his devotion to the interests of his client or community; and
his capacity fully to comprehend the interests at stake for his client,
because of personal identification with those interests. Perhaps
somewhat different combinations of qualities are essential for a
lawyer, depending on the type of lawyer he wants to become. The
needs may differ for one who aspires to become a “community
lawyer” as compared with one who aspires to become a corporation
lawyer.
Even if it were agreed that the law school is focusing upon the
essential skills and qualities, the artificialities of the examination
process may introduce biases irrelevant to the demands of practice.
Note the requirements the typical examination places upon a person,
in contrast to those confronted in practice.
1. Examinations test the student in a written, rather than an oral
form. The problem is aggravated at those law schools which follow
the practice of “blind” grading, under which the instructor does not
know whose paper he is grading. He therefore is unable to take into
account the student’s classroom performance, which may be excel14
EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
lent, in his evaluation of the student’s examination paper, which may
be poor.
2. Examinations are conducted under highly speeded, artificial
time limitations. There is little time for reflection about the problem
before attempting a solution.
3. The student is not permitted to consult any research sources.
He is required to answer solely on his unaided reserves of memory
and understanding.
4. He must answer the question by himself, rather than mull the
problem over with colleagues in the fashion typical of the practicing
lawyer.
5. The examination questions are hypothetical. Some students
have a low toleration for the unreal and may experience far greater
difficulty comprehending these questions than they would if the same
issue arose in practice where the tangible significance of the controversy
were plain.
6. An examination question is often calculatedly ambiguous. The
student is expected to tolerate, indeed thrive, on the ambiguity. But
students may differ in their capacity to tolerate such ambiguities,
many of which would be eliminated in real life by adequate investigation
and preparation.
The point here is that the student might perform far more satisfactorily
in practice with respect to given skills than he does in a
highly artificial examination system. Put another way, not only may
the examination processes be culturally biased, the bias may be
irrelevant in terms of the requirements of practice.
To exaggerate the point for emphasis, the law student who possessed
only those skills tested for on law school examinations would
conform to the following profile: he would be proficient at providing
rapid answers in writing, independently arrived at, without research-
and he could be quite lazy, altogether indifferent to his
client’s interests, an incompetent negotiator and an insensitive
counselor.
This is of course no argument that traditional law school skills
are irrelevant. They may, however, be less central to the requirements
confronting the average lawyer than is frequently believed.
Adherence to this examination process reflects, in part at least, the
judgment that there is no better way of doing the job, rather than a
conviction that it is immune from serious criticism. This may (or
may not) have been an adequate justification so long as the process
was merely selecting from among a relatively homogeneous group of
PERSPECTIVES ON MINORITY ACCESS 15
white students. It is wholly impermissible-a faculty cop-out-if the
effect of its shortcomings is to screen out the vast majority of minority
students in large volume.
Even if law schools‘ objectives with respect to skills training are
adjudged sound, even if the testing methods are believed valid, it is
unsound merely to exclude those for whom the chances of success
are relatively low. The job of the teacher is to teach. A variety of
forms must be developed to help the student with special problems to
meet the academic demands. Moreover, students with low academic
credentials may take somewhat longer to get in the swing of law
school work than others. The minority student with a low LSA T
may end up performing better in the second or third year than in the
first. We do not know. If so, and if the need is sufficiently urgent, this
argues for giving such students the opportunity to repeat work performed
unsatisfactorily on the first round rather than denying them
the opportunity in the first place.
Beyond that, it should be recognized that curriculum is undergoing
change in many schools. The aim is to respond to the
ubiquitous student demands for “greater relevance.” What is unknown
is how the minority student with low academic credentials
will perform in a curriculum so enriched and altered. In evaluating
the chances of a student’s success, in other words, law school should
not be viewed as an immutable given, the demands of which the student
must meet on pain of exclusion. Law schools should change, are
changing, and probably will continue to change, in ways that will
shape them somewhat more closely to the interests and talents of the
minority students.
To the degree this is achieved, present standards of admission may
be rendered substantially less relevant. As such changes occur, it
may well turn out that not only the minority students but the general
run of students and faculty as well are the beneficiaries. Surely all
engaged in the educational enterprise are victims in varying degrees
of bureaucracy, insensitivity, and irrationality. The re-examination
of some of these methods of student evaluation may be immediately
triggered by concerns with the problems of minority students, but
the benefits of change will not be restricted to these students.
Participation in Decisions about Admission
A word may be in order about who should participate in the admission
decisions. Perhaps two central criteria are involved in these
decisions: predictions of the probability of the student‘s academic
16 EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
success, and predictions of the contribution he is likely to make to
the law school educational process and to the society at large. The
process transparently involves personal values. It is indefensible that
the decisions should reflect solely the values of white academics.
Minority group members should not be denied a voice merely because
of their meager representation in the academic structure, itself
a result of the very condition such programs are designed to overcome.
Appropriate participation should be guaranteed through
minority faculty members (where they exist), administrators, students,
or lawyers.
With respect to the mechanical technique of selection for the
CLEO Program, the selections committee had before it the college
transcripts of the applicants, their LSAT scores, and letters of
recommendation. All of the senior applicants in the Los Angeles
area were interviewed by representatives of one or more of the three
sponsoring law schools. Representatives of two of the sponsoring
law schools spent a total of about ten full days interviewing about
175 applicants. The other school preferred the technique of interviewing
a smaller number of people in greater depth.
The Curriculum and Academic Objectives of the Summer Program
Three courses of regular law school type were offered, each taught
by a full-time faculty· member (one from each of the sponsoring
schools). They dealt with voting rights, personal property, and the
legal process. The courses were in most respects taught precisely as
they would have been in law school. Traditional legal materials,
cases and statutes, were used. The method was Socratic. Style, of
course, varied with the instructor. The principal differences as compared
to law school were that the courses were not for credit and
that their subject matter was not coexistensive with any of the traditional
first year courses. The students were divided into two sections
of about 20 each. Both sections of each course met three hours a
week.
A mock trial extended over most of the eight-week period. Among
its highlights were a preliminary hearing in a criminal case and a
jury trial, each presided over by an outside judge. Students performed
the role of the attorneys. The students were divided into
prosecution and defense sections, each numbering about 20.
A major object was to give the student the opportunity to do written
work and have that ·work closely evaluated. Two student instrucPERSPECTIVES
ON MINORITY ACCESS 17
tors were specially retained to read the student papers, criticize them,
and discuss them with the students.
There were several field trips to the criminal courts and to large
law offices.
The academic objectives of the Summer Program were twofold:
to provide exposure to typical law school work and skills, and to
cope with certain problems of “motivation.” The latter purpose was
predicated on the belief that more than a few students would be
highly skeptical about the relevance of the legal system-either because
they did not regard it as a significant instrument for critically
needed social change, or at any rate, because they did not believe
it a meaningful arena for personal commitment, given competing
paths open to them.
The curriculum reflected each of these objectives to a degree. The
“skills” orientation was reflected in the three courses which were
the backbone of the Program, in writing projects of the traditional
law school sort, and in the mock trial which ran over most of the
Program. The “motivational” concerns were reflected in an effort
to incorporate subject matter in the curriculum that might more
readily be perceived by the students as “relevant” -one of the
courses dealt with the protection of voting rights against discrimination;
the mock trial revolved around a criminal prosecution of students
for conduct on a college campus arising out of a racial issue;
several outside speakers sharply raised the issue of the relationship
of law to contemporary social change (these included a number of
minority lawyers and also Governor Reagan’s counsel); students
were encouraged to attend certain outside events in which issues of
“relevancy” might prominently arise, e.g., the trial of Huey Newton,
and sessions of the National Lawyer’s Guild convention, each of
which took place during the Program; and efforts were generally
made to create an atmosphere which recognized the legitimacy of
questions about the “relevance” of any subject under consideration
to the actual operation of the legal system or to the student’s values
and concerns.
Criticisms of the Program
It may be useful to consider a number of criticisms that were
leveled at the Program by some staff members and students:
1. That it was hampered by confusion of goals. A number of staff
members felt that the Program’s two objectives–to provide expo18
EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
sure to typical law school work and skills, and to cope with certain
problems of “motivation”-could not both be successfully pursued
within the brief scope of the Program. One staff member commented,
in part, “Establishing two goals rather than developing the single
goal of preparing the summer students for law school affected the
entire program, causing such confusion and tension that it was not
possible to reach a satisfactory intellectual atmosphere necessary
for an effective orientation to a legal education.”
Many of the participating students, however, had serious problems
of motivation as well as of academic preparation. A recurrent
theme in the comments of many students was a profound skepticism
about the relevance of the legal system to their personal goals. It
seemed desirable to create an atmosphere that recognized the legitimacy
of such questions. Furthermore, it seemed to some of us that
the sharp distinction between problems of motivation and traditional
academic problems suggested by this criticism was, as a matter
of educational reality, often a false dichotomy.
2. That not enough attention was focused in the Program on cultivating
those basic skills vital to survival in law school.
This implies that there are easily identifiable, fundamental techniques
indispensable to success in law school that the Program might
have taught adequately but did not. The faculty members of the
Program found it no easier in this context than in the regular law
school curriculum to determine what these techniques and skills are
and how to teach them successfully. It takes an experience like the
Program to make one fully appreciate how little educational theory
we have and how intuitive is our approach to educational technique.
The system is presently set up for those students who have a certain
complement of conceptual-verbal habits. It has paid little attention
to the problem of how to help educate those whose difficulties may
lie precisely in this area.
3. That students were not exposed to the typical law school sanctions,
requirements, and expectations and therefore could not derive
the maximum benefit from the Program; that, indeed, they were
given a false sense of the real experience they were about to confront
in law school.
It is true that the Program invoked no threats to compel satisfactory
performance. The student was already assured of admission to
law school. He was not graded on his course work, nor docked part
of his stipend for non-attendance or for failing to turn in work.
PERSPECTIVES ON MINORITY ACCESS 19
Under these circumstances, about 20 to 25 of the 42 students attended
regularly and performed substantially all of the assigned
work. For them, the absence of sanctions seemed to be an educational
feature of distinct value. The performance of the other students
shaded off from spotty to wholly inadequate. Sanctions might
have improved the performance of this group, though some members
of the staff believed there was great value in permitting students to
experience the Slimmer Program on their own terms without external
compulsion.
The Problem of Financial Aid
The financial support which the student might expect during his
first year of law school was the biggest single problem that confronted
the Los Angeles CLEO Program. It was the cause of student
walkouts from classes, negotiations, threats, and more negotiations.
It exercised the students, the Program administration, and, no doubt,
the national CLEO administration. The issue was very complex and
the solution not readily evident.
Two aspects of the financial arrangements troubled the students:
They did not know until late in the summer how much support they
would receive, and they challenged the adequacy of the amount
once it was known.
Uncertainty
The Program made no definite commitment to the students about
the amount of financial aid for the forthcoming school year until
mid-July. Each student was then informed that he would receive a
full tuition scholarship and a cash fellowship (if need for the latter
was demonstrated, as it almost invariably was) in the following
amounts: The basic stipend was $2,000. A married student with a
child received $2,500 and for each additional child an additional
$250. These amounts are comparable to those provided in many
standard scholarships for graduate students, a little better than some
and a lot worse than others (particularly some of those that are federally
financed). One thousand five hundred dollars of this total per
student was provided out of the CLEO-administered Ford grant; the
balance, by the respective law schools.
The student had not been notified earlier of the amount he would
receive because the amount available was not known earlier. The
national CLEO made no definite commitments until July, and the
20 EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
separate financial resources in the case of UCLA, which is dependent
on the annual operating budget provided for the University of California
by the State Legislature, was not known until the beginning
of July.
This uncertainty had presented a dilemma in the recruitment
efforts of the Program. We were reasonably confident that substantial
sums of money would be available. We wanted to indicate this
fact in our publicity in order to encourage applications. On the other
hand, we were not prepared to make definite commitments. The
dilemma was resolved by publicly announcing that CLEO students
would “receive substantial financial assistance toward the payment
of law school expenses throughout their law school enrollment.”
In early July, during one of the regularly scheduled class hours,
35 to 38 of the students assembled and presented the Program
administration with their concerns about the financial uncertainty.
Stated in its strongest light, the student position amounted to this:
You have encouraged us to leave summer jobs for the CLEO Program,
to abandon other careers, and to re-orient our lives to become lawyers.
You have promised us financial support. Many of us have extreme financial
needs and must make plans for this coming fall. You have explained
all the reasons for your financial uncertainties. But either the
amount from CLEO is definitely committed or it is not. If it is, you
ought to tell us now so we can now rely on it. If it is not, if there is a
risk the money will prove unavailable, why should we be saddled with
the burden of uncertainty? The law schools are far more capable of
shouldering the risk. Let them make the necessary commitments, and
then raise the money.
When the fact of the student protest was communicated to national
CLEO, the scholarship funds were released within a few
hours. To view the problem from the vantage point of the minority
student, it appeared as though there were an excessive, bureaucratic,
concern on the part of the administration with its administrative
convenience and an inadequate sensitivity to the pressing needs of
the students–until student pressure was brought to bear. Whatever
the degree of alienation of white students from academic and governmental
bureaucracy, in a certain sense it is their bureaucracy,
run by their parents or people much like them. To the minority student,
such bureaucracies are alien and viewed primarily as structures
whose central mission has been to find ways and reasons to deny
them their rights. To respond with the explanation that this is the
way we treat everybody-that we are evenhandedly inhumane-is
an argument of limited appeal.
PERSPECTIVES ON MINORITY ACCESS 21
How one views the student reaction depends ultimately on one’s
starting point. One may conceive of such efforts as a favor to minority
students for which they should be duly grateful. On the other
hand, one may believe these students have rights which have not
been previously attended to, that educational institutions have not
been sufficiently sensitive to their potential contributions and to the
reasons for such academic deficiencies as they may have, that such
programs are not the result of noblesse oblige, but rather a matter of
right.
The Level of Support
Once financial commitments were finally made, the issue shifted
to the adequacy of the amounts. After a prolonged period of negotiations,
impossible to describe within the confines of this discussion,
the participating law schools agreed to raise an additional sum over
the amount already pledged and distribute it among the most needy
students, largely as determined by the students themselves. The reasons
for these demands and for the strength of the feeling associated
with them are complex and include:
1. A belief that the amounts provided, particularly for those with
family obligations, were inadequate to carry the student through the
first year of law school. To superimpose these financial difficulties
upon the special academic problems already anticipated would
invite academic disaster.
2. The students’ desire for a hand in shaping decisions vitally affecting
their lives. They rejected an atmosphere in which financial
support might be viewed as largess from above rather than a product
of mutual discussion.
3. The feeling of a number of the students that they had been
misled by earlier, vague references to “substantial financial aid.” This
phrase could mean entirely different things to different people. The
Program, in lawyer-like precision, thought this promised nothing
specific; students in good faith often interpreted it otherwise.
4. The fact that a number of CLEO students intend to become
lawyers in their own communities rather than to seek out more lucrative
arenas of practice. Many of these students were already
heavily burdened by debts. If they were further burdened by additional
thousands of dollars of indebtedness to finance their law
school careers, it would be exceedingly hard for them to go into the
type of community law practice that had motivated their coming to
law school. They would be compelled to seek fairly high-paying
22 EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
work in order to meet loan obligations. Loan requirements would
thus pervert the purposes of the Program.
The sums of money needed to provide adequately for subsistence
and tuition are enormous if compared to the amounts presently
available. While figures are incomplete, a rough estimate would be
that some $200,000 was committed by the three Los Angeles schools
to meet the financial requirements of approximately 60 students for
the current year. Of this $200,000, $45,000 was made available
from the CLEO administered Ford grant. The balance of $155,000
was raised by the three schools elsewhere. Given the same rate of
minority recruitment in the next two entering classes-not to speak
of accelerated recruitment-the financial need in 1970 will run
about half a million dollars a year, just for the three Los Angeles
law schools. The amount needed for an analogous statewide expansion
would run into many millions. The sums presently available
are, of course, grossly inadequate, though thus far they are relatively
favorable in the case of the University of California law schools,
because of the availability of educational opportunity funds. Based
on the experience of the Los Angeles Program, it is no exaggeration
to say that, for the present, the limiting factor upon the expansion
of minority enrollment is neither the lack of students nor the unwillingness
of law schools,· it is rather the lack of money.
A soundly conceived financial aid program would, I believe,
include the following features:e
Since the overwhelming majority of minority group students came
from families unable in any way to assist them financially, and since
a large number will enter law school having already incurred substantial
debts in the course of obtaining their undergraduate educations,
the sums provided should be sufficient to enable a student to
pursue his academic work with a minimum of distraction from financial
pressures. On the average, the minimum amount provided
a single student should be about $2,500, in addition to tuition. The
amount should, of course, increase for the student with dependents,
perhaps at the rate of $1000 per child.
Because of the financial condition of most minority group students,
the financing of any portion of their legal education through
0 What ensues represents proposals made by Professor Richard Wasserstrom
and myself to the national CLEO. National Goals for Expanding Minority
Group Entry into the Legal Profession: Some Proposals to the CLEO
Council, October 1, 1968 (unpublished).
PERSPECTIVES ON MINORITY ACCESS 23
loans should be avoided. However, to the extent to which a loan
program may become necessary, it should provide interest–free loans
which do not become payable until a substantial period of time (say
five years) after graduation from law school. More importantly, any
such loan program should contain forgiveness provisions if the recipient
chooses to employ his legal skills on behalf of the minority
community or in public service generally.
Should an individualized determination of financial need be a
prerequisite to financial aid? Admittedly, failure to make a detailed
scrutiny may occasionally result in a student without need getting
funds. But, given the great need almost all minority students present,
administration of a detailed means test as a condition for financial
aid will end up being more expensive than across-the-board allocation
of a standard sum. Moreover, detailed and searching financial
inquiries can be most demeaning to the applicant. On the other hand,
if inquiries are not detailed and searching, they provide only a spurious
basis for precise determination of need. If any means test is
employed, it should be an extremely simple and “gross” test, so that
if “need” is demonstrated by the applicant for substantial financial
assistance, the standard stipend should be awarded, without more
detailed inquiry to determine whether a smaller amount would
suffice.
To Sum Up
In any efforts to improve the access of minorities to legal education,
we must grapple with a number of problems, some of them
difficult even to understand, and one of them– that of financial
aid-simple enough to understand but difficult to resolve. The Los
Angeles CLEO Program demonstrated that the anticipated problem
of attracting a sufficient number of applicants for legal education
need perhaps cause little concern. There remains, however, along
with the problem of providing financial aid at the needed levels, the
tangled area of devising appropriate admission standards and criteria;
of learning what constitutes validity in the educational process
and what student characteristics would most contribute to it; of
gauging the adequacy (or, rather, the inadequacy) of our educational
theory and technique as applied to students who lack the particular
pattern of conceptal-verbal habits for which the present system
is set up; and of discovering how to motivate students who have
little or no stake in the system-or perhaps more importantly, of
24 EXPERIMENT & INNOVATION
discovering how to change that system to make it more relevant to
valid motivattions that already exist in such students. If the CLEO
Program provided no final solutions, it was a useful experiment, and
helpful in illuminating the problems. • D f!l
Leon Letwin (1929-2015) 