Why Blacks Should Say No to Law School  

Winkfield Twyman Jr.

      After graduating with High Honors from the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School, Winkfield Twyman Jr. worked at a major New York law firm, served on the staffs of Congressmen Barney Frank and Henry B. Gonzalez, and taught as a law professor for seven years. His publications include articles in the South Carolina Law Review, the Virginia Tax Review, the National Black Law Journal, and the San Diego Union Tribune.

      I know a young woman who has made the biggest mistake of her life.

      “Shelby” is an attractive, intelligent, and driven student at a top University. And she is Black. When I met Shelby, she was in her first year at college and her mom was quite pleased that she had gained admission to a top University. Over the last 3 years, I learned that Shelby was very interested in foreign relations, having taken advantage of international study programs. She traveled overseas and developed a genuine passion for international policy. On occasion, Shelby’s mother and I would talk about Shelby’s progress. Shelby loved college and had developed close friendships, particularly among the African-American community. But it was also clear that Shelby worked very hard to achieve a 3.3 grade point average, leaving little room or time for dates and parties. I admired Shelby’s discipline and focus, in part, because I had been so driven as a Black student at the University of Virginia.

      So I had mixed emotions when I learned that Shelby was going to take the LSAT and apply to law school. For several years, my wife, a former Minority Affairs administrator, and I recruited African-American law students to a bottom-ranked law school. While we celebrated the accomplishments of a few who made law review and excelled, having found their calling, we were pained by a greater number who flunked out, struggled during their first year, or encountered a cold reception from employers. I cannot speak for my wife but, at times, I felt like we were selling dreams of prestige and financial success while turning a blind eye to the misery most admitted students, particularly minority students, would weather in law school.

      When I next talked with Shelby’s mom, she told me that Shelby had “not done well” on the LSAT. She had scored at the 84th percentile. As a result, she was “reconsidering” law school. I assured Shelby’s mom that Shelby would make a good choice. In my experience (assuming the role of former law professor), I reasoned that the 84th percentile was not horrible but Shelby might now have a good reason to pursue her interest in foreign relations. I added, with a knowing grin, that the law was not an ideal profession for everyone.

      A few months later, I learned, to my surprise, that not only had Shelby applied to law school but also she had applied to a number of elite law schools and gained admission to the University of Chicago. I congratulated Shelby’s mom and my congratulations were genuine. It is no small feat to gain admission to the law school at Chicago, ranked in the top five of law schools. Chicago received over 3,500 applications for 171 seats in their first-year class. Chicago may well have the top admissions criteria of any law school in the country, with all due respect to my alma mater, Harvard Law School. I offered Shelby’s mom my assessment that Chicago was the center of a conservative legal movement known as Law and Economics, so Shelby needed to appreciate that Chicago had a conservative reputation in legal education. I shared my own experiences in law school and how I would study if I were in law school again. I am sure that I bored Shelby’s mom with my details but I’ve always believed that African-American lawyers have an obligation to help others deciding whether to enter the profession.

      You may think that Shelby’s story will have a happy ending, if she accepts Chicago’s offer. You would be wrong.

      Over the summer, Shelby will bask in a warm glow of acclaim from family and friends. Chicago, like Stanford, Yale, and Harvard, evokes instant credibility and respect. Black graduates of the law school who, wisely, may advise her to take a year off from the academic treadmill may contact her. She will not listen to them. She will be eager to get on with her life in the law.

      When she arrives at Chicago, the Black Law Students Association will arrange orientation programs for Shelby and other entering African-American students. Whether the offerings are workshops, picnics, or legal method sessions, the point will be to make Shelby feel at home, to give her a “head start.” Even a conservative institution like the University of Chicago’s Law School will condone these efforts in the name of “diversity.”

      As classes begin, all law students will be stunned by the complexity of the material. Legal opinions are essentially a foreign language that students must digest: What are the relevant and material facts in a case? What are the applicable rules of law? The holding? The rationale? Dicta? The reasoning in casebooks will be dense and all students will constantly face too much work and the ever-present threat of sharp questioning from a seasoned law professor who may have been teaching Contracts, Civil Procedure or Torts for years. Yes, Shelby will be immersed in a new level of challenge, difficulties that will cause her to yearn for the certainty of her undergrad courses.

      Not only is the work overwhelming but also she will know within two or three weeks that she is out of her league. The average LSAT score at Chicago’s Law School ranges in the 98th percentile. The summer glow of feeling that all is possible with hard work, that hard work will see you through, will give way to a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach that she’s not in the game. Period. The gap between Shelby’s grade point average and that of her average classmate’s will be a full .5 points, the difference between a 3.3 and a 3.8. Now consider how distant Shelby will be in talent and ability from the top students in her class. Shelby has gained admission to a game where she is bringing up the rear.

      Now Shelby will fight an epic fight for academic success. As the weeks wear on, however, she will set her sights on a solid B average, having discerned that her top classmates, the likely A students, are participating at an unobtainable level in dissecting legal material and throwing back crisp argument to the brightest law professors in the country.

      Then, alienation will set in. Shelby will start to pass as a typical student with credentials indistinguishable from anyone else. She will overhear students talking about their summa cum laude degrees, their Phi Beta Kappa keys, 4.0 grade point averages and, because she desperately wants to belong, Shelby will not volunteer her undergraduate statistics, or, if asked, change the subject as smoothly as she can. But passing weakens the spirit, trashes one’s identity, and renders one vulnerable. By late November, Shelby will sense that everyone around her is catching on to the game. If she belongs to a study group, her study group will likely be all Black, an ominous sign both because few Black law students have better than average LSAT scores and college grades at Chicago and because their shared vulnerability (remember, everyone is passing) will feed on itself.

      As exams approach, panic will set in. Shelby will be studying every minute of every hour of every day, save for her fitful hours of sleep. So much is riding on her doing well—$50,000 a year tuition, positive self-image, racial vulnerability. She will have learned that the law is a very unforgiving profession. Grades are THE key to jobs. Top students at Chicago have their pick of the top paying law firm jobs and prestigious judicial clerkships. Average students at Chicago can still find clerkships and jobs at firms with ease. What her fellow students and professors do not share are the dismal prospects for students in the bottom third of the class: a cold shoulder from firms, rigorous screening by judges, and disillusionment with job opportunities. Shelby learned as an undergraduate that hard work is rewarded, so she will overcompensate and limit her life to the four corners of the classroom, the library, and her bedroom.

      You may share Shelby’s faith in the power of Herculean study. You would be naïve.

      I have counseled too many distraught law students after grades came out to believe any correlation exists between hours of study and law school grades. Students would complain because they studied all the time (and I believed them) and flunked out anyway. Other students would say that they studied a lot in one subject, say, Contracts, and got a C but relied on commercial outlines in say, Torts, and got a B. My favorite example of the craziness of law school grading would be my friend “Joseph,” a law professor at a top 25 law school. Now Joseph is a brilliant professor but study habits in law school were not his forte. I recall a course where he did not attend a single class; save for the last class that he attended so he would know where the exam was being held (must take the test to get a grade, you know). Anyway, Joseph relied on commercial outlines, studied at the last minute and either got an A or a B in the class. There is no justice.

      But Joseph scored at about the 95th percentile on the LSAT. He was in the game. Shelby is not competitive with an 84th percentile score at Chicago—no amount of study will compensate for her LSAT deficiency. That is a blunt truth.

      And so on a winter’s day in January or February, Chicago will send Shelby her first-semester grades. When I attended Harvard Law School, the Registrar hand-delivered first-semester grades with grave finality in an Austin Hall classroom. One moment, all is possible in the law; the next moment, your path for life is set in the law. I recall that some students wept openly in Langdell Hall on that fateful day. Others seemed delirious with the prospect of making law review, reserved for the top 5 percent of the class, and a life of privileged opportunity. Shelby will fight back the tension and anxiety, hoping that she did “ok” with a solid B. More likely, if her LSAT score and college grade point average are any guide, she will open her first-semester grades and her heart will drop to the floor. She will see grades that she has never known in her charmed life. The blood will drain from her face. She will fight back the tears and walk aimlessly around campus, perhaps in a developing Chicago snowstorm. And Shelby will be a changed person . . . forever.

      Now, I love Black people. I believe in African-American achievement to the core of my being. My heart sings when I see Condoleeza Rice conducting masterful press releases. When my boys see Kofi Annan and Colin Powell on television, I rejoice that they take Black powerful men for granted. That is good.

      Law schools are not good for Blacks.

      Blacks should not go to law school because law schools have rigged the game. Unlike other professions, grades are hypercritical throughout one’s career in the law. I know this from personal experience. Headhunters have told me of law firms rejecting a partner with a million dollars of portable business because of the partner’s grades. That is insane. And it happens because the profession treats grades as a professional IQ.

      Now, why admit students who will be bringing up the rear of the class, if you know that the profession will close those students out of jobs? If you know that those students will go through the charade of recruitment season and turn up with limited, if any, associate opportunities because of their grades?

      Self-esteem flows from mastery of one’s profession, one’s livelihood. Confidence comes from feeling connected to the values and attitudes of one’s peers. Power is a factor of acceptance. If the firm does not hire you because of grades, then you never become a powerful law firm partner. If you are out of the running for a judicial clerkship because of grades, then the odds are against your becoming a law professor at a respectable law school and influencing future lawyers.

      I do think that law schools are well-suited for Black students at the top of their game in college. For example, students like William T. Coleman, a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, or Charles Houston, a Phi Beta Kappa at Amherst, are in an excellent position to excel in law school. Coleman graduated first in his class at Harvard Law School and Houston was in the top 5 percent of his Harvard Law School class. Similarly, students who feel a true calling to practice law, an adversarial profession, would be good candidates for law school. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and multi-millionaire attorney Willie Gary come to mind.

      When Black students with uncompetitive credentials attend law schools, especially elite law schools like Chicago; they hurt the cause of Black advancement in several ways. First, they commit themselves to a brutal career track that promises disappointment, frustration, and self-doubt. The Shelby I know has a lot going for her. Why risk all that you uniquely bring to the game of life for the prospect of being in the bottom third of an elite law school? Secondly, uncompetitive Black law students boost the class ranking of white students. If no Blacks attended Chicago Law School, then other students would bring up the rear. Third, Black underachievement reinforces stereotypes that Blacks cannot compete in intellectual pursuits. We all know the stereotype is bogus but how do you educate your classmates who have a 4.0 grade point average about African-American brainpower with a 3.3 grade point average? You cannot because you are too busy passing and overcompensating.

      There is a strong urge in the Black community to walk through all the doors of opportunity. I understand the hunger for professional fame and fortune. I dismissed a career as a historian for a shot at Harvard Law School, just as Shelby has grasped the Chicago Law School ring in lieu of graduate study in foreign relations. I am a 41-year-old lawyer now and I have seen law schools scoop up the young, gifted, and Black for at least 20 years. But how many historians, writers, and philosophers have we lost to the legal grind? How many? If their grades and LSAT scores are not competitive, it is time for Black students to say no to law schools, and, yes to following your passion, your bliss. If you have caught the attention of an elite law school, you probably have shown an unusual depth in an undergraduate discipline. Pursue that interest and say no to law schools.

      “When you change your thoughts, you change your world.” —Norman Vincent Peale     Ω