Increasing Diversity in Arkansas’s Law Schools and Our Profession
By Dean Stacy Leeds One of the most publicized national trends in legal education today is the dramatic decline in student applications to law schools and the corresponding decline in law school enrollment throughout the United States. If this trend continues, there are implications for the legal profession as a whole, particularly within Arkansas. From 2010 to 2012, total enrollment in U.S. law schools dropped by 7,000 students. A more troublesome and often overlooked phenomenon within the overall reduced applicant pool is a sharp decline in both applicants and matriculants from underrepresented communities. In the past three years, there were 1,000 fewer African American law school applicants than in prior years. As a result of the overall declining applicant pool, law schools throughout the country, including the Arkansas law schools, have admitted slightly smaller entering classes as competition for law students intensifies. The likelihood that some of Arkansas’s top law school candidates, as measured by performance on the law school admission test and undergraduate grade point average, will be successfully recruited by out-of-state law schools offering lucrative scholarship opportunities has never been so pronounced. When these market forces are at play, Arkansas’s concerns over brain drain are highlighted. With declining enrollments, it follows that ensuring a diverse student body and ultimately a diverse legal profession is becoming a tougher proposition. A very positive development for Arkansas, and consequently the legal profession within our state, is the recognition that our state law schools are providing quality education at an affordable price. Arkansas law graduates move into practice with student loan debt much lower than the national average and they face a job market in our region that produces more JD required and JD preferred employment 16
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opportunities than other areas across the United States. In the most recent national law school best value rankings, both of our state law schools performed well, each delivering a unique experience for its students at a remarkable value. But even with these national accolades, the declining applicant pool at our state’s law schools signals potential changes that we must be proactive in addressing. The state of Arkansas is fortunate to have a long history of welcoming underrepresented groups into the study of law. In 1948, the University of Arkansas School of Law (and, by association, the entire University) became the first college in the South to admit an African American student since Reconstruction. The admissions building of the University of Arkansas is named in honor of that student, Silas Hunt. Five trailblazing African American students
followed Silas Hunt and enrolled in the School of Law in the next few years. Those men—Wiley Branton, George Haley, George Howard, Christopher Mercer, and Jackie Shropshire—are honored along with Silas Hunt in the Six Pioneers Room in our Leflar Law Center. When one considers the impactful legacy of their careers and how their individual success translated into tangible positive outcomes for the communities they served, a simple proposition rings true: community empowerment starts with meaningful access to legal education. Of the first five African American law school graduates within the state of Arkansas, one became a United States Ambassador (to Gambia), one became a Law School Dean (at Howard), one served as a Federal Court Judge, and two enjoyed successful careers in the public and private practice of law, which included countless hours of pro bono service in the most important issues of their time, including the integration of the Little Rock schools. The commitment to diversity and inclusion continues to this day, a legacy that our two state law schools share and prioritize. This coming summer will be the sixth year in a row that an Arkansas law school has hosted a summer pipeline program geared at increasing the overall diversity in law Dean Stacy Leeds is the dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law. She has focused her teaching and extensive research on property, natural resources, and American Indian law. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she is the first American Indian woman to serve as dean of a law school.