Law schools have been doing their very best to recruit diverse students and professors; in fact, more incoming law students identify as people of color than ever before, and in recent years, we’ve seen record numbers of law school deans and faculty members of color. If you’re a person of color searching for a law school where you’ll be truly valued for who you are as a person, rather than a law school where you’ll be a face in marketing materials to promote diversity and inclusion efforts, then have we got a ranking for you.
The National Jurist recently released its Most Diverse Law Schools ranking, highlighting the schools that are really doing their homework when it comes to diversifying their institutions. Here’s the methodology that was used:
Our grades are based on how well each school matches with the U.S. average for each minority population. For students, we look at Asian (which includes native Hawaiian), Black, Hispanic, Caucasian and American Indian populations. For faculty, we compare overall U.S. minority percentages with the percentage of minority faculty. A school receives full credit when it matches the national average and can receive up to 40% added value when its percentage is higher than the national average for each population. Faculty accounts for 25% of the final grade, with each student population accounting for 16.67%, except for American Indian, which accounts for 8.32%. We’ve used this methodology since 2013. All data is from the American Bar Association.
Without further ado, here are the top 25 most diverse law schools:
- CUNY School of Law
- Texas Southern University
- University District of Columbia
- UNT Dallas College of Law
- Golden Gate University
- North Carolina Central University
- Western State College of Law
- Florida A&M University
- Southwestern Law School
- University of San Francisco
- University of Hawaii
- Atlanta’s John Marshall
- Barry Law School
- McGeorge School of Law
- Seattle University
- California Western School of Law
- South Texas Houston
- UC Irvine
- University of New Mexico
- Santa Clara Law
- Touro Law Center
- Nova Southeastern University
- Loyola University New Orleans
- Rutgers Law
- LMU Loyola Law School
If you’re looking for T14 law schools, you’ll find several of them in the unranked portion of this list, designated only by their letter grades (A-). Click here to see the full rankings, courtesy of National Jurist.
Congratulations to each of the law schools listed and all of their students!
Most Diverse Law Schools [National Jurist]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
