The article in The Atlantic, linked above, features the work of Richard Sander, who has been arguing for a while now that AA in law schools hurts black people. Most people who study this, though, have come to the opposite conclusion; the bulk of the research shows that folks admitted into elite law schools via AA do comparably well to those who weren’t, and certainly weren’t hurt by their admission.

That shouldn’t be so surprising. First, success in actual law practice rests in important degree on personal qualities (e.g., entrepreneurial attitudes & people skills) that aren’t reflected in LSAT and GPA. Second, while LSAT is supposed to measure the extent to which you have the kind of smarts you need in law school, I take for granted that the reason most black law school applicants tend to present lower LSAT scores isn’t because they’re dumber than white folks. Rather, it’s because they tend not to have the sort of educational backgrounds that make them as good at filling in the little circles on standardized-test forms. Moral: we shouldn’t fetishize LSAT (or for that matter, undergraduate GPA) as predictors of success as a lawyer. So why do law schools use those measures for admissions? Because, as flawed as they are, they’re the best predictors we’ve got (and because any law school that decides not to rely on them will be punished in the marketplace — US News will lower the law school’s ranking, and that it turn means that the school will have a harder time hiring faculty and attracting students).

Last point: AA in law school admissions *is* about money. Folks who graduate from more prestigious law schools tend to get higher-paying jobs.