Diversity, the Legal Profession, and the American Education Crisis: Why the Failure to Adequately Educate American Minorities is an Ethical Concern for the Legal Profession

17 Pages Posted: 18 Nov 2014 Last revised: 25 Nov 2014

Date Written: November 17, 2013

Abstract

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan's Department of Education produced a report on the intense need for education reform in the United States. Thirty years later, the education system in the United States is still in drastic need of reform, as it continues to fail to educate minority students to the same level as their non-minority counterparts. This particular shortcoming of the education system in the United States is commonly referred to as the achievement gap. The effects of the achievement gap are numerous and expansive. However, this Note focuses on one particular effect: the lack of diversity in the legal profession that results from a crisis in the American education system.

This Note advances the thesis that the lack of diversity in the legal profession is a direct result of the achievement gap in the United States. Accordingly, if the legal profession intends to meet its ethical duty to bring the diversity of our profession into alignment with the diversity in our country, then the profession must go beyond scholarship programs, diversity pipelines, and race-conscious admission -- we must focus on the heart of the problem, an American education system that continues to fail minority students.

Keywords: Diveristy, Legal Profession, Ethics, Education, Minorities, African-Americans, Hispanics, Race, Achievement Gap

Suggested Citation

Williams, Edward, Diversity, the Legal Profession, and the American Education Crisis: Why the Failure to Adequately Educate American Minorities is an Ethical Concern for the Legal Profession (November 17, 2013). Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, Vol. 26, No. 1107, 2013, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2526152

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