Jad Battle

ENG-320
Persuasive Letter with Research
12/3/17

John Smith
Dean of Admissions
Iowa School of Law
280 Boyd Ave.
Iowa City, IA 52242

Dear Mr. Smith,

Studying law is something that I have longed to do for as long as I can remember. The more I
matriculated through school, I noticed that there is a lack of diversity in the legal profession. As
a future law student, I began to research and look at different law schools diversity information
and there was a large disparity between white American students and all other minorities who are
currently enrolled. This large gap between white students and minorities enrolled in law schools
is the root of the problem throughout the profession. This problem continues onto numerous law
firms throughout the country because of this issue that is stemming from law schools. In this
letter I have enclosed a few suggestions as to how this problem can be fixed.
According to Deborah Rhodes at The Washington Post, eighty-eight percent of lawyers are
white. She also states that In major law firms, only 3 percent of associates and less than 2
percent of partners are African Americans. This is because of the issue that is stemming from
law school admissions. There are so very few African Americans that work in law firms and are
partner because there are not many of us being accepted into law school.
At the highest-ranking law schools in America, African Americans are extremely under
represented. At Harvard Law Schools (Harvards) enrollment was the highest at 8.7%, while
Michigans AfricanAmerican enrollment was the lowest at 3.6% (Nelson, Pinter, Pratt 2198).
With these extremely low numbers, this causes the pool of African American lawyers to be
extremely small, therefore causing the lack of diversity within the field. To begin to solve the
issue of little to no minority law students and lawyers, there should be a no-bias policy when
looking at applications and interviewing applicants. This policy will allow for all students with
good academic records to be equally considered no matter what may be presented to you. This
means that there should not be any instances of overlooking or disregarding any applicants
whose name or race/ethnicity may seem to be slightly different or not what you feel will fit into
the schools community. Throughout my research of this issue, I found that there is a large bias
with names that could be considered ethnic within various admissions counsels. For example, if
you receive an application from a student who has a 4.0 and very active in school and his name is
Kareem, you may overlook him for a student with a 3.0 who is semi-active in school named
Steve. Cynthia Mares, the President of the National Hispanic Bar Association conducted a study
on the different names of applicants and found that there was afifty percent gap in callback rates
between the white and black resumes (Mares 37). People cannot control the names they were
given, but it is up to Deans of Admissions like yourself to make sure that this is no longer an
issue.
I do hope that this letter finds you well and I hope that you will consider my ideas. The lack of
diversity within the legal field is very severe, making it the least diverse field in America. There
are a lot of great future minority lawyers who are not given the chance because of certain things
like their name. I hope that you will consider these steps for future admissions decisions. If you
have any questions, you may contact me at 732-555-5555 or by email at jbattle2@yahoo.com.
Sincerely,
Jad Battle
 Works Cited

Mares, Cynthia. Is Anybody Listening? Does Anybody Care?. TheFederalLawyer. The

Federal Lawyer. 2015. Web. 23 March 2016.

Nelson, Eboni, Ronald Pitner and Carla Pratt. Assessing the Viability of Race-Neutral

Alternatives in Law School Admissions. Iowa Law Review. vol 102, no. 2187, 2017,

pp.2198.

Rhode, Deborah. Law is the least diverse profession in the nation. And lawyers arent doing

enough to change that. TheWashingtonPost, 17 May 2015.