Latest ABA data shows a continuing decrease of Black men enrolled in law schools
Any discussion of race, sex, and legal education has its own challenges about how to approach or how to interpret the topic, but some recent trends are noteworthy enough to raise, which I do here, and leave some of the discussion of implications for others.
Total 1L enrollment of Black law students has been fairly steady at law schools in the last decade. Total 1L enrollment has been fairly stable, mostly between 37,000 and 38,500 with occasional forays above 40,000. For Black 1Ls, it’s been mostly between 2900 and 3500 1Ls. (For figures, see the statistics here.)
For 2024, Black 1L enrollment is 3066, up a tick from 2023’s 2969. Stories like this one at the New York Times focus on a few elite law schools, particularly Harvard, and its declining Black 1L enrollment after the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions. It’s a fairly anecdotal story, though—the picture for legal education as a whole looks a little different than a deep dive on a handful of schools.
One fairly significant and underreported story for that bigger picture of legal education is the wide, and now widening, gender gap among Black law students.
Let’s start with the overall portrait of sex and legal education. In 2016, women outnumbered men in the incoming 1L class for the first time. The total number of women has continued to climb, and the total number of men has continued to fall.
While men totaled around 18,000 to 19,000 of 1L enrollees about a decade ago, and even up until a few years ago, it’s down to around 16,000 now (16,679 for the incoming Class of 2024). Women enrolled rose both in absolute and relative numbers over the years, from 19,032 in that 2016 figure to 22,276 in 2024. Among men and women, women were 51% of the incoming class in 2016; they are more than 57% of the incoming class of 2024.
This is consistent with trends in higher education more generally, as men are increasingly eschewing college and women enroll at much higher rates. As the gap in undergraduate education widens, one would expect the gap in legal education to widen, too.
So, there is a story to tell in recent years about sex and legal education. But the interaction with race is a separate noteworthy development.
There are anecdotes about the gender gap between Black men and women in the legal profession in recent media. For instance, President Joe Biden recently appointed Embry Kidd to the federal court of appeals, and news outlets noted that it was the second Black man he appointed to the bench, compared to thirteen Black women. (At the district court level at the time of that story, it was 20 Black men and 25 Black women.)
But 1L enrollment tells a story about the current and future state of the legal profession, too. As the gender gap has widened more generally in legal education, it has widened particularly acutely for Black men.
Back in 2016, there were 1198 Black men enrolled in the 1L class, and 2076 Black women. Women were 63% of the total of Black men and women 1L enrollees. In the last decade, the total number of Black men has fallen to 918 in 2024, about a 25% decline since 2016. (And in 2017, 1L Black men totaled 1281, so the fall to 918 is even more precipitous compared to that bench mark.) For Black women, 1L enrollment is up slightly since 2016, to 2103 1Ls in 2024 (some years climbing into the 2200 range). That moves the percentage of Black women up to almost 70%—more than a 2 to 1 ratio.
There are challenges with this, like any, data. This data set only includes those who identify as a man or a woman, not another gender identity or refuse to reveal their sex (although the ABA aggregates those, but they are a much smaller number, around 32 Black 1Ls total in 2023 and 45 in 2024, to give two examples). It also includes only those who identify as “Black of African-American” (the category the ABA uses), not those who refuse to disclose, or who identify as two or more races (although the ABA aggregates those, too). But for consistency, we can make the comparative approach over the last decade with the same kind of data limitations.
In many respects, Black men have all but disappeared from legal education in many places. Consider the following statistics about the 918 Black men who make up the incoming 2024 1L class.
About one-sixth of Black men enrolled as 1Ls (154) are concentrated at the five HBCU law schools.
Another 13% (120) are concentrated at what might have historically been labeled “top 14” law schools.
27 law schools (about 14% of law schools) report zero Black men who are 1Ls.
51 law schools (about 26% of law schools) report one or two Black men who are 1Ls.
There are, of course, reasons for some schools to have such figures (e.g., lower racial diversity in some great plains or mountain west states and their affiliated law schools). But the figures are fairly noteworthy all the same.
In short, in the aggregate, Black 1Ls have been a fairly stable cohort in the entering 1L class over recent years, and the incoming 2024 admissions class is no exception. But there’s a deeper story to examine about race and sex when it comes to legal education.
As I opened this post, any discussion of race, sex, and legal education can be challenging. And presenting data always presents its own challenges, including what conclusions to draw or what implications the data offer. One could compare the current legal education picture to the legal profession as a whole. One could look at current trends and ask why certain trends are happening or what can or ought to be done about them. One could drill down to individual schools or cohorts of schools, by “prestige” or by geography. But there’s no question that the ABA data shows a continuing decrease of Black men enrolled in law schools, and the numbers are more stark than they’ve been in recent history.