Affirmative action may have been dismantled in higher education and diversity may be under attack, but this hasn’t stopped students from navigating the pathway to law school. Despite these challenges, law schools have been doing their very best to recruit diverse students and professors, attempting to make the legal profession look more like society at large. Student diversity may sadly be declining, but 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, then have we got a ranking for you.
The National Jurist’s preLaw magazine 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:
We graded schools based on how well each school matches with the U.S. average for each minority population. For students, we looked at Asian (which includes native Hawaiian), Black, Hispanic, Caucasian and American Indian populations. For faculty, we compared the percentage of minority faculty members to the overall U.S. minority population. A school received full credit when it matched the national average and could receive up to 40% added value if its percentage was higher than the national average for each population. Faculty diversity accounted for 25% of the final grade, with each student population accounting for 16.67%, except American Indian, which accounted for 8.32% of the final grade. We have used this methodology since 2013.
Without further ado, here are the top 20 most diverse law schools:
- CUNY School of Law
- Texas Southern University
- University District of Columbia
- Florida A&M University
- UNT Dallas | College of Law
- University of San Francisco
- Atlanta’s John Marshall
- Penn State – Dickinson Law
- North Carolina Central University
- Barry Law School
- University of Nevada, Las Vegas
- University of Arizona
- Northern Illinois University
- UCLA Law
- South Texas Houston
- Yale Law School
- Southwestern Law School
- University of Houston
- George Washington University
- Oklahoma City University
As you can see, two of the best law schools in the country — UCLA and Yale — made their way to the top of the diversity ranking this time around. 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 [preLaw magazine / 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 Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
