Are Asians URM at Law Schools?

Polite_Antagonis
Tue, 11 Apr 2006 00:28:52 +0000

That was my point though it wasn’t clear in my first post. Many of the high-achieving asians are actually recent immigrants who have a very strict work ethic. People who are born here and read a lot and know the language first hand have a distinct advantage on the LSAT. Their reading speeds are faster and they have a much better handle on the language. As such its very hard to throw a work ethic against the LSAT and do well.

And I never said their intelligence comes from work ethic alone (but as a knowledgable person should know, non-genetic factors make anywhere between 40-60% of intelligence), but their overachievement in comparison to other races in aggregate is largely due to that; not innate smartness.

I would posit from personal experience that though the diference is marginal, asians worked slighlty to substantially more to achieve their LSAT scores in relation to the average (white) LSAT taker because of their work ethic and culture.

I would say that asians are equally as smart as anyone else but insofar as they score better on average than the general population in a wide variety of academic tests, I would have to attrbiute that difference soley to work ethic. The reason work ethic does not work well on the LSAT is because things like reading speed and analytical abilities are more deeply ingrained over time and practice. A child who reads english earlier is just going to be better at English the rest of his life compared to most immigrants, and thus natives have a big advantage on the LSAT.

Plus as I said, many traditional asians don’t respect lawyers (since law as an institution is ridiculously corrupt in their home countries) and thus don’t encourage their children to do it.

And Indians are also ORM’s. Many already speak English natively in their home country which makes them equal to native English speakers in America.