Mismatch in Law School1

An important criticism of race-based admissions preferences is that they may hurt minority students who are thereby induced to attend selective schools. We use two comparisons to identify so-called “mismatch ” effects in law schools, with consistent results. There is no evidence of mismatch effects on graduation or bar passage rates of black students above the bottom quintile of the entering credentials distribution. The data are consistent with mismatch effects for bottom-quintile black students but do not demonstrate the importance of these effects, as sample selection bias is a potentially important confounding factor in this range. There is no evidence from any comparison of mismatch effects on employment outcomes