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69 UMKC L. Rev. 491 (2000-2001)
The Academic Support Student in the Year 2010

handle is hein.journals/umkc69 and id is 501 raw text is: THE ACADEMIC SUPPORT STUDENT IN THE YEAR 2010 Leslie Yalof Garfield* Ally McBeal's short skirts and The Practice's questionable professional ethics have not proven influential enough to encourage a flock of law school ap- plicants in the way that its predecessor, L.A. Law did.' Consequently, many schools are faced with admitting applicants whose LSAT's and undergraduate 2 GPA's are not as strong as those of students admitted ten years ago. Low pre- dictors have, indeed, led to lower bar pass rates.' This influx of students with less impressive indicators has left legal educators in a quandary as to how best to educate these students. The reality is that in order to teach these students the law, we need to teach them how to be law students. Academic support professionals have long recognized the benefits of im- parting a greater knowledge of learning skills to law students as a way to enhance their ability to learn the law. Consequently, the science and pedagogy of aca- demic support have become a staple of legal education.4 However, while the need for academic support remains a constant, the identification of those in need of academic support programs continues to be in flux. Growing social awareness of an expanded definition of diversity, recent decisions such as Hopwood v. Texas5 and the proliferation of academic support programs have expanded the definition of the academic support student. In January 2000, legal educators convened at the Academic Support Sec- tion Meeting of the Association of American Law Schools to consider issues concerning the future of the academic support student.6 At the symposium enti- . Leslie Yalof Garfield, Associate Prof. of Law, Director, Academic Support Program, Pace Univ- ersity School of Law; Chair, AALS Section on Academic Support, 1999. 'See Diane M. Glass, Portia in Primetime: Women Lawyers, Television, and LA. Law, 2 YALE J.L. & FEMINISM 371, 407 (1990) (suggesting that the 16% rise in the number of law school applicants in 1987-88 could be attributed to L.A. Law's depiction of a legal career as appealing and lucrative); Robert Eli Rosen, Ethical Soap: L.A. Law and the Privileging of Character, 43 U. MIAMI L. REV. 1229, 1257 (1989) (quoting an admissions officer at Harvard Law School who suggests that many students have entered the profession because LA. Law has made a legal career seem attractive); John A. Sebert, Dean's Forum, 29 U. BALT. L.F. 2 (1999) (describing a thirty percent decline in law school applicants across the nation over the past seven years); Joseph L. Daly, Why I Am A Lawyer, 35 SAN DIEGo L. REV. 1111, 1112 (1998) (stating that between 1990 and 1997, law school applications decreased 27%). 2 See Daly, supra note 1, at 1121 n.5 (explaining that due to the rapid decline in law school applicants, law schools feel pressed into admitting more at-risk students). ' See Cecil J. Hunt H, Guests in Another's House: An Analysis of Racially Disparate Bar Performance, 23 FLA. ST. L. REv. 721, 767 (1996) (suggesting that the correlation between the LSAT and bar passage may indicate that both measure the same thing). ' The term academic support refers to programs in an educational institution intended to improve the academic performance of traditionally at-risk students and to provide early academic assistance to students who actually are at risk of not succeeding. See Kathy L. Cerminara, Remembering Arthur: Some Suggestions for Law School Academic Support Programs, 21 T. MARSHALL L. REV. 249, 251 (1996). 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 518 U.S. 1033 (1996). 6The meeting was held on January 7, 2000, at the AALS Annual Meeting in Washington D.C. 491

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