Dear Council Chair Thies:
The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) appreciates the opportunity to submit its views for inclusion in the record and for consideration by the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar (the “Council”) regarding the proposed repeal of Standard 206 (Diversity and Inclusion). For the reasons below, the Council should continue to advance the principles that underlie Standard 206. If the Council repeals Standard 206, it should create a structure of transparency so that the legal community and prospective law students can evaluate a law school’s commitment to diversity.
NAPABA represents the interests of the more than 80,000 Asian Pacific American (APA) attorneys, judges, law professors, and law students across the nation, as well as over 90 national, state, and local APA bar associations. Founded in 1988, NAPABA promotes justice, equity, and opportunity for APA legal professionals and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities. We foster professional development, advocacy, andcommunity involvement.
As NAPABA mentioned in its September 30, 2024, comment to the Council, our support for a diverse and inclusive legal profession has not wavered:
NAPABA agrees that access to the study of the law and the legal profession is necessary for ensuring the legitimacy of, and confidence in, the justice system and nearly every other civic institution in this country. As the U.S. Supreme Court previously observed regarding access to legal education for historically underrepresentedgroups in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), in order ‘to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity. All members of our heterogeneous society must have confidence in the openness and integrity of the educational institutions that provide this training.’ Id. at 332.
NAPABA also recognizes the unprecedented, turbulent, and rapidly evolving legal landscape across different states. As the Council’s February 26, 2026, Memorandum notes, “enacted and
proposed laws at the state level have made it impossible for the Council to have a meaningful Standard 206 that can apply to every accredited school across the country.” While headwinds against diversity and inclusion efforts continue to proliferate, it is not because the need to ensure equal access and opportunity for many underrepresented communities across racial, ethnic, and socio-economic lines has diminished. In some ways, at law schools, the divide has become more pronounced.
I. The need for diversity efforts remains high.
NAPABA is carefully monitoring recent shifts in the schedulingof direct law firm recruiting of first year law students that some commentators have argued will disproportionately harm persons from low-income, racially diverse, and other disadvantaged backgrounds. As Dean William Treanor and Assistant Dean Amy Mattlock of Georgetown Law have argued:
The push towards early recruiting might be less problematic if everyone came to law school with the same knowledge of the legal market and how to play the recruitinggame. But not everyone does. Many first-generation students or students who have never encountered the law want correctly to prioritize their academic success over networking with employers and applying to law firms during 1L year.
II. AANHPI and first-generation law students face significant barriers even after arriving on law school campuses.
As the most recent iteration of the groundbreaking Portrait Project of Asian Americans in the Law has documented, “[a]mong 2022 Survey respondents who reported the number of mentors they had in law school, 33% indicatedthey had no mentors at all,” and “Respondents who were the first in their families to attend college or law school were especially likely to report not knowing as law students about the importance of mentorship in their future careers.” This lack of career-development infrastructure for law students across all racial and ethnic backgrounds who do not arrive on campus with connections and mentors already in hand is precisely what Standard 206 was designed to combat.
In addition to lack of mentorship, misleading and harmful stereotypes, including the so-called “model minority myth,” have long contributed to an inaccurate perception in the legal profession that Asian Americans are a monolithic population that is uniformly highly educated and academically inclined. The myth is not true. Significant variation exists within the AANHPI populations in terms of educational, economic, and other outcomes.
The AANHPI legal community is comprised of members from a wide variety of backgrounds, including Chinese American, Indian American, Japanese American, Filipino American, Korean American, Vietnamese American, and many others. That does not mean that “Asian Americans” have particular advantages in terms of educational attainment. According to the Pew Research Center, 56% of Asian Americans have a college degree or higher, but the numbers vary widely according to background: the spectrum includes 77% of Indian Americans,
60% of Korean Americans, 58% of Chinese Americans, 54% of Japanese Americans, 50% of Filipino Americans, 36% of Vietnamese Americans, and 18% of Laotian Americans.
Within the legal profession, AANHPI attorneys continue to face systemic barriers, which include lack of formal leadership training programs, inadequate access to mentors, and lack of recognition for one’s work. These obstacles inhibit advancement, affectingentry into partnership tracks, C-suites, and other high-profile roles. NAPABA has long advocated for measures to address these obstacles.
III. The Council should stand firm on the principles underlying Standard 206.
Given the longstanding and systemic barriers facing AANHPI and other first-generation law students, we concur with the views of the ABA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Center that an acute need exists for some structural framework in place so that the legal profession’s and the legal academy’s commitment to promote access, opportunity, and belonging are not merely hortatory (and inconsistent), but achievable nationwide.
While acknowledging the difficult realities of competing state interests, NAPABA believes that the Council should adhere to and articulate the principles and commitments underlying Standard 206. If Standard 206 is repealed as a mandatory component of law school accreditation, the Council should ensure that the aspirational principles remain publicized. This would include the creation of a mandatory disclosure paradigm of key data from law schools so that law school applicants, when choosing a school, may easily discern a law school’s commitment to these principles. In other words, the Council should require transparency when it comes to the commitment to diversity.
Law schools must cast a wide net in their recruitment efforts, especially towards communities that have historically been disadvantaged or excluded from the legal profession.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit NAPABA’s views. We hope that they are informative, and we appreciate the Council’s consideration of our perspective.
Respectfully submitted,
NATIONAL ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION
By: /s/ Rahat N. Babar
Rahat N. Babar
Deputy Executive Director