UCLA School of Law

Past research on law school mismatch has been hampered by the absence of school-specific data, thus requiring scholars to estimate individual levels of mismatch through various indirect techniques. In this paper, the authors use data on nearly four thousand students at three law schools to directly measure mismatch levels based on LSAT scores or an academic index. The analysis shows large and statistically significant effects of mismatch; when one controls for mismatch, racial effects lose statistical significance. The results highlight the importance of mismatch in explaining both racial bar passage gaps and individual outcomes on the bar. The results also illustrate the great importance of individual school-level data across a range of schools in studying mismatch.