The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

Participation Ratios:
Class
Class Size
Students of Color
Turns
Elite/Prestige
2*
135
23.0
.89
8*
32
46.9
.57
5
98
19.3
2.00
Regional
4
106
12.3
.87
7
90
7.7
1.06
Local
1
115
11.3
4.44
6
53
11.4
.99
3
76
6.6
1.25
*Class taught by professor of color.
Ratios are calculated by dividing the white students’ participation rate by that of
students of color. 1.0 is the figure that would represent equal participation by
students regardless of race. Figures over 1.0 represent an imbalance toward white
students’ participation; figures under 1.0 represent an imbalance toward participa-
tion by students of color.
Participation rates are basically the average number of turns per student. The
participation rate for students of color, for example, is the number of turns taken by
students of color divided by the number of students of color enrolled in the course.
When average participation rates are equal—that is, when the average participation
rate for one group divided by the other equals 1.0—each group is participating in
proportion to its representation.

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Student Participation and Social Difference
183
cohorts of minority students (Classes #7 and #3) had less imbalance in favor of white
students than did two of the classes in the middle range in terms of cohorts (Classes
#1 and #5). Of course, this does not imply that a substantial minority cohort in a
classroom has no positive effects on participation; to the contrary, the two classes
with the largest cohorts are two of the three most racially inclusive classrooms. (Note
also, however, that these are also classes taught by professors of color, so that there
are other potentially encouraging aspects of the settings as well.) But it again sug-
gests that multiple aspects of the context combine to create more or less inclusive
environments, so that the positive influence of a minority cohort can sometimes be
undermined by other features of the classroom environment. Conversely, the com-
bination of a diverse student body and faculty diversity seem to work well, at least in
this study, in creating a learning environment in which students of color are com-
fortable enough to make their voices heard.
Perhaps the most striking finding on race in the study emerges from an analy-
sis of the dominant speakers in each classroom. It is only in the two classes taught
by professors of color that students of color are the dominant speakers. Table 8.3
lists the two students in each class who occupied the most time and turns. We see
that students of color become leaders of classroom discussion only in Classes #2
and #8, both of which are taught by professors of color. Interestingly, these two
classes occupy opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of size: Class #2 is the larg-
est in the study (135 students) and Class #8 is the smallest (32 students). Thus, we
can say that large size alone does not seem to silence minority students, although
students of color dominate to the greatest extent in the smaller of these two classes.
(Indeed, not only are the first two dominant speakers in that class students of color;
the third most talkative student, with 8.68% of the turns in the class, was also a
student of color.)
Summary
Our findings open up some interesting questions worthy of further exploration.
Does the presence of faculty of color create an atmosphere in which students of
color feel their own presence to be more legitimate, their contributions more valu-
able? If this is the case, are there constraints on this effect, situations in which this
encouraging aspect of faculty diversity is blunted by other factors worthy of study?
For example, this study did not find that the effect of a professor of color on stu-
dents of color was blunted in elite schools. There might, however, be other aspects
of the law school or classroom context that could affect this dynamic. We can also
ask: What role does cohort size play? On the one hand, the existence of a sizable
cohort of minority students in Class #5 did not lead to favorable participation rates
in a class taught by an older white male professor using a relatively formal teach-
ing style in an elite/prestige law school. On the other hand, we did find that both
of the two classes with the best participation rates for students of color contained
a substantial cohort of students of color, in addition to being taught by professors
of color. So it may be that some combination of faculty and student diversity, re-
sulting in both substantial cohorts and available professorial role models, can be
important parts of creating more inclusive classrooms and law schools. This would

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184
Difference
table
 8.3
Race of Dominant Speakers
Dominant Speakers by Time
Dominant Speakers by Turns
% of Total Class
% of Total Class
Time Taken
Time Taken
Class
Race
by Speaker
Race
by Speaker
Elite/Prestige
2
1) White
1) 3.31
1) White
1) 2.88
2) White
2)  2.64
2) African American
2) 2.66
8
1) African American
1) 16.65
1) African American
1)15.94
2) Asian American
2) 14.29
2) Asian American
2)14.06
5
1) White
1)  4.55
1) White
1) 4.62
2) White
2)  4.03
2) White
2) 3.41
Regional
4
1) White
1) 3.46
1) White
1) 6.59
2) White
2) 3.16
2) White
2) 5.94
7
1) White
1) 8.45
1) White
1) 5.57
2) White
2) 7.78
2) White
2) 5.17
Local
6
1) White
1) 9.06
1) White
1)10.97
2) White
2) 5.97
2) White
2) 7.07
3
1) White
1) 5.69
1) White
1) 5.45
2) White
2) 5.66
2) White
2) 4.57
We were able to reliably track repeat speakers in seven of the eight law schools. We are not able to
report statistics for Class #1, one of the local law schools. Because this was the classroom in which
the distribution of both time and turns was most heavily skewed toward white students, with a huge
disparity, it is unlikely that any students of color occupied a dominant role in the class. This likely
scenario is supported by qualitative observation in the classroom tracking the students who
emerged as identifiable repeat players.
fit with previous scholarship, discussed earlier, documenting minority students’
negative responses to overwhelmingly white schools as well as to the overt and
covert forms of racism found in many such settings. It would also fit with findings
showing that students of color feel that it makes a difference if they have the expe-
rience of being taught by professors of color.
39
Overall, we found a high degree of variability in terms of minority participa-
tion rates, with at times whopping disproportions in favor of white students. (These
disproportions were far more marked than were found when analyzing gender.)
No clear pattern among the kinds of classes emerged from a comparison across
the eight schools of this study, except for the fact that students of color partici-
pated more vigorously in classes taught by professors of color in which there were
substantial cohorts of minority students—and this was particularly true in terms
of dominant speakers. It also is worth exploring whether subtle aspects of class-

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Student Participation and Social Difference
185
room discourse can operate to produce a more encouraging atmosphere for learn-
ing and participation (possibly for all students, as well as for students of color).
Combining our findings with those of existing studies on race, we see that the overall
inclusiveness of the classroom and law school as truly egalitarian sites for learning
seems to connect with degrees of segregation versus diversity.
Gender in Law School Classrooms
There has been a continuing line of research for some years documenting gender
differences in all kinds of classrooms. At the elementary and high school levels, stud-
ies have found that girls are frequently excluded from classroom participation in a
number of ways.
40
 This exclusion is part of a pattern that is thought to contribute to
declining performance throughout female students’ years in school.
41
 Girls are re-
warded for docility, whereas boys are more likely to receive meaningful and exten-
sive instruction when they encounter difficulties and are also more likely to be called
on.
42
 Teachers tend to insist that boys work through and solve problems, whereas
they more frequently hand girls the answers: “A sixth-grade girl is having trouble
working out a math problem. The teacher takes the pencil out of her hand and quickly
does the problem for her.”
43
 In a math contest between the boys and girls in a differ-
ent class, one teacher kept score under the headings “Good Girls” and “Brilliant
Boys.”
44
 Studies indicate that black female students are the most affected by this ex-
clusionary pattern, although there are also encouraging indications of African Ameri-
can girls’ psychological resilience in the face of this exclusion.
45
Studies of college education show a similar pattern and have linked the chilly
classroom and campus climate to a gradual process whereby women “revise and
scale down their career goals.”
46
 Again, there are indications that this impacts
women of color more than it does white women.
47
 A pioneering observational study
of 24 teachers at Harvard University found that male students spoke 2.5 times longer
overall than women in “the predominant classroom circumstance: i.e., the situa-
tion in which the instructor is male and the majority of the students are male.”
48
This detailed and nuanced study of classroom language found that in classes taught
by women, female students talked almost three times as much as they did when
taught by men.
49
 In addition to the effects of the teacher’s gender, the Harvard study
identified a number of differences between men’s and women’s speech patterns
that contributed to inequalities in student participation:
1. In the relatively freewheeling discussion format of these classrooms, women
students were more vulnerable to interruption and often did not come back
from being interrupted to talk again.
2. Women students tended not to compete with men students for floor time,
instead interrupting one another so that they wound up competing for the
relatively scarce female-dominated floor time.
3. Women and men tended to speak in clusters or runs, rather than speaking in
dispersed patterns; this meant that any existing pattern of domination or
underrepresentation would only be heightened.

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186
Difference
4. These teachers often let an emphasis on “keeping the flow of discussion going”
take priority over encouraging inclusion, permitting those with the quickest
response time to dominate classroom discussion; participation then became
“based on quick thinking instead of deep or representative thinking” and was
biased toward the more verbally assertive (who in this study tended to be white
males as opposed to “minorities of either sex” or white females).
5. Because participation earlier in the class session was the best predictor of