I am no stranger to classrooms where one gender radically outnumbers the other. My undergraduate college continues to maintain a ratio of 1 man for every 3 women despite going co-ed four decades ago. As a graduate student in philosophy, I usually found myself just one of only 2 or 3 women in 20 person seminars. I entered law school at the University of Illinois eager for a more balanced classroom. I knew that most first tier schools have a 45/55 split in genders favoring men. Having long ago learned to hold my own in a variety of educational environments, I was nonetheless excited to finally be in a classroom where neither gender was starkly under-represented. Further, in entering a profession that had, until recently, been closed to all but a few women, I was excited to learn how the University of Illinois College of Law (“the College of Law”) worked to welcome women into the profession.

For example, the College of Law’s Myra Bradwell Association for Women Law Students (“Women’s Law Society”) reached out to me and other incoming women during that first week of law school. This cohesive network of women offered students community service opportunities, as well as mentoring and pragmatic advice on surviving the first year of law school. Through my involvement in the women’s law society, I was able to meet 3Ls who worked on journals, and in the College of Law’s clinics. Through these relationships, I created reasonable goals for my law school career. I, like many women entering the College of Law over the past few years, found a supportive network, with nary an old-boys club in sight.

Nonetheless, Assistant Dean of Admissions Paul Pless noticed an alarming trend during the 2004 and 2005 admissions cycles. The incoming classes of 2007 and 2008 each had 35% and 38% women respectively. Nationally, the percentage of women enrolled in law school is closer to 48%. Dean Pless’ announcement that the class of 2007 yielded only 35% women surprised me. While this percentage did not quite approaching the 25/75 of my undergraduate days, the possibility that the College of Law was moving in the direction of a marked gender ratio imbalance worried me. My fellow law students were just as concerned. We worried that the College of Law did not take the role of women in the profession seriously. In other words, the College of Law, in yielding a smaller percentage of women in its classes of 2007 and 2008, appeared to ignore the changing face of the profession, which had lead to an increasing number of women lawyers holding leadership roles. At this point in time, however, partners in major firms, and other leaders in the profession are predominantly male. This will change over time as law schools continue to graduate a higher percentage of women. The College of Law’s dip in female percentages, however, suggested that Illinois had shirked its role in contributing to these changes.

Contrary to these fears, the College of Law took the need for an enrollment approaching 50/50 seriously. Pless, along with his staff at the office of admissions recognized, however, that their efforts to sell the College of Law to prospective female students needed a bit of tweaking. With the assistance of then Dean Heidi Hurd, Pless was able to gather a list of factors that might have lead to a pernicious drop in female enrollment at the college of law.

While Illinois had many factors making the College of Law an attractive option for women, including the Women’s Law Society, Pless and Hurd concluded that the College of Law needed to do even more to attract women to apply to and attend the College of Law. For example, Pless and Hurd found that law schools situated in rural college towns often have a harder time attracting female students. As the Universities of Virginia and Iowa have found, women contemplating law school prefer schools in urban areas. For many women, the convenience of a big city trumped the low cost of living in Champaign. Several of the College of Law’s strengths seemed to favor male applicants and admittees. The College of Law boasts a strong curriculum in intellectual property that continues to attract students with a hard sciences background. Statistically this group is majority male. Also during Dean Hurd’s tenure, she pushed to admit a class with higher LSAT scores. Statistically women score lower on this test. Pless and Hurd agreed that admitting women with lower than average scores was not the solution to the problem, though. Having a class composed of women not up to par with the many of the men in the class would lead to further problems including the risk that women would make up the bottom end of the grading curve. Finally, women applying to law school want the office of admission to consider more than gender when making admissions decisions. Or at least I did.

Recognizing these formidable obstacles, the Office of Admissions, in conjunction with the Women’s Law Society initiated a campaign to attract highly credentialed women to the College of Law. Specifically, these efforts included opening up scholarship monies for highly credentialed female applicants. This was done with the understanding that the competition between top law schools for women with high LSAT scores is keen, and that many applicants choose a law school based, in part, on financial considerations. A scholarship combined with the low cost of living in central Illinois makes matriculation at the University of Illinois an attractive option. Second, the office of admissions invited women already enrolled at the College of Law to contact newly admitted women via phone and email. These communications served to both welcome women to the community, as well as answer any questions or address concerns the prospective students might have. Applicants and admitted students to law schools often view these institutions as daunting and impersonal places. Law student life in the popular imagination consists of horror stories. Women admitted to the College of Law, thus, appreciated the office of admission’s extra effort to reach out to them, and give them the information that they needed to truly picture themselves at Illinois. This personal touch, which provided admitted students with a clearer picture of law school life, along with working to make law school more affordable for highly credentialed women tipped Illinois’ percentages closer to national averages. The incoming class of 2010 at the College of Law is 48% women.

Illinois’ quick response to a dip of percentages of women enrolled is emblematic of law schools everywhere working to ensure that the profession actively abandons the old-boys network of yesterday. The College of Law is committed to launching women into the legal profession. While women attorneys still face obstacles, a law school that provides its women with networking, mentoring, and leadership opportunities has taken a major step in ensuring that women in the profession reach unprecedented heights in the decades to come.