Kimberly Angeles Gutierrez, Contributing Photographer

Yale Law School once factored legacy affiliation into its admissions preferences, three Law School professors told the News — a policy that was not publicized and no longer exists.

Over the course of more than a decade, the Law School has gradually become legacy-blind in its admissions process, Akhil Reed Amar ’80 LAW ’84, a Sterling professor of law and political science, said in interviews with the News between April and June. Parental ties to the school — whether as alumni or faculty — now carry no weight in evaluating potential J.D. candidates, according to a Law School spokesperson.

The change was completed in the past five years, Amar said. Professor of jurisprudence Gideon ​Yaffe and emeritus professor Lea Brilmayer confirmed the Law School’s shift away from legacy preferences but said they did not know the timeline.

No mention of the Law School’s policy pertaining to legacy consideration appears to exist in any official public documents online.

When contacted by the News for comment, Law School spokesperson Alden Ferro declined to provide specifics about when or how legacy preferences were phased out — or whether they had ever been in place at all. Instead, Ferro issued a single written statement addressing both legacy admissions and legacy preferences for Yale College graduates, though the News had not inquired about the latter.

“There is no advantage given to legacy applicants in the Yale Law School admissions process,” Ferro wrote in the statement. “The YLS application does not ask whether the applicant has a family member who attended Yale College or Yale Law School.”

He added: “This has been our consistent practice for many years.”

‘Merit and not blood’

According to Amar, legacy preferences at the Law School were gradually dismantled over the course of more than a decade by the faculty admissions committee, a group of professors formerly tasked with directly evaluating applicants. 

The News could not verify the current workings of the evaluation process. 

Amar said that he served as chair of the faculty admissions committee from around 2006 to 2020, for much of the period during which these changes occurred.

For many years, he said, applicants were assessed using an internal “12-point system,” in which faculty readers awarded scores based on academic performance, recommendations, writing, work experience and other factors.

Amar recalled that legacy applicants historically received an automatic additional point — a small but potentially decisive boost, he said.

He said that under the previous system, “perhaps five applicants each year” were admitted in part because of their legacy status.

Amar explained that this bonus was first reduced and later eliminated entirely. First, they got rid of the extra point, but gave legacy applicants an additional read. In recent years, the Law School also eliminated questions about family alumni or faculty ties from its application forms. By the end of the process, Amar said, the children of alumni received no preferences at all.

The News could not confirm the exact year that these questions were removed.

Yaffe noted that all faculty members were once required to participate in admissions by reading about 50 applications every year. Each file, he explained, was evaluated by two professors and given a numerical score.

Yaffe also said he does not recall any formal announcement of the change being “publicly available.”

“I don’t believe it was announced before the change in policy that we did take legacies into consideration,” Yaffe said. “Why would you make it publicly available after the change?” 

He later added in an email to the News that then-Law School Dean Heather Gerken “was a strong supporter of changing the policy that gave legacies a boost.”

Law School spokespeople did not respond to the News’ requests for comment from Gerken, who stepped down from the deanship over the summer and does not have contact information available on her Law School webpage. Gerken, now named an emeritus Sterling law professor, is set to become president of the Ford Foundation in November.

Amar said the move away from legacy preference had backing within the Law School’s faculty.

“The faculty has been overwhelmingly supportive — focusing on individual merit and not blood,” he said.

“Nothing was done without the endorsement of the dean of the Law School, the support of the admissions dean, the general acquiescence, support of the admission faculty admissions committee, in close consultation with the faculty as a whole,” Amar said in a later interview.

Eleven Yale Law School professors declined to comment to the News for this story. Miriam Ingber LAW ’04, the Law School’s associate dean for admissions, did not respond to the News’ request for comment.

‘It’s a surprise to me’

Joel Greenberg LAW ’73, a donor to the Law School, shared that he was not aware of the change in admissions policy. Greenberg said he did not anticipate detailed updates from the school unless he actively sought them out.

“If I had children who were possible candidates for the law school, I think I could very easily have gotten information about what the policy was now,” he added.

Last December, another Law School alumnus wrote to the Law School admissions office — in an email exchange obtained by the News — that his daughter had applied to the Law School. He noted that he was a “proud member” of his class.

The admissions office responded to the alumnus’s email about an hour later, thanking him for reaching out and adding that they would “ensure” his email was added to his daughter’s file. The response did not indicate that the school does not consider legacy status in assessing their applicants.

Ferro, the Law School spokesperson, wrote in a statement to the News that alumni who contact the admissions office “receive a courtesy reply and the Admissions Office notes the interaction.”

“It has no impact on the assessment of the application and provides no advantage in the admissions process,” he wrote.

When the alumnus’s daughter was waitlisted from the Law School in March, the alumnus — who, according to his daughter, had consistently donated to the Law School — received an unsolicited, personalized email from Gerken. “I wish matters could have turned out differently,” Gerken wrote in the email, adding that if the daughter did well at another law school in the next year, “she might consider the option of transferring to Yale.”

Gerken did not mention in her email that the school does not take legacy status into consideration in its review process.

Destiny Lopez LAW ’21 worked in the admissions office during her time at the Law School as a diversity representative and was the president of the First Gen Low Income Partnership, a group for students who mark the first generation of their family to attend college. She said she also did not know about the shift away from legacy preference.

“It’s a surprise to me,” Lopez said. 

She said she did not remember admissions office staff members telling her and her colleagues about legacy preferences. She added she had assumed they were in place, as it was a typical practice at her alma mater, Stanford, and at Yale College as well.

“I do think it’s something positive that a lot of students support,” Lopez said. “It’s very confusing why they wouldn’t choose to make that known.”

Lily Man Lai Fan ’01 LAW ’04, a donor to the Law School, said she was not aware of the shift but expressed support for it once informed in an interview.

She added that she does not think donor expectations are tied to admission.

“I don’t think donors go there or make donations expecting their children to get in, because it’s such a small pool and it’s such a high bar,” Fan said.

As for the lack of an announcement, Fan said, “Do they need to announce it? I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s hard enough for the Law School to raise money because of the small pool, and most people are professors.”

“I’m not offended by it,” she added. “I never even knew there was a legacy at one point.”

Outside Law School walls

Yale College, by contrast to the Law School, continues to advantage students with legacy status in undergraduate admissions and is transparent about doing so. According to the Yale College class of 2028 profile, 11 percent of students have legacy affiliation.

Yaffe suggested that differences between undergraduate and professional education could explain the divergence.

“Parents play a much more substantial role in the life of undergraduates than they play in the life of graduate students,” he said. “So that would be an argument for thinking that there’s some kind of good reason to have legacy admissions for undergraduates and no similarly good reason to have it for law students.”

A 2022 Pew Research Center survey found that three-quarters of Americans believed that legacy status should not be considered in college admissions decisions, with support for ending legacy admissions cutting across party lines. Amherst College and Wesleyan University eliminated legacy preferences in 2021 and 2023, respectively, while Virginia in July 2024 became the first state to outlaw them entirely at its public universities.

Undergraduate Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan said he does “not comment on admissions policies at other schools, including Yale’s graduate and professional schools.”

The News reached out to Yale’s other graduate and professional schools about their admissions policies. Representatives of the David Geffen School of Drama, the School of Medicine’s M.D. program, the School of the Environment and the Divinity School all said they do not consider legacy status.

Maureen Farrell, a spokesperson for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences wrote in a statement to the News: “While admissions decisions in the Graduate School are made by departmental admissions committees, the Graduate School application does not collect legacy information.”

Jared Liu, the assistant admissions dean at the Jackson School of Global Affairs, wrote in an email that the school likewise does not consider legacy status, noting that it was founded in 2022.

“So it would be unusual for there to be a legacy situation that quickly,” Liu wrote.

Spokespeople for the University’s remaining graduate and professional schools — the School of Public Health, the School of Management, the School of Art, the School of Architecture and the School of Music — as well as Yale’s central media office did not respond to the News’ requests for comment on their admissions policies.

Yale Law School is located at 127 Wall St.

Ariela Lopez contributed reporting.