The Correlation between Mathematical Competency

and Legal Practicing Proficiency

Christian Young

Independent Study
Mrs. Graves
January 17, 2014

WHAT I KNEW/WANTED TO KNOW

The Correlation between Mathematical Competency and Legal Practicing Proficiency

Attorneys serve a vital role in modern society: they are a major part of the legal system
of nearly all modern nations. Their comprehension of laws and cases alike can have long lasting
impacts on anything from peoples lives to an entire nation, so their ability to properly practice
law is extremely important. Many attorneys therefore focus solely on areas of study that directly
relate to the field of law, namely English and Governmental studies while remaining fairly
unknowledgeable in fields such as science and mathematics.

As a student in the Math and Science Academy, I would like to know how the classes I
am currently taking will impact my pursuit of a career in the field of Law. This guiding though
ultimately led to the development of my research question: What is the correlation between
mathematical competency and an attorneys ability to properly practice law? In addition to
affecting me personally, any other students who are attempting to pursue a career in the field of
law could also benefit from this research in that they would be more informed as to why great
effort should be put forth in mathematics classes. The law field itself could potentially change on
a national or even international scale if research deems that requirements to have more emphasis
on mathematics would be necessary in order to produce more effective Attorneys. Law school
curriculum would therefore also have the potential for change.

As an aspiring attorney, I already knew quite a bit in terms of the knowledge necessary to
be a lawyer as well as the educational requirements and the valued skills of the career field. I was
also well aware that the study of mathematics helps sharpen the mind, though I had done very
little research into this prior to this research project. In order to find the answer to the over-

The Correlation between Mathematical Competency and Legal Practicing Proficiency

arching question of my research project, I had to create sub questions to guide my research. My
first question was regarding which undergraduate majors were the most popular and most

beneficial for law school students, which could indicate mathematics effects if any of the
beneficial majors are math based. The next question was, what effects do mathematical
proficiency have on analytical and critical thinking abilities? because analytical ability has a
huge impact on an attorneys performance. My final question was, how does mathematics
directly relate to the field of law? which I chose because it shows a non-theoretical reason for
the importance of math in the law field.

THE SEARCH
When I began my search, I started by visiting the BAR exam board website to see if any
statistics were available on current law school students or applicants. Though I found plenty of
statistics, none of them were in direct relation to my research question. I then expanded my
search to websites that specialized in Law school advice/information and came upon a site that
reported not only what undergraduate majors were popular among law students, but also what
each major scored on the LSAT. I had to make an assumption as to which undergraduate degrees
were the most popular among Law school applicants because no statistics that I found gave me
the exact percentages. I made this assumption based on the number of students with each major
represented proportionately in smaller scale surveys. In addition, though the mathematics majors
scoring highest on the LSAT was not very surprising, one detail in particular struck me as
peculiar. This detail was that people who majored in prelaw, a course designed specifically to
help train people to become attorneys, performed the worst of all of the mentioned majors, with
many of the other popular undergraduate majors performing similarly.

The Correlation between Mathematical Competency and Legal Practicing Proficiency

Next, I attempted to discover how mathematics related to critical thinking ability.

Originally I attempted to search psychology websites for information on this, but these sites
ultimately provided very little detail and were almost always inconclusive. After increasing my
search parameters to include government ad organization websites, I came upon a page created
by the Center for Curriculum Redesign that offered very good points both for and against
mathematics being able to increase analytical abilities. I also encountered an article published by
a news agency in Illinois that reported an experiment done by students at the University of
Illinois. This provided very convincing evidence that supports the idea that mathematics is key in
increasing critical thinking abilities.

After digging deeply into the subject of how mathematics affected cognitive ability and
finding a variety of different sources with somewhat differing opinions, I decided that contacting
an expert on the subject would be beneficial to my research, so I requested an interview with Mr.
Wilson Banks, a mathematician and former mathematics professor at Illinois State University. I
chose him because his hands-on experience with students would provide him with invaluable
insight regarding the cognitive effects of the study of mathematics. Also, he has close ties with
my family, so I believed that it would be easier to get him to approve an interview. However, due
to a lack of response from Mr. Banks, I was unable to conduct an interview with him.

Lastly, I answered my final question involving the direct relation of mathematics and law.
This took less than half an hour of research because the only thing involved in this process was
the use of an online search engine and the use of some of the more popular results. This question

The Correlation between Mathematical Competency and Legal Practicing Proficiency

did not leave any lasting impacts on my research project and was honestly quite disappointing in
its simplicity.

THE RESULTS
The most popular undergraduate major of students entering law school are Political
Science, Economics, Pre-law, Criminal Justice, Business Administration, English, History, and
Rhetoric. However, of these majors, students with the two majors most often thought of as the
best preparation for law school, prelaw and criminal justice, scored the lowest on the LSAT1. The
LSAT is the test that law schools use, in part, to determine who they will accept. It judges not
only a students critical thinking levels, but their ability to comprehend and effectively analyze
large amounts of information as well as manage large workloads, all of which are necessary
skills in law school2. The major that scored highest was mathematics and physics majors, which
is an overwhelming minority in terms of both law school applicants and current students.
Economics majors, whose curriculums were heavily math based, scored second highest on
average, and were also considered to be a minority of applicants. The average LSAT score was 510 points higher than those of the most popular majors1.

Mathematical understanding increasing analytical abilities has been a theory in existence

for many centuries, as exemplified by the great philosopher Plato writing Let No One Ignorant
of Geometry Enter Here. This belief is one that is still held by many philosophers today, with
mathematical knowledge and comprehension being thought of as a necessary building block
towards the higher thinking that effective analysis requires. Learning to use a variety of methods

The Correlation between Mathematical Competency and Legal Practicing Proficiency

to reach the correct mathematical answer as well as creating proofs to justify answers are both
activities that can clearly be linked to critical thinking in that neither has a correct answer per
say, but one answer is in essence better than the others, so an individual must be able to analyze
their current situation in order to pick the most appropriate choice3. In addition, studies show that
lawyers who lack in mathematical understanding (numeracy) make worse decisions and their
skill of analyzing documents /evidence is also decreased. 3 math questions were asked, and
based on how they scored, their analysis ability could be predicted. It decreased in direct
correlation with their math scores. This seems to point that numeracy is important in the field of
law, even when it isn't applied directly4.

One way mathematics relates to the field of law is that, like any other career, an attorneys
overall pricing and profits must be calculated. However, this only requires a basic amount of
arithmetic and therefore is not very demanding in terms of numeracy. There is one major field of
law that relates greater to mathematics more so than almost all others: intellectual property law.
Within this general field is the field of patent law, which is the most direct relation between
mathematics and law. Becoming a patent lawyer involve some amount and mathematical and/or
science training and requires an individual to work with novel concepts to ensure both their
validity and protection. In order to do this, a complete comprehension of the idea in question is
necessary5.

In conclusion, studying and being competent in mathematics is very beneficial for both
practicing and aspiring attorneys. It has been shown to increase law school acceptance rates as

The Correlation between Mathematical Competency and Legal Practicing Proficiency

well as analytical ability and can potentially have a direct connection with an individuals chosen
field of law. Though making higher level mathematics courses a requirement for law school
acceptance would in my opinion be a step too far in terms of addressing this, it is clear that
numeracy is something that attorneys should at least take into consideration before moving
forwards in their careers.

MY GROWTH AS A RESEARCHER
I feel like I personally benefited from this project as a researcher in numerous ways. For
starters, I got my first hands-on experience with source evaluation, which Im guessing will be
very helpful for any future research I do. Also, through this project I feel that I learned a new
method of recording my research while simultaneously using metacognition. This use of
metacognition helped me realize where my weaknesses lied throughout this process, in areas
such as concentration and time scheduling. I think that my biggest strength throughout this
experience was my mastery of the about-point-react form of writing, which I found to be
invaluable when writing my actual paper. One of the major issues I faced when writing this Isearch paper in terms of the research itself was the limited availability of research relating
directly to my topic. Most resources that I used were often about topics only slightly related to
my research question, so I had to scour these pages to find the information necessary.

Given the opportunity, I would research quite a few more topics that stemmed from this
project, as well as some additions I would have liked to make to this one. For starters, I would
have liked to contact Maya Bialik, a Harvard professor, for an interview. Her opinion on whether

The Correlation between Mathematical Competency and Legal Practicing Proficiency

critical thinking was improved by mathematics or critical thinking ability is inherit and affects
mathematical ability could have made an excellent addition to my research. In addition, I would
be very interested in investigating whether mathematics is actually the building block of higher
thinking or vice versa, a point that was brought up in the article I referenced that was published
by the Center for Curriculum Redesign. Another question I would like to further research is
whether patent attorneys scored higher or lower on the LSAT since theyre educational focus
tends to be more mathematically based. I am also interested in researching why some of the other
undergraduate majors that yield high LSAT scores (such as theology, which averaged 0.2 points
less than economics) were able to perform so well with virtually no mathematical or even
scientific focus. My curiosity has also led me to question whether studies of scientific areas
would be able to affect a lawyers proficiency, though this would be particularly hard to show
since the field of science is so incredibly vast. Lastly, I would like to know whether any law
school has implemented or has considered adding mathematics courses to their curriculum and
whether or not there was a difference in the graduating class overall performance.

For my junior/senior self, my advice for this topic would be to approach it from a variety
of angles because no direct answer honestly exists at this time. I will also need to remember that
the purpose of this research is to find the truth of the matter, not support the topic of my research.
Removing my timidity in terms of contacting mentors would also be very wise, especially
considering how limited resources on this topic. My last piece of advice for myself would be to
give myself plenty of time to complete the research necessary for this topic. Given the proper
amount of time, I believe that a more comprehensive analysis of this research question could be
achieved.

The Correlation between Mathematical Competency and Legal Practicing Proficiency

CITED REFERENCES
1. Craven, Joshua. "Best Majors for Law School." LawSchooli. N.p., 06 June 2013. Web. 01
June 2015.

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http://lawschooli.com/best-majors-for-law-school/
2. "The LSAT." About the LSAT. Law School Admission Council, n.d. Web. 15 June 2015.
http://www.lsac.org/jd/lsat/about-the-lsat/
3. Bialik, Maya. "Mathematics for the 21st Century." (2014): n.
pag.Http://curriculumredesign.org/. July-Aug. 2014. Web. 1 June 2015.
http://curriculumredesign.org/wp-content/uploads/Does-Maths-Education-EnhanceHigher-Order-Thinking-Skills-CCR.pdf

4. Ciciora, Phil. "News Bureau | University of Illinois." Research: Poor Math Skills Affect
Legal Decision-making. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 June 2015.
http://news.illinois.edu/news/13/0403numeracy_ArdenRowell.html
5. "Do I Qualify to Sit for the Patent Bar Exam?" Do I Qualify to Sit for the Patent Bar
Exam? N.p., n.d. Web. 15 June 2015.