HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LAW SCHOOL NON-TRANSPARENCY EDITION: UCLA Law Prof’s Long Legal Fight Over Access To California Bar Admissions Data Headed To Trial.

It was a decade ago when a UCLA law professor known for his critique of affirmative action first asked the State Bar of California to give him a trove of data on people who applied to practice law in the state.

Professor Richard H. Sander still hasn’t gotten the state bar to turn over the information he wants. But his long legal effort in pursuit of it may have reached a turning point this week when a judge said his case could go to trial over the objections of the state bar.

Mr. Sander is the academic most associated with the “mismatch” theory about affirmative action, the idea that racial and other kinds of admissions preferences can have unintended consequences by putting students in academic settings for which they’re not prepared.

In 2006, he asked the state bar to disclose bar exam scores, grade point averages and LSAT scores of everyone who applied for bar admission between 1972 and 2007, along with each bar applicant’s race and gender. All of the information is stored on the state bar admissions database.

His request didn’t seek disclosure of anyone’s names, but sought admissions data on much more granular level. Mr. Sander has said his request had to do with his research into “the large and persistent gap in bar passage rates among racial and ethnic groups.”

My take: They wouldn’t be trying so hard to keep this stuff under wraps if it made them look good. It must be just terrible.