LSAC, Behind the Data: Comparing Law School Applicants to all College Freshmen:

According to data from the 2010 census, approximately 28% of the US population is non-White. The population of non-White lawyers in the United States is less than 10%. Since
1986, concerted efforts to increase the pool of underrepresented minorities in the field of law have shown limited
success—the percentage of minority lawyers has risen from 8% in 1990 to 10% in 2009.
Although a number of programs have been established to help support students from minority populations who express
an interest in law, and a limited number of studies have documented the rate of “leakage” in the pipeline to law school
and the legal profession, very little systematic work has been done to examine background
factors that lead to the study of law. This report illuminates how students’ backgrounds, experiences, and goals may
affect their decision to apply to law school and their ultimate success in applying and being admitted to law school.
Group differences for many socioeconomic variables were as expected, but the analysis of the data also showed that
underrepresented minority applicants were more focused on their career plans and expressed higher self-ratings on drive
to achieve. In addition, grades, standardized test scores, and socioeconomic status were related to whether or not
freshmen expressed an interest in studying law and to their decision to apply to law school. 

Data available through the Law School Admission
Council (LSAC) and its member law schools were
combined with data from The Freshman Survey (TFS)
available through UCLA’s Cooperative Institutional
Research Program (CIRP). This unique data set contains,
for each applicant, (a) information the applicant
submitted to law schools, (b) first-year average (FYA) in
law school, and (c) responses to 91 items from the TFS,
including information about their parents’ education and
income as well as their own goals, aspirations, and plans
for the future. 

The Freshman Survey has been administered at over
1,500 institutions in the United States. The 171,000 law
school applicants who applied during the academic years
2006–2007 through 2008–2009 were compared and then
matched to the 2.8 million TFS respondents for 1999
through 2005 using the student’s name (first name,
middle initial, last name), date of birth (month, day, year),
gender, freshman-year institution, and year of their
freshman fall semester. Matches between LSAC and TFS
data were successfully completed for 39,573 law school
applicants. This represents approximately 23% of the
applicant population for the years 2006 through 2008.

National Law Journal, Future Law School Applicants Are Wealthier, More Self-Confident:

No, it's not your imagination. Aspiring lawyers tend to be more
self-confident, enjoy more family wealth and are more likely to have a
lawyer parent than the average college student, according to research
released by the Law School Admission Council. …

Among freshmen who went on to apply to law school, 50% reported
that their families would pay $10,000 or more toward their undergraduate
expenses, compared to 31% for all college freshman. The aspiring
lawyers also had more highly educated parents: 41% said their
father held a graduate degree, and 28% said their mother held
one. That compared to 23% and 18%, respectively, for all
college freshman.

The aspiring lawyers rated themselves more
highly than the typical college student regarding academic ability,
public speaking, drive to achieve and tendency to socialize with
students outside their own race. Of the eventual law school applicants,
87% reported that they had "above average" academic abilities,
compared to 69% of all college freshman.