Answering this question depends upon the group with whom you are comparing those who attend law school. If you are comparing the law school people with the general population, then the answer is simple: most of those who attend law school are significantly above average in intelligence. The reason is that qualifying for enrolment in a law school program usually requires a strong GPA and strong performance on the LSATs, since LSAT performance correlates positively with intelligence. Also, a study of law requires the ability to generalize from precedent cases to make decisions about particular cases with different fact situations. This level of abstraction is possessed mainly by those of higher than average IQ.
If comparing law school entrants with other university students, then we again observe that the law school entrants (on average) are higher than the average university undergraduate in intelligence. Among the 191 ranked law schools that submitted grade data to U.S. News in an annual survey, the average median GPA of entering law school students in 2021 was 3.55.
A study published in 2022 in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics indicated that the average GPAs for first-year students at large research universities was 2.79 in 2000, while GPAs for students entering public liberal arts colleges was 3.02. This is below the 3.55 for law school entrants. However, there are other college majors that have even higher SAT requirements than those for law school. Visit: What is the average IQ of students by their chosen degree? I just found an old statistic. – Intelligence and IQ
