Kirschner said that the confidential report has not led to any specific policy changes yet, but that the Review will decide as a whole on the proposed amendments.

The report suggests eleven new ways to change the application process, which include reducing the maximum weight of grades to 30 percent for the 14 students selected based on grades and the writing sample. Other scenarios include selecting the top male and top female from each section and completely eliminating “grade-ons” as a selection category.

McLaine said the Review should remedy the problem because the gender disparity has become plainly visible on the Review.

“There are times when you notice that it is a very testosterone-heavy environment...There are moments when you notice a lack of female voices. You’ll be in the editors’ lounge, and you’ll notice that you’re the only woman,” McLaine said.

Broader Trends?

The Review’s study has also sparked discussion over whether the gender disparity at the Review is indicative of a larger problem of women under-performing at HLS.

Steiker noted that few women graduate in the top 10 percent of the class.

But Beneficial Professor of Law Charles Fried said he didn’t think the HLS student body had an over-arching gender problem.

“Women are just as smart as men, and obviously we have a lot of smart women here who strike me as being able to take pretty good care of themselves,” Fried said. “We have had a number of women Law Review presidents, and this seems to me to be a manufactured issue.”

Fried said women typically perform well in his class.

“They’re doing terrific work, hitting home runs,” he said.

Kagan said more important than focusing on the Review’s admissions process would be a broader study of the under-performance of women in law school.

“The under-representation of women on the Law Review is a concern, but I’m not inclined to think an affirmative action plan is the answer. I think that in this context the costs of affirmative action would outweigh the benefits of putting another handful of women on the Review,” Kagan wrote in a statement. “I think we should focus instead on discovering the reasons for gender disparities within law schools generally; that would be a very significant contribution to legal education.”

But McLaine said the Review’s situation deserves immediate attention because editorship can greatly benefit law students in applying for jobs.

“Not having women on the Law Review is influential with who gets clerkships or professorships—a lot of those clerks looking over applications are former-law-review people and you get the benefit of them knowing your character,” McLaine said.

—Staff writer Lauren A.E. Schuker can be reached at schuker@fas.harvard.edu.