The lamellar armor was a stat reshuffle from the breastplate; when designing it, I summed up the total resistances and divided them between pen and crush, then shifted some stats around and took some away to account for the light tag. The basic idea was to cover a light armour niche that the jerkin and similar pieces of gear didn't.
Point-wise, it's not any better than the breastplate or jerkin, just differently distributed.