Does every law school require the LSAT now?

Already, many law schools do not require that first-year applicants submit LSAT scores. That’s because the bar association’s testing requirement can be interpreted to allow another standardized test, the Graduate Record Examination or G.R.E., to satisfy the requirement. Other, smaller exemptions also exist, but the vast majority of applicants must take one of those two tests.

What are the arguments for dropping the requirement?

Proponents want to provide law schools more flexibility in how they recruit and admit students, in the hope that doing so may make a dent in the profession’s relative lack of diversity.

Research by Aaron N. Taylor, the executive director of the Center for Legal Education Excellence at AccessLex, a nonprofit organization, suggests that use of the LSAT in admissions is one of the reasons that Black aspiring lawyers are accepted to law schools at lower rates than their white counterparts.

Jeryne Fish, vice chair of the National Black Law Students Association, took the LSAT in 2019 after two months of preparation, and is now in her third year at New York University’s School of Law. She notes that the proportion of lawyers in the United States who are Black has been largely stagnant at around 5 percent for more than a decade.

What do opponents of dropping the LSAT requirement say?

Many opponents say they are open to change, but don’t want to rush. Without a standardized test, they say, law school student bodies could become even less diverse, because other criteria for deciding who to admit could turn out to be even more biased against applicants of color, as well as people from low-income families and first-generation college students.

Paulette Brown, a delegate and former member of the bar association’s council, who was also the first Black woman to serve as the association’s president, said she was undecided on the LSAT question until last week. At the Feb. 6 delegates’ meeting, she made a last-minute decision to speak against dropping the requirement.

“Every time I hear the word ‘flexibility,’ the hair goes up on my neck,” Ms. Brown said to the delegates. “Because when you talk about flexibility, that means subjectivity. And when you introduce subjectivity into any process, it provides too much opportunity for mischief.”

In other words, she said, unconscious bias could creep in. Like other opponents of the change, Ms. Brown argued that the association should wait and collect more data.

What does this all mean for law students?

If the council’s proposal to drop the LSAT requirement is approved, law school applicants would probably not see any change until 2026, and even then, law schools could decide to continue to require the test.

Legal education tends to embrace change slowly, Dr. Taylor said, so altering the rule would be unlikely to create turmoil.

“But such a move could foster curiosity among law schools about more comprehensive and equitable ways to choose winners and losers in the admission process,” he added. “And that would be a good thing.”

It is still unclear what that would look like. For years, deans and lawyers on both sides of the LSAT debate have been marshaling studies to make their case, and most of them acknowledge that they cannot say for sure what would happen if schools stopped requiring the test.

According to Ms. Theis-Alvarez, the proposed change would be “likely to increase the confusion and expense for candidates that is associated with navigating the law school admissions process,” which could hurt first-generation college students more than others.

Comment

The American Bar Association’s House of Delegates on Monday rejected a proposal to end an admission testing requirement for law schools, an action that stalls the test-optional movement for legal education but does not necessarily kill it.

At issue is a proposal that has gained momentum in exact years within the bar association to allow schools to admit students who don’t submit scores from the Law School Admission Test or the Graduate Record Examinations. The association’s House of Delegates, which is a policymaking body, rejected the proposal on a voice vote at a meeting in New Orleans.

Under the bar association’s procedures, though, the final word on law school admission standards rests with the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which is the association’s accrediting arm. The council last year gave the proposal preliminary approval.

“The Council is disappointed in the House of Delegates’ vote,” Bill Adams, the bar association’s managing director of accreditation and legal education, said in a statement. The council will consider next steps at a Feb. 17 meeting, he said.

The LSAT is the most widely used admission test for law schools. It assesses skills in practicing comprehension, analytical reasoning and logical reasoning, and has long been a prime metric for gatekeepers of law schools. The LSAT poses multiple-choice questions in one part, and in a second part it prompts test-takers to write a persuasive essay under proctored conditions. More than 100,000 people take it annually.

In exact years, many colleges and universities have adopted test-optional policies for undergraduate admissions. Law schools, though, are required to use admission test scores to meet the bar association’s accrediting standards.

Critics of admission tests say they pose an unnecessary barrier to disadvantaged students who otherwise have strong potential. Proponents say tests provide useful information to admissions officers and help qualified applicants make their case. They also are often used, in combination with grade-point averages and other factors, to help decide whether admitted students will qualify for scholarships.

Even if the bar association drops the mandate for admission test scores, individual law schools still would be allowed to require them.

The debate over the LSAT comes at a moment of unusual flux and scrutiny for legal education, as many prominent law schools have declared opposition to cooperating with U.S. News & World Report’s influential annual rankings. LSAT and GRE scores have long been a part of the U.S. News ranking formula. In addition, many schools are bracing for the possibility that the Supreme Court later this year will reverse decades of precedent and end race-conscious affirmative action in college and university admissions.

Marc L. Miller, dean of the University of Arizona’s law school, said he was disappointed in the House of Delegates vote. The admissions testing requirement, he said, makes law schools “an outlier” in graduate-level professional education. And he said the mandate is “harmful for the widely shared goal of increasing diversity and access in our profession.”

What’s going on at the bar association?

Does every law school require the LSAT now?

What are the arguments for dropping the requirement?

What do opponents of dropping the LSAT requirement say?

What does this all mean for law students?

15 February 2023, 12:51 PM IST

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