Do Law Schools Need the LSAT? Here’s how to understand the debate.
There’s a long and legal debate going on at the American Bar Association about a question that could have lasting implications for diversity in legal education: Should taking the LSAT be mandatory for people in law school?
Today, law schools accredited by the Bar Association must require applicants to take a “valid and trustworthy” admission test – in most cases, students take the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT. The association is considering scrapping that requirement and allowing each law faculty to decide for itself whether tests are necessary.
Opponents and proponents of the amendment both advocate diversity – a sensitive subject in the field of law, that disproportionately white. The arguments echo other debates about standardized testing at all levels of higher education, a practice some see as an equalizer and others as a barrier.
What’s going on with the Bar Association?
The American Bar Association, a professional association for lawyers that describes itself as the “national voice of the legal profession,” is divided on the issue.
The removal of the LSAT requirement was recommended nearly a year ago by the association’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, the national body that accredits law schools. But the proposal was voted down earlier this month by the House of Representatives, the policy-making arm of the Bar Association.
On Friday, the 21-member council, most of whom have experience as law school administrators or professors, decided to go ahead with the proposal despite the rejection by the House of Representatives, a much larger group of nearly 600 members. The House is expected to vote on the issue again at a meeting in August.
After that second vote, the council would have the power to pass the change with or without the approval of the delegates.
Dropping the LSAT requirement is not a new idea. The council passed a similar resolution in 2018, but withdrew it after deputies opposed it. The council then devoted more study to the issue and, last year, called for public letters; the responses were fairly evenly split for and against.
Does every law school now need the LSAT?
Many law schools already do not require freshman applicants to submit LSAT scores. That’s because the Bar Association’s test requirement can be interpreted to allow another standardized test, the Graduate Record Examination, or GRE, to meet the requirement. There are also other smaller exemptions, but the vast majority of applicants must take one of those two tests.
Of the approximately 200 law schools now accredited by the Bar Association, just over half accept applicants who have taken the GRE, according to the educational testing service, who administers the exam. It costs about $220 and tests a wide range of skills, including reasoning, math, and vocabulary.
Even so, most law school applicants still take the LSAT, which consists primarily of multiple-choice questions designed to test applicants’ logic and analysis skills. This year the exam costs $215; students often spend hundreds or thousands more on test prep.
What are the arguments for dropping the claim?
Proponents want to give law schools more flexibility in recruiting and admitting students, hoping it could put a dent in the profession’s relative lack of diversity.
Research by Aaron N. Taylor, executive director of the Center for Legal Education Excellence at AccessLex, a nonprofit organization, suggests that using the LSAT in admissions, one reason is that aspiring black lawyers are admitted to law schools at lower rates than their white counterparts.
Jeryne Fish, vice president 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 largely stagnated at around 5 percent for more than a decade.
Ms. Fish, 26, described the jurisdiction as “outdated” and said rethinking the LSAT would be worth a try. “I think it’s a great first step to at least allow schools to do something different,” she said. “And to get the field to do something different.”
Law school accreditation is already unusually restrictive, said Bill Adams, the general manager of the ABA Council. Accreditation agencies for other professional schools, including medical and business schools, do not insist that the schools require a standardized test score from applicants.
“There has been criticism that our standards have gotten in the way of schools becoming more creative,” said Mr Adams.
The University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law pioneered in 2016 accepting applicants with GRE scores instead of LSAT scores. Marc L. Miller, the school’s dean, said the change sparked new conversations about admissions testing.
“You end up with a huge pool of new potential applicants” under his school’s new system, said Mr. Miller, adding that students also got more flexibility in choosing the test scores they want to share when they sign up.
The school is now developing another possible entrance exam, called JD-Next. Some early research has suggested that scores on JD-Next show smaller racial differences than LSAT scores.
What do opponents say about scrapping the LSAT requirement?
Many opponents say they are open to change, but don’t want to rush it. Without a standardized test, they say, law students’ sororities could become even less diverse, as other criteria for deciding who should be admitted could prove even more biased toward applicants of color, as well as those from families with low-income and primary school students. generation of students.
Paulette Brown, a delegate and former member of the Bar Association’s board who was also the first black woman to serve as president of the association, said she had not made a decision on the LSAT issue until last week. At the February 6 delegates’ meetingshe made a last-minute decision to speak out against scrapping the requirement.
“Every time I hear the word ‘flexibility’ it raises the hairs on the back of my neck,” Ms Brown told deputies. “Because when you talk about flexibility, it means subjectivity. And when you introduce subjectivity into any process, it opens up 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.
Danielle R. Holley, who is the dean of law school at Howard University and is on a Advisory Committee for the Law School Admissions Council, a non-profit organization that earns income of the administration of the LSAT, said the Bar Association could take an intermediate step — allowing more exceptions to the LSAT requirement, for example — and review the results.
“I’m very concerned that things like letters of recommendation and other types of packaging that rely on students having both information and privileges will become the currency of the empire, rather than a more objective factor like the LSAT,” she said.
She added that if the Accreditation Board left the matter to individual schools, market forces could lead law schools to drop the LSAT requirement — not out of careful consideration of best admissions practices, but as a way to compete for applicants.
Kristin Theis-Alvarez, dean of admissions and financial aid at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, argued that law schools were already making careful choices based on diversity goals, even with the testing requirement.
“I think proponents of the change,” she said, “are overlooking something that veteran admissions professionals understand well: that the proper use of tests, as part of a holistic assessment process, contextualizes scores within a much larger and more nuanced qualification profile.”
What does all this mean for law students?
If the council’s proposal to remove the LSAT requirement is approved, law school applicants probably wouldn’t see any change until 2026, and even then law schools could decide to continue requiring the test.
Legal education tends to be slow to embrace change, Dr. Taylor said, so changing the rule is unlikely to cause a stir.
“But such a move could spark law schools’ curiosity about more comprehensive and equitable ways of choosing winners and losers in the admissions process,” he added. “And that would be a good thing.”
What that will look like is still unclear. Deans and lawyers for years both sides of the LSAT debate have been shunting studies Unpleasant make their caseand most of them admit that they can’t say for sure what would happen if the schools stopped requiring the test.
According to Ms. Theis-Alvarez, the proposed change would “likely increase the confusion and costs for candidates associated with navigating the law school admissions process,” which could harm first-generation students more than others.
The Supreme Court could soon introduce more uncertainty. The court appears to be on the verge of making a decision that would jeopardize affirmative action in higher education, which could reduce the representation of black and Latino students.
But when it comes to diversity, LSAT scores are only part of the puzzle. Bar association Mr Adams said that the accreditation of a law school should focus less on restrictions on applicants and more on the results of the schools, such as the number of students who eventually pass the bar.
And Ms. Fish pointed out that once students graduate and start working as lawyers, their standardized test scores matter much less. “I’m not saying this is a terrible test,” she added. “But I also understand there’s more to me than just my LSAT score.”