Once again, the ABA thought it had killed the LSAT’s virtual monopoly over law school admissions. Once again, it failed. The accrediting body announced on Friday that it would slam the brakes on the proposal to end the LSAT testing requirement for law schools.
There is a vampire among us, and it is the LSAT.
Cutting through the hyperbole to note that the proposal would not actually end the LSAT in any way. The bid would just allow law schools the flexibility to select students without relying on a standardized testing and, by extension, the single privileged test provider that has dominated the market for generations. This war has waged for years, with some schools taking advantage of pilot approval to consider the GRE as an alternative as far back as 2016. At the time, the same people complaining about the end of this rule argued that the GRE’s tentative approval would throw law school admissions into chaos.
It didn’t.
But while allowing the GRE to poke its nose into the admissions process didn’t substantially disrupt the LSAT’s market power, the bid to unmoor law schools completely from the testing security blanket continues to be a bridge too far. The Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has pushed this for years only to be stymied by the House of Delegates. It finally looked like that last obstacle would be cleared and the effort might move forward with a 2025 target date. On Friday, the organization abruptly changed course:
The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar will reconsider the elimination of a longstanding rule that requires schools to use the Law School Admission Test or other standardized tests when admitting students, chair Joseph West announced on Friday during a council meeting. The council might not ask the ABA’s House of Delegates to approve that change in August as planned, West said—a reversal from the position the council has taken since voting to drop the rule in November.
A number of law school administrations have complained that eliminating the testing requirement would hurt diversity. This is a dubious claim, resting on the premise that standardized tests wouldn’t exist if law schools aren’t forced to require them. But there’s no reason why law schools would wholesale abandon standardized tests and even less reason why these concerned deans would have to. Rather than curtail diversity, lifting the requirement opens schools up to pursue their goals — including diversity initiatives — with a creative combination of inputs.
LSAT supporters have warned that eliminating the rule would make admissions offices more dependent on subjective measures such as the prestige of an applicant’s college.
Then don’t do that. This is hardly rocket science. It’s not even a particularly challenging bit of LSAT logic reasoning. If schools are afraid of Harvard kids earning an easier path to law school — as if that isn’t exactly how things work now — then the school can go ahead and choose not to rely on “the prestige of an applicant’s college.” Super easy!
A counterproposal from these deans to require that 75 percent of applicants have a standardized test score, which sounds like a good plan for these schools to impose upon themselves as opposed to placing it on their regulator but whatever. The existence of this counter has thrown a wrench in the ABA’s plans and pushed the standardized testing monopoly into the foreseeable future.
Yet again, the LSAT is dead, long live the LSAT.
ABA pauses move to nix LSAT requirement [Reuters]
Earlier: ABA Votes To End Admissions Testing Requirement… Everyone Panic Accordingly!
Law School Deans Say Ending The ABA’s LSAT Requirement Will Hurt Diversity… But Would It?
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
