An American Bar Association panel voted Friday to drop a requirement that law school applicants take the LSAT or another standardized admissions test, amid debate about whether the tests help or hurt diversity in admissions.
The accrediting council, made up of lawyers, professors and administrators, voted 15-1 at its meeting to eliminate the requirement of a “valid and reliable admission test” for hopeful law students. The panel sought public comment on the proposal in May, after an ABA committee recommended the elimination of the testing requirement.
Individual law schools are still free to require a test. The policy change will take effect beginning for students applying in fall 2025.
The LSAT, or Law School Admission Test, tests analytical reasoning, logic and reading comprehension, and is considered a predictor of success in law school. The ABA last year allowed law schools to consider the Graduate Record Examination, or the GRE, in addition to the LSAT.
Public comments over eliminating the testing requirement have been polarized, largely around the issue of diversity. The legal profession has long been criticized for a lack of women and people of color in its top ranks, and the panel’s debate comes as schools are bracing for a decision from the Supreme Court on whether race can be a factor in college admissions.
“In the grand scheme of things, folks of color perform less well on the LSAT than not, and for that reason, I think we are headed in the right direction,” Leo Martinez, an ABA council member and dean emeritus at University of California, Hastings College of the Law, said at the meeting. “I am sympathetic that it gives people like me a chance.”
Representatives from the Law School Admission Council, which administers the LSAT, and ETS, a nonprofit education testing service, told the council making testing optional would result in the admission of some law students who are unprepared to succeed, which it said would ultimately hurt the legal profession.
“This proposal will be highly disruptive,” John White, chair of LSAC’s board of trustees, told the council. “The change won’t be worth it, and we won’t get the diversity we are looking for.”
ABA panel members largely pushed back.
“I find the argument that the test is necessary to save diversity in legal education is bizarre,” said council member Craig Boise, dean of Syracuse University College of Law.
The panel also questioned why law schools shouldn’t be aligned with other graduate programs that don’t require tests.
A range of law professors and prospective law students urged the ABA to eliminate the testing requirement in public comments submitted before the vote.
In one written comment, Fariha Amin, a full-time worker and mother to a 6-year-old son, said her LSAT scores remain a hurdle to getting into law school. She took tutoring courses, but her scores still weren’t high enough to be admitted, she told the ABA, urging them to eliminate the requirement.
“I would hate to give up on my dream of becoming a family lawyer, just due to not being able to successfully handle this test,” Ms. Amin wrote.
Coalitions of admissions officers and university deans warned of unintended consequences if the testing requirement were dropped.
“We believe that removal of the testing requirement could actually increase the very disparities proponents seek to reduce by increasing the influence of bias in the review process,” Kristin Theis-Alvarez, assistant dean of admissions and financial aid at University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, said in a submission on behalf of dozens of university officials.
They argued that eliminating the test could lead to an overreliance on grade-point average and other criteria they say could be “infused with bias.”
In a survey of 82 law schools, released this week by Kaplan Inc., 30 said they would be “very likely” to continue to require tests while 37 said they were undecided. Only two schools said they would be very unlikely to continue requiring an admission exam.
John Pierre, chancellor of Southern University Law Center, a historically black university in Baton Rouge, La., in an interview said he supported the ABA change but his university would continue to use the LSAT for prospective students, regardless.
Each school, he said, should make its own choices. “There have been concerns for a number of years that it might not be a factor in determining success,” Mr. Pierre said. “Everyone has to look at their own history.”
The test-optional policy will be presented before the ABA’s House of Delegates in February, but final approval rests with the accrediting panel that voted for it on Friday.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-sc...-to-consider-making-lsat-optional-11668778730 (Archive)
