This Law School Will Pay You To Take The GRE To Save Its U.S. News Rank From The Dreaded LSAT

Law schools are desperate to do away with the LSAT.

LSAT 2 RFLaw schools have been trying to do away with using the LSAT as an admissions requirement for quite some time. The American Bar Association first took up the idea of axing the LSAT in 2011, and then in 2014, instituted a new rule that would allow some law schools (i.e., law schools connected to a university or college with an undergraduate program) to fill up to 10 percent of their entering classes with students who hadn’t taken the LSAT. Several law schools, including SUNY Buffalo, Drake, the University of Iowa, the University of Hawaii, and St. John’s University quickly rushed to begin enrolling students without LSAT scores. Just one year later, the ABA voted to repeal its LSAT exemption rule, effective with the incoming class of fall 2017.

Now that evidence of the great law school brain drain is on display for all the world to see, with LSAT profiles of matriculants dipping lower and lower every year, law school administrators are trying even harder to find a way to weasel out of having to admit students who have taken the LSAT (unless, of course, their LSAT scores are amazing; those students are allowed to continue taking the LSAT, if only because those high scores will help the law school’s U.S. News ranking instead of hurting it).

What are law schools trying to do now to keep the LSAT far, far away from their U.S. news ranking? At Wake Forest University School of Law, a dean is sending emails to recent graduates with this subject line: “Want to be a Trailblazer like Notorious RBG? Help WFU Law Blaze a New Pathway to Law School.” Oooh, Notorious RBG! Everyone loves Ruth Bader Ginsburg! Wake Forest is so hip and so cool, tell us more!

Asinine subject line aside, Wake Forest has teamed up with Educational Testing Service (ETS) and two other law schools to see if the GRE would work as an alternative to the LSAT for law school admissions, and the school needs assistance from both current students and recent graduates for some experimentation. Here’s more information from the email sent by Ann Gibbs, Associate Dean of Administrative & Student Services:

On behalf of WFU Law, I’m asking for your help in conducting research about standardized tests in law school admissions. …

We need:

  • 150 WFU law students or recent graduates (Classes of ’13 and later);
  • Who are willing to take the 4-hour GRE here at any Prometrics testing location (thousands worldwide) or on campus if you happened to be in town on Saturday February 13 OR who are willing to share a past GRE score that was taken in August of 2011 or later, and
  • Who are willing to have their LSAT scores, law school grades, and demographic information used for anonymous comparisons.

You will receive lunch on the day of the test and $50-$75 for your time:

  • $50 to take the GRE;
  • An additional $25 if your GRE score places you no lower than 20 percentile points under your LSAT percentile. This is offered as an incentive for you to take the test seriously, though there is no need to study.

Can you help us by being part of this study? We really need good participation from the students and alumni, and I am hoping this can be a community effort.

How desperate is Wake Forest to get rid of the LSAT? Wake Forest is so desperate that it’s willing to pay people to take a standardized test with a math component. Yikes.

An astute tipster had this to say about Wake Forest’s plans to escape the LSAT:

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How can this be read as anything other than borderline panic about the future of legal education? Though realistically this is nothing but a bunch of hot air; Wake, like every lower Tier-1 school, will do anything it can to keep itself from falling out of the top 50 in USNWR. Perhaps they think this will be a loophole whereby they can jack up the LSAT stats and fill out the rest of the class with GRE applicants for a year or two before USNWR catches on.

Will Wake Forest’s GRE gamble work? Would the ABA even deign to consider using the GRE instead of the LSAT? At the very least, you know the ABA is willing to try anything for a year, so we suppose we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, we hope Wake Forest students and graduates are brushing up on their algebra and geometry skills.

(Flip to the next page to see the full Wake Forest Law email about its GRE experiment.)

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