Law Schools

Raising The Bar: Law School Takes Bold Stance -- No LSAT Scores Below 142!

It's somewhat terrifying to realize law schools are coming UP to this standard.

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Not every law school is Yale. And not every great lawyer bangs the LSAT out of the park. But can we all come together and just admit to ourselves that someone who can’t crack 142 on the LSAT probably shouldn’t be going to law school?

Unfortunately, we haven’t settled this one, but one school has courageously drawn a line in the sand and established some incredibly meager standards for admission.

Going forward, the NCCU School of Law will deny admission to anyone who scores less than a 142 on the LSAT, a standardized test that’s scored on a range going from 120 up to 180, the school said in answer to a December ABA query about its admission standards.

N.C. Central officials released a copy of their response to the trade group ahead of a meeting this week of the campus trustees. To the trustees, Chancellor Johnson Akinleye said he’s hoping the letter will become “the end of the conversation,” though he and law dean Phyliss Craig-Taylor are prepared to meet with ABA officials later this year if they have more questions.

People, we’ve set the floor and it is incredibly depressing.

The Herald-Sun has another gem from NCCU’s February 1 letter to the ABA announcing it’s tough new standards:

Among the students who began law school last fall, most of those in the bottom quartile of LSAT scores, from 136 to 142, earned first-semester class grades ranging from about a 1.44 up to a 2.91, the Feb. 1 letter said.

Apparently, getting a 136 on the LSAT almost always translates into being unfit for law school. WHO KNEW?!?

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This is usually the point where someone defends law schools by claiming that schools with lax admissions standards are critical to diversifying the profession because they typically serve students with educational roadblocks and these students are often minorities.

Sure.

But there’s got to be a limit. At a certain point, this high-minded rhetoric is just cover for schools profiting off of students they’ve set up to fail. North Carolina Central has a 34 percent employment score and a 36 percent underemployment score per Law School Transparency. The Herald-Sun reports that the 1L washout rate was 37.7 percent in 2016-17. That’s not promoting diversity, that’s taking advantage of misguided students.

And it sounds like NCCU may be taking this to heart. Even though the cutoff will now be 142, the school says it will form a committee to perform “further review” of applicants who score between 142 and 145 to determine if they have what it takes to complete their schooling and join the profession. Good. This is exactly what schools should be doing with the 25th percentile of applicants. Some students don’t test well, but have the smarts and drive to make it anyway — take the extra time to figure that out.

But remember that, on average, students in that range aren’t going to cut it.

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NCCU’s raising law-school admission standards. But how high are they going? [Herald-Sun]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an 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.

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