Law Schools

LSAT Will Still Be Required For Law School Admissions -- For Now

Long live the LSAT!

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The LSAT is a law school rite of passage. You get a high score, you go to a top law school. You don’t get a high score, you won’t go to a top law school. The Law School Admission Council, the overlords of the LSAT, thought they were sitting pretty with this harsh reality — until recently, when a fierce competitor showed up on the scene and the very entity that more or less forced all pre-law students to take the LSAT for admissions purposes suggested that the entry exam requirement be dropped.

After duking it out with the GRE for months on end and facing an ABA committee’s recommendation that the standardized testing requirement be axed from accreditation standards, it appears that the LSAT has emerged victorious.

On Monday, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar officially withdrew a resolution before the ABA House of Delegates that called for the removal of accreditation Standard 503, which requires that law schools use a reliable exam — such as the LSAT — for the admission of prospective students. Here’s what Kellye Y. Testy, president and CEO of the Law School Admission Council, had to say:

Today’s decision gives us all time to work together to consider how to proceed in the best interests of applicants and law schools to promote access and equity in law school admission. While law school applications are on the upswing, LSAC is eager to partner with our member schools to provide greater flexibility and creativity in admissions while ensuring fairness, access and transparency for all candidates. Likewise, we look forward to continuing to work collaboratively with the section on legal education to provide the clarity and guidance our member schools seek with respect to admission practices.

Don’t get too excited yet, Ms. Testy. The House’s decision isn’t the be all, end all in this fight. The full Council could still bring the proposal back before the body, and even if it’s voted down, the Council could decide to move forward with the changes anyway. But this is all a story for another day — and that day could come as soon as February.

Although the LSAT’s testing crown is a little more secure at the moment, what is the ABA going to do about the law schools — more than 20 of them — that have started to use the GRE and even the GMAT for admissions purposes? Validity tests must still be performed, and ultimately, the ABA will have the final say on the matter.

Jeff Thomas, executive director of pre-law programs at Kaplan Test Prep, issued this statement about the measure’s withdrawal last night:

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The reality is that regardless of what the ABA ultimately decides, any major changes to admissions policies do not happen overnight. Prospective students applying to law school this fall should still consider the LSAT a central component of their admissions strategy, as it’s the only test accepted at every ABA-accredited law school. Aspiring attorneys applying to start in 2020 or beyond may have other viable admissions strategies, but we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out first.

We’ll be tracking this issue closely over the next few weeks and months as we conduct our annual admissions officers survey, speaking with law schools directly about which test scores they plan to allow applicants to submit. In our 2017 survey, 25 percent of schools said they were considering allowing their applicants to submit GRE scores in lieu of LSAT scores. A lot has changed since that time, so that percentage may increase, as the call for change among law schools remains strong.

For the time being, this proclamation shall echo throughout legal academia:

Long live the LSAT!

Plan to drop law school entry exam requirement withdrawn before ABA House vote [ABA Journal]
ABA Holds Off on Removing LSAT Requirement for Law Schools [Law.com]

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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