Law Schools

Another T14 Law School Will Accept The GRE For Admissions (Probably)

A little oopsie over at Duke Law.

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Welcome Duke to Team GRE! (Probably)

Law school admissions policies have undergone some pretty radical changes over the last three years. Once upon a time, if you wanted to be a lawyer, you had to be ready to take the LSAT. But slowly over time, that requirement has been chipped away as more and more law schools allow students to submit their GRE score in lieu of the traditional admissions test, the LSAT.

Above the Law readers are always quick to point out when a law school starts accepting the GRE — particularly when it’s a prestigious one. So it was no surprise when ATL got tips about the latest update to the Duke Law admissions page, which pretty clearly indicates the law school has joined the GRE party:

However, when I reached out to the law school for a comment, I found someone in the web design department at Duke had jumped the gun. A spokesperson at the law school said their final decision on the GRE was still being made. But, don’t throw out that GRE application just yet. According to William Hoye, associate dean of admissions and student affairs at Duke Law, the language on the website will be changed to:

Application information will be revised in late August for the 2021 entering class. We will accept the LSAT and the LSAT-Flex; we expect to be able to accept the GRE as well.

UPDATE: Duke Law does indeed accept the GRE for admission.

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So there is a pretty good chance prospective Dukies can avoid the LSAT after all. And assuming Duke does make the change for the next admissions cycle, the only T14 law schools still holding onto the LSAT as the exclusive method for admission are Stanford and Michigan. We’ll see how long that lasts…

The list of law schools that currently accept the GRE for admissions:

Alabama
American University Washington College of Law
Arizona
Arizona State University (no LSAT or GRE required due to COVID-19)
Berkeley Law (concurrent/combined degree programs)
Boston University School of Law
Brooklyn
BU
Buffalo
BYU
California Western School of Law
Cardozo School of Law
University of Chicago (dual degree students)
Chicago-Kent College of Law
Columbia
Cornell
Dayton School of Law
Florida International University College of Law
Florida State
George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School
Georgetown
Harvard
Hawaii
Hofstra University – Maurice A. Deane School of Law
Indiana University Maurer School of Law
John Marshall Law School
Kern County College of Law
LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
Massachusetts School of Law at Andover
Mercer University School of Law
Montana Alexander Blewett III School of Law
Monterey College of Law
New Hampshire School of Law
Northwestern
Notre Dame Law School
NYU
Pace
Penn
Penn State Law at University Park
Pennsylvania State University Dickinson Law
Pepperdine School of Law
San Luis Obispo College of Law
Seattle University School of Law
Seton Hall University School of Law
SMU Dedman
South Carolina School of Law
St. John’s
Suffolk University Law School
Texas
Texas A&M
UC Irvine
UCLA
University of Akron School of Law
University of Baltimore Law School
University of California, Davis, School of Law
University of California, Hastings College of the Law
University of Georgia (dual degree students)
USC
UVA
Wake Forest
Washington University in St. Louis
Willamette University College of Law
Yale

And remember that survey by Kaplan Test Prep from 2017 that said a full 25 percent of law schools have plans to accept the GRE? Yeah, we’ve hit that threshold. And it’s a popular move. Another Kaplan study determined 49 percent of students surveyed support the move to the GRE.

Even though more and more law schools are on board with the GRE, the body responsible for law school accreditation, the American Bar Association, hasn’t officially weighed in on using anything other than the LSAT in admissions. What they’re waiting for, I just don’t know. But ABA accreditation Standard 503 currently mandates that law schools require admissions testing and that the test used be “valid and reliable.” Whether the GRE meets that standard, the ABA hasn’t officially said. But now that so many law schools have moved on the GRE, it might be impossible to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

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headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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