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Do you think fondly of your time studying for the LSAT? Me neither — despite having an A average, a double major, and graduating with honors from undergrad, I had to compartmentalize mourning the loss of a family member because this particular bureaucratic hoop before becoming hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt has strict testing times and I didn’t want to miss deadlines. That said, I’m not one of those weirdos who thinks the people who come after me have to suffer the way that I did for my accomplishments to mean anything — I’ve thought that we could do away with the LSAT for years now and, thankfully, we appear to be a step closer to that reality. From Reuters:
Deans from more than half the nation’s law schools are working to salvage a longstanding rule that requires schools to use the Law School Admission Test or other standardized tests when admitting students.
Instead of letting law schools go fully test-optional as planned, the deans want the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to modify the rule to enable schools to admit up to 25% of new students without a standardized test score.
The deans’ proposal represents a compromise between the existing rule, which lets schools admit up to 10% of the class without such scores, and the ABA’s plan to eliminate the standardized test requirement altogether by 2025 in a bid to give schools more flexibility in how they choose students.
As happy as I am for the future generations that won’t have to tarry for the right to get cold called by a vindictive tort professor, did anyone else know that there was a pre-existing rule that let up to a tenth of the class get in without an LSAT score?! You mean to tell me I could have saved the time I spent honing my logic games technique elsewhere? Excuse me for a second. *yells into the void*
As to be expected of the legally minded, this bold departure from tradition does not come with caveats:
The law deans behind the proposal include administrators at elite schools such as the University of Pennsylvania, UC Berkeley, and the University of Michigan as well as deans from lower and unranked schools. They are also asking the ABA to evaluate that change within six years of implementation to ensure it has not led to “unintended consequences,” they wrote last month in a letter to the ABA signed by 125 deans, representing 63% of ABA-accredited law schools.
“Certainly, once an admissions test is abandoned it will be hard to reverse course,” their letter reads.
Does it feel weird to say we will know how this turns out in six years? Yes, but dem’s the facts. I would imagine that six years from now, the inequity gap could be lessened. My hope? Maybe we get a couple more successful splitters over the next 2190 days.
With LSAT Poised For Elimination, Law Deans Call For Compromise [Reuters]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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