The ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar (Council) has voted to allow law schools to apply for a variance that will enable them to admit up to 100% of their students without scores from the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) or another standardized admissions test.
The variance expands upon ABA Standard 503, Interpretation 503-3, which allows law schools to admit up to 10% of their incoming classes without an LSAT score, as long as other requirements are met.
ABA Standard 503 currently says law schools “shall require each applicant for admission as a first-year J.D. degree student to take a valid and reliable admission test.”
Law schools that apply for and receive the new variance can use it for three to five years.
Reasoning behind the LSAT variance
This new variance addresses ongoing debates about the effectiveness and fairness of standardized tests in the law school admissions process.
Critics of standardized testing have argued that the cost, time spent preparing, and racial disparities in LSAT scores negatively impact minority students and diversity in law schools. The LSAT has also been critiqued for not testing skills important to law students or practicing lawyers.
Supporters, on the other hand, argue that standardized tests are important for predicting law school success, among other points.
The ABA Journal notes that accreditors of other professional education programs, like medicine, do not require that the programs demand applicants take a standardized test for admissions.
“Legal education is unique among all of the professional education schools in having such a requirement,” Beto Juarez, chair of the ABA working group that is leading the effort, said to the ABA Journal.
Law schools that use the variance must provide the ABA with data on student success to evaluate things like changes in demographics, academic success, rates of attrition, and bar passage rates for students who did and did not take standardized tests, Juarez told the ABA Journal.
The ABA will partner with AccessLex Institute to analyze the data.
History of challenges to the LSAT
In recent years, the ABA has voted on several proposed changes or updates to law school accreditation standards.
The Council approved the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) as an acceptable admissions test for law schools, in addition to the LSAT, in 2021.
Last year, the ABA House of Delegates rejected a proposed revision to Standard 503 that would have removed the entrance exam requirement for law schools, though law schools could have still chosen to require an exam.
Supporters of the revision saw it as an opportunity to increase diversity in law schools and offer law schools the flexibility to decide if an exam is right for them. Those against the revision worried that the lack of structure would increase the opportunity for “unconscious bias” to influence admissions decisions.
Finally, earlier this year, the Council voted that an alternative law school admissions test called JD-Next should not be granted test parity with the LSAT and GRE. The ABA allows law schools to apply for variances to use the JD-Next exam, and 60 law schools have done so, the ABA Journal reports.
To learn more about law school admissions standards, visit the ABA Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar’s website.
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