Summary: Two law schools change their criterion so LSAT scores are not part of admission.
With the pull and strain of law schools nowadays, which are down the lowest in enrollment since we’ve seen in the 1970s, we expect them to bend, quaver, and maybe for some of the weaker ones, to fall out. After all, if the legal market is so lousy, if the law school debts are so high, if fewer students are signing up, something’s gotta give somewhere, right?
Perhaps we are seeing a little of this “giving” now that two schools have announced they will consider accepting law students who have not taken the LSAT.
The LSAT is the stopgap that weeds out the desperate English majors from those who have a mind for law. It was a test all took, and the passing rates a school is willing to accept go a ways in determining metrics such as its national ranking.
But Bloomberg Business claimed last week that “the State University of New York-Buffalo Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law said they would admit students from their respective undergraduate colleges,” based on GPA and standardized tests such as the SAT and the GRE.
Have they capitulated? Certainly they are taking advantage of a change in rules the American Bar Association lays down. They now state that 10 percent of their classes need not take the LSAT so long as they meet other criterion.
This doesn’t mean they will simply be letting the dregs in. The new ABA rules are strict about academics. Nevertheless, the incentive that one can get into law school without taking the LSAT may be savory enough to tempt some students in, assuming they were already part of the same university.
If it becomes a wider trend, however, it might be more indication that quality is slipping in law schools.