More than 140 LSAT test scores went missing this month after a technical glitch affected the online version of the July Law School Admission Test, the Law School Admission Council confirmed Thursday.
The Law School Admission Council, the group behind the test said a technical issue on the LSAT-Flex prevented the answers of a “small number” of test takers from storing properly.
“We have tried multiple ways to recover the answers and are continuing to investigate the issue in hopes that we can recover answers and provide scores for at least some of the affected candidates,” reads a prepared statement from the council.
The July exam was a part of LSAT-Flex, the online test introduced in April due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The council said that this is the first time the testing platform experienced a glitch, as the LSAT-Flex in May and June went smoothly. Changes have been made to the testing platform to ensure other test-takers won’t experience the same issue.
“This issue did not occur in May and June tests,” reads the council’s statement. “We have made changes in our online testing platform to make sure this does not happen in the future.”
Melissa Harris Thirsk, chief communications and marketing officer with the Law School Admission Council, told the ABA Journal the issue affected how the applicants’ answers were transmitted into the system, which ultimately caused their answers not to score properly.
About 1% of the 14,000 test-takers were affected by the issue, and a sixth of them are applying for law school this fall and need an LSAT score to do so.
“It appears that about 25 of those affected test-takers had applied for admission this fall, and so we will work with them and the schools to which they’ve applied to ensure the schools are aware of this situation and will provide as much flexibility as possible given that the circumstances are not in any way the fault of the candidate,” the council said.
Some test-takers took to social media to vent their disappointment.
“Just got a call from LSAC, and they explained that the data for my test is missing. Devastated,” wrote one test-taker on Reddit. “This is sadly real. But we fight on. See you in August.”
The affected test-takers will have a chance to retake the exam next week, free of cost, with their scores being available in less than a week, the council said. The council will also refund those applicants the cost of the July exam and offer them four free law school reports.
The news of the lost LSAT scores came on the heels of the recent online exam debacle when Michigan bar exam takers were unable to log into a portion of the test when the software crashed due to an apparent cyberattack.