The American Bar Association’s policymaking body, the House of Delegates, recently rejected a proposal to end the rule that requires schools to use the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) or another standardized exam when assessing applicants. The decision was made over concerns that dropping the test requirement would harm the interests of law student diversity, marking the second time such a plan has failed. The decision is now up to another part of the ABA, the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
The 20-member council had previously voted in favor of ending the testing mandate in 2025, arguing that law schools need more flexibility in admitting students and that the ABA alone requires professional schools to use an admissions test. The council was disappointed in the recent vote by the House of Delegates and will consider its next steps at its meeting on February 17th in Phoenix. It could revise the proposal, resubmit it to the house for consideration in August, or drop it.
The future of the testing mandate adds to the growing uncertainty for law school admissions offices. The U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to strike down affirmative action at colleges and universities across the country after hearing several challenges to race-conscious admissions policies. And the influential U.S. News & World Report law school rankings are in flux amid a growing boycott.
In 2019, the ABA’s legal education council bypassed objections from the House of Delegates when implementing a tougher bar passage standard for law schools. However, it backed off a previous attempt to drop the LSAT rule due to house opposition. The council had first proposed eliminating the testing mandate from the accreditation standard in 2018.
Despite the recent vote by the House of Delegates, the resistance to a test-optional future for law schools is expected to be short-lived. According to Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, which opposes standardized testing, “Admissions leaders increasingly recognize that test scores do not measure merit.”
The future of the LSAT requirement for law schools is still uncertain and it remains to be seen what the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar will decide. However, there is a growing movement towards a more flexible and comprehensive admission process, one that takes into account a variety of factors beyond test scores. This is in line with a broader trend in higher education, where more and more schools are embracing a “test-optional” approach to provide students with a more accessible path to education and career success.
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Bid to end law schools’ LSAT requirement is down but not out