Op-Ed: ‘Go Ahead and Kill the LSAT’
Matthew G. Andersson is a writer and former CEO. He says we can live without the LSAT.
He writes at the James G. Martin Center:
Go Ahead and Kill the LSATThe legal industry, and the law academy in particular, are in a high state of contention concerning one of their most protected traditions: the Law School Admission Test, or LSAT. The American Bar Association (ABA) that regulates our law-school industry is thinking of doing away with it. This exam is among the most heavily weighted student-applicant ranking methods for law schools and among the most feared and coveted competitive hurdles for law-school aspirants.It is irrelevant.Well, at least to those factions that want it removed as a requirement. They include a number of special interests, mostly in government, that seek to promote broad personal- and group-identity objectives. The LSAT (or any standardized test for that matter) is considered inherently biased, thereby making it a target of discrimination claims. This isn’t a bad issue to raise in general, as the test itself is rather old. More recent advances in learning theories, and even in neurobiology and brain science, can provide important new parameters of intelligence that may not be captured by standardized tests. Some biological science researchers, on the other hand, have come out fully in favor of standardized testing and explain why. This raises the obvious question as to whether the LSAT is actually outdated or if new applicants are merely going to be given a “pass” based on political criteria. (Alternately, for commercial reasons, the LSAT may, in the future, be merely a “check the box” formality, to accommodate current progressive viewpoints and to assuage law school deans.)Debate about this issue is divided among several schools of jurisprudence, or philosophies of law, and includes questions about the degree to which law is a closed system with its own rules of reasoning.
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