American Bar Association Walks Back Plan to Drop LSAT Requirement
“The LSAT rule has been a source of heated debate for years, but the latest push to abolish it began in early 2022.”
Many of the people who run law schools don’t think that dropping the test is a very good idea.
Reuters reports:
ABA pauses move to nix LSAT requirement
The American Bar Association is walking back a controversial plan to allow law schools to go fully test-optional by 2025.
The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar will reconsider the elimination of a longstanding rule that requires schools to use the Law School Admission Test or other standardized tests when admitting students, chair Joseph West announced on Friday during a council meeting. The council might not ask the ABA’s House of Delegates to approve that change in August as planned, West said—a reversal from the position the council has taken since voting to drop the rule in November.
While the council has said that eliminating the testing requirement is the correct way to give law schools flexibility and spur innovation in admissions, “it wants to be sensitive and responsive to the concerns raised by law school deans and other stakeholders,” said William Adams, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education. The pause will give the council time to evaluate those concerns, Williams added.
The LSAT rule has been a source of heated debate for years, but the latest push to abolish it began in early 2022. The proposal has divided the legal academy, with opponents and supporters both focused on its impact on law student diversity and consumer protection.
LSAT supporters have warned that eliminating the rule would make admissions offices more dependent on subjective measures such as the prestige of an applicant’s college. That could disadvantage minority applicants, they say.
Those who want to get rid of the test requirement have argued that the LSAT is a flawed measure and a barrier for minority would-be lawyers because on average they score below white test-takers. A 2019 study found the average score for Black LSAT takers was 142, compared with 153 for white and Asian test-takers.
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“Those who want to get rid of the test requirement have argued that the LSAT is a flawed measure and a barrier for minority would-be lawyers because on average they score below white test-takers. ”
You know what else is flawed that very same way? The salary-history computation for receiving buckets of Social Security,
Typical of Leftist thinking. Instead of holding everyone to the same standard and figuring how to better prepare minority test-takers so they can meet that standard, the Left wants to just do away with the standard in the name of “equity” and admit every minority applicant to law school, regardless of whether they’re prepared and qualified. Then, when the unqualified students, who’ve been effectively set up to fail, start failing their courses, they’ll scream “racism” and “equity” until the schools do away with the academic standards and just churn out completely unqualified graduates.
How long till the ABA moves to do away with the Bar Exam to practice law in the name of diversity and equity because these unqualified graduates can’t pass it.
Again with the “minorities.” Getting rid of the LSAT means more students who don’t have the prerequisite skills to even be in law school would be admitted. When they fail because they’re not prepared then expect the race hustlers and THEIR lawyers to come a-suing. That the ABA even considered this shows the dismal state of that group.
“Walking back” should be considered a sobriety test.