re: American Bar Association drops LSAT requirement for Law School admissions

quote:

---

This... this supports my argument

---

In opposite land.

Revise your argument again, though. You're doin' great.

Josh continuously changing his argument when presented with opposite facts…. no wonder why law isn’t nearly the respected profession it once was. I can feel the sleaziness from here.

quote:

---

I feel the legal profession needs to raise the entry bar, not lower it. Same with the MCAT, I wouldn’t want to be a patient of someone who worked the system who avoided the MCAT as someone who was admitted based on equity. It shouldn't be controversial to test the capabilities of skills necessary to practice competently and be successful.

Screen their logical thinking, deductive reasoning, reading comprehension, etc. Hell, go ahead and retool the LSAT to cover most of the 20+ types of logic, ~7 types of reasoning, and a component that covers comprehension, synthesis, differentiation, and attention to detail.

1/3 of the test should be a written section that will be available to schools to review if they wish and automatically sent along with an applicant's scores.

I'm all for expanding access to overcome socioeconomic challenges faced by many people, but the profession should have never started handing out new law schools like they were Pez starting in the 90s.

---

I'm extremely torn on this. On the one hand, there are tons of god awful attorneys out there, and I think that's a fricking travesty. On the other hand, as a libertarian, I have strong feelings about the government dictating who can and can't make a living in a particular field

The best middle ground I've been able to come up with is to having entities, whether public or private, that engages in significant certification and oversight of attorneys, not just for general competency, but for specialized competency. You wouldn't need their permission to practice, but practicing outside of certified areas could lead to increase malpractice scrutiny, and those certifications should be publicly searchable.

I've been practicing for a decade, and I'm extremely good at what I do in the limited field of criminal defense practice. If I let someone hire me in literally any other area of the law, I would basically be stealing from them. Yet, the Bar says I'm free to do so. And other than my word, no client would have the faintest idea which areas of the law I'm worth hiring for. It drives me crazy any time I look up an attorney and their website lists every practice area under the sun.

First and foremost, I genuinely appreciate the thoughtful reply. It's a bit late, so I won't be firing on all cylinders, but I'll try to give it its due and maybe follow up in the morning

quote:

---

Your stance is that this doesn’t change anything in the grand scheme of things, because law schools were already free to ignore LSAT scores. Why, then, is the Asst. Dean of Admissions at Berkeley School of Law saying that removal of the requirement will have an impact (albeit with different consequences than others, including proponents of this measure, expect)?

---

In my opinion, it's the other side of the coin to the slippery slope argument, which we'll spend more time on in a bit. Actually, frick it, no need to go quote by quote...

The perfectly reasonable part of the slippery slope argument (ignoring the idiots, who I think you're giving vastly too much credit to, but I digress too early...) is the lack of verifiable accountability. While this doesn't change the behavior of a single law school, it does limit the amount of data collected. In a perfect world, this doesn't matter much. But in the tribal world we live in, it could potentially matter. Those who are honestly concerned in this thread about the slippery slope value the fact that we can break down admissions by school based on race, and point at the fact that different races are being admitted with markedly different LSAT scores, GPAs, etc. They value that data specifically from the perspective of showing that, on average, black students are admitted with lower objective metrics. Our dear dean from Berkeley has the same concern, but flipped: she's concerned that objectively talented minority candidates are passed over in favor of some white legacy candidate, just as an example.

And while I understand both sides of the argument, I'm also sympathetic to the argument that forcing candidates to spend hundreds of dollars and hours of time, and forcing universities to collect and collate all of this data, is a bit of a harsh ask for the sake of building a data trove to fight over late.

quote:

---

I could go on but the point is clear: this move by the ABA is just another effort to remove standardized testing, the barrier du jour, in order to increase diversity.

---

quote:

---

You say that you understand it, yet you are arguing with folks who obviously see this as another step along that slippery slope. Nobody has articulated the slippery slope argument because it shouldn’t have to be articulated. It’s obvious.

Even if it doesn’t lead to some eventual changes/relaxation in the actual licensing exams, it’s not hard to see how this road leads to a reduction in quality. The primary concern I’ve read from administrators who oppose the ABA decision isn’t that it will negatively impact diversity; it’s that it will lead to more law students being unable to pass the bar. One would think that surely if the number of students who don’t pass the bar increases, the number of students who barely pass the bar increases as well.

---

Ultimately it's academic, but I fundamentally disagree with you regarding whether or not people should articulate the root of their objection, whether that be slippery slope or otherwise. I think you give the majority of people on this thread vastly too much credit. You say they all obviously argue slippery slope; I say they hear diversity dog whistle and they bark. I obviously have no way of knowing which of us is more correct, but considering that the overwhelming majority of people on this thread have never taken the LSAT, taken the MPRE, applied to law schools, been accepted, graduated law school, taken the Bar, passed the Bar... I'm reasonably confident that when the average person read "ABA drops LSAT requirement" they put it in roughly the same basket as "Louisiana allows diploma privilege and cancels the Bar exam". I also have no doubt that they will rally around your vastly more measured and informed response, but I think you do them a service they aren't due by assuming their honesty and goodwill on the subject. But maybe I've been on TD for too long, and it's made me a bit of a cynic...

But anyway, to swing back to the more substantive part of your argument, I'm not sure I take the law school deans decrying future Bar passage rates at face value. In my experience, they tend to be a self-interested bunch. If I'm throwing a dart, I think that the average law school, with its relatively small admissions department, feels threatened by a paradigm in which law schools aren't requiring the LSAT, but is engaging in a more time intensive admissions review, e.g. doing admissions interviews. The LSAT is a glorious time saver for an admissions department, and I could see some fearing losing an edge if that paradigm shifts. But, I'll admit that's getting into some fairly deep speculation on my part.

In summation, while I'm inclined to bristle against your allegations of intentionality, I don't believe I've skirted that there's an eye towards diversity in all of this. Where I differ is in believing it's more of a slackening of the reigns than it is the first step of some grand push. But, again, I appreciate that reasonable people can disagree on that. I would just like for people to be more upfront and honest about what, exactly, they are objecting to. Reading intent into the musings of anonymous strangers on a message board is a fool's errand at best, and I believe is an active impediment to discourse.

But all in all, I hope you've had a pleasant evening