American Bar Association Scraps LSAT

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A range of law professors and prospective law students urged the ABA to eliminate the testing requirement.

In one written comment, Fariha Amin, a full-time worker and mother to a 6-year-old son, said her LSAT scores remain a hurdle to getting into law school. She took tutoring courses, but her scores still weren’t high enough to be admitted, she told the ABA, urging them to eliminate the requirement.

“I would hate to give up on my dream of becoming a family lawyer, just due to not being able to successfully handle this test,” Ms. Amin wrote.

The Clinical Legal Education Association, which represents law professors, said the proposal will give schools flexibility to address “the persistent lack of racial diversity” in the legal field. While the LSAT may predict law school success to some extent, “it is a tool for predicting a narrow type of academic, not professional success,” the group said.

Coalitions of admissions officers and university deans warned of unintended consequences if the testing requirement is dropped.

“We believe that removal of the testing requirement could actually increase the very disparities proponents seek to reduce by increasing the influence of bias in the review process,” Kristen Theis-Alvarez, assistant dean of admissions and financial aid at University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said in a submission on behalf of dozens of university officials.

They argued that eliminating the test could lead to an overreliance on grade-point average and other criteria they say could be “infused with bias.”

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