Law Schools Permitted to Go Test Optional in Three Years, Plus More Law Admissions News
In a related turn of events, nine members of the T-14 cohort also opted out of the influential US News & World Report’s rankings for law schools.
The American Bar Association’s accrediting council opted this month, in a 15-1 vote, to eliminate its longstanding requirement that U.S. law schools require a “valid and reliable admission test” of applicants, a decision that should take effect for the 2025-2026 admissions cycle, giving law schools time to devise updated criteria for admission . While the measure will be sent to ABA’s House of Delegates for review, the final decision rests with the accrediting council, meaning this decision is almost certain to take effect for applicants in 2025.
This decision advances the recent trend of decentralizing law admissions requirements, coming just a year after ABA moved to permit accredited law schools to accept GRE scores in place of LSAT scores from J.D. applicants, a practice 104 programs (over half of the 195 U.S. law schools) now follow.
The Law School Admissions Council, which administers the LSAT, objected that making testing optional would result in admitting unprepared law students, which would ultimately hurt the legal profession. “This proposal will be highly disruptive,” John White, chair of LSAC’s trustees, complained. “The change won’t be worth it, and we won’t get the diversity we are looking for.”
Indeed, a large group of law school deans had warned the ABA in a September letter that eliminating the testing requirement risked diminishing “the diversity of law schools’ incoming classes, by increasing reliance on grade point average and other criteria that are potentially more infused with bias.” As the dean of UCLA’s law school, Russell Korobkin wrote, “The LSAT has its problems, but it at least provides schools with a way to compare students who come from different undergraduate schools who pursue very different courses of study that are subject to different degrees of grade inflation.”
It’s important to note that, even with this change, individual law schools retain the option to require the LSAT or an alternative, like the GRE. A recent survey of admissions officers at 82 law schools found that half of them were “likely” or “very likely” to continue their testing requirements, 45% were unsure what their school would do, and only 4 schools were “unlikely” or “very unlikely” to require applicants to submit LSAT or GRE scores.
In related news, nine members of the elite T-14 cohort of law schools have announced they will no longer cooperate with U.S. News & World Report in its prominent law school rankings list. On November 16, the deans of Yale Law and Harvard Law both announced their intentions, citing objections to the list’s methodology, which they maintain is harmful to legal education. Within a week, the law schools at Columbia, Georgetown, Stanford, the University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan, Duke, and Northwestern – plus number 15 in the rankings, UCLA – had all followed suit. Since then, two other T-14 members, Cornell and University of Chicago, confirmed that, despite their own misgivings about the rankings, they will continue to cooperate with U.S. News & World Report.
Ultimately, if you plan to apply to law school in 2023 or 2024, you will need to submit scores from the LSAT or GRE. If you need support, don’t hesitate to reach out to our expert LSAT and GRE tutors, who can help as you navigate the daunting terrain of law school admissions tests. Get in touch to discuss our sophisticated approach to LSAT prep and make a plan for success in your law school applications.
