A committee within the American Bar Association has recommended the dropping of standardised examinations like LSAT as a part of the admission process to the law schools.
The committee also added that the law schools in the US are free to require a test if they wish to.
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The recommendation of eliminating admission test requirements was made by the Strategic Review Committee which is made up of 21members including lawyers, professors, administrators and others.
Bill Adams, the managing director of accreditation and legal education for the A.B.A commented that the issues concerning admission policies have been of concern to the council for several years. The members are more concerned about how the students do in law schools.
The recommendations of the council will be subject to discussion at a meeting later. The council may also plan to send the proposal out for public comment.
The House of Delegates sets the policy for the association and they will have an opportunity to review the recommendation. The decisions, if taken, will be effective from admission in Fall 2023. The law schools may consider the undergraduate course of study and GPA, extracurricular activities, work experience, performance in other graduate or professional programs, relevant demonstrated skills, and obstacles overcome.
The committee is tip-toeing on the lines of the major colleges and universities in the USA which have decided to drop the requirements of the standardized tests due to the criticism that only the wealthy can afford the costly test preps.
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The LSAT is administered by the Law School Admission Council which partly oversees the law school application process. They released a notification claiming that the LSAT will continue to be a vital tool for the schools. They also hoped that the A.B.A will consider these issues carefully.
The deans of law schools in recent years have said that the standardized exams are impediments to reaching out to potential new students.
In 2016, the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law started accepting students who had taken the GRE exam instead of the LSAT. The law school council had issued a warning against the law school but the deans of other schools supported the universitys decision.
The proposed changes will be discussed on May 20, 2022, at the councils public meeting in Chicago.
Source: The New York Times
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