Chapman law community reacts after American Bar Association scraps LSAT requirement

The decision will be reviewed by the House of Delegates, the association’s policy-making body, in February, where the decision would ultimately be finalized or rejected. Photo by RENEE ELEFANTE, news & politics editor

The American Bar Association (ABA) came to an overwhelming decision Nov. 18 regarding the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) requirement potentially being eliminated. 

The House of Delegates, which is in charge of creating policies for the ABA, is expected to make the final call in February.

The ABA’s vote comes after years of discussion and debate within the organization and among legal professionals and academics, who have argued over whether the requirement hurts or helps diversity enrollment. A similar decision was reached in 2018 when the ABA voted to make the requirement optional, but later withdrew it at the last minute when it went to the House of Delegates for their final say.

According to Marisa Cianciarulo, the interim dean for the Fowler School of Law, she is currently discussing whether the law school will continue requiring applicants to take the LSAT with other administrators.

“I think it’s kind of too early to tell what it’s going to mean,” Cianciarulo said. “The LSAT is a really good predictor for first-time bar pass. There’s really strong statistical value to it. But things are changing… I would have liked to see maybe a little bit more time and thought going into it before that was done, but again, that’s mostly because the way I understand the LSAT is as a very reliable predictor for certain law school-related things like first-time bar pass.”

Currently, Fowler requires prospective graduate students to submit their LSAT scores. In the school’s joint degree program with the Argyros School of Business and Economics where students earn both a Juris Doctor (JD) degree and a Master of Business Administration, prospective graduate students are required to send their LSAT scores to Fowler and their Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores to Fowler.

While the LSAT tests a student’s ability to use logic and analytic reasoning as well as helps students apply to more law schools, the GRE lets students apply to more graduate programs, and it also includes numerous math questions and vocabulary words not used in daily conversations.

In addition to the LSAT, Fowler also looks at a three-page personal statement, a resume, two letters of recommendation and a Credential Assembly Service report that includes a student’s transcripts, test scores and evaluations.

Third-year student Zachary Princi, who is working towards his JD degree at Fowler, told The Panther that having the LSAT requirement can help potential students determine whether they are willing enough to put in the necessary work, deal with the accompanying stresses and pay the tuition costs associated with law school.

“I think (the LSAT) kind of protects people that don’t come from financially strong backgrounds because if they spend (around) $200 and figure out the amount of work, preparation (and) stress they have to deal with isn’t for them, they can now avoid (having more) debt because they now know that they don’t want to put in that kind of work (or) they don’t want to be forced to study in this manner,” said Princi, a staff editor for Chapman Law Review.

Princi also said he acknowledges that the LSAT does not necessarily indicate a person’s success in law school, and he is open to an alternative way in which students can figure out whether they want to fully commit and spend high amounts of money on the tuition.

For Kelly Kolar, a third-year law school student with an emphasis in alternative dispute resolution, she feels that the LSAT is a good indicator of a student’s ability to strategize and that it can help level the playing field for students who had lower grades in high school or their undergraduate career due to a family emergency or any other situations they ran into in prior years.

“For some students, it’s really important (they have) the ability to show that they can succeed (and) the test (can be) beneficial for them getting into law school,” Kolar, the executive notes & comments editor for Chapman Law Review, said. “I see that it’s a difficult indicator of your success, but I think what it can do is provide another alternative way of evaluating whether a student is qualified to be part of the incoming class.”

The elimination of this requirement has experienced pushback from the LSAC, which is in charge of administering the exam. The organization submitted a letter to the ABA in which they stated five major reasons for their opposition.

The letter was co-authored by two members on the LSAC Board of Trustees: Kristin Theis-Alvarez, the assistant dean of admissions and financial aid at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and Rebecca Scheller, the associate dean for admissions and financial aid at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Over 40 staff members from law schools across the nation added their signatures to the letter.

One reason as to why LSAC opposes making the test optional is that it could hurt diversity enrollment more than help it. Another reason is due to the possibility of “unintended negative consequences” such as confusion on which test a student should take and concerns about costs.

In an interview with The Panther, Scheller explained that diversity enrollment could hurt first-generation students.

“I think that removal of the LSAT could be a disservice to applicants who are first-generation students who are not aware of the cost that comes with law school, and that comes not just as the actual cost money-wise, but the rigor that law school has and the types of programs that they might be getting into,” Scheller said.

By contrast, organizations including the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) have voiced their support for the ABA’s decision.

“This is a small, but potentially important, step in the direction of making a career in the law possible for far more students and enabling law schools to innovate and differentiate for everyone’s benefit,” Brooklyn Law School Dean of Admissions Eulas Boyd wrote in a Sept. 8 post for NYSBA.

Boyd also clarified in his post that if Standard 503, which discusses the testing requirement, were to be changed, there isn’t a guarantee that test-optional admissions policies will be adopted in law schools on a wide scale.

“What I am saying is that the availability of test-optional admissions policies will give law schools critically needed flexibility to experiment in admissions, which has the potential to facilitate beneficial change throughout legal education,” Boyd wrote.

One reason as to why Boyd and others support the decision is due to a lack of diversity in law school enrollment nationwide. In 2019, Enjuris reported that students of color made up less than 32% of the enrollment for ABA law schools. 

This percentage increased to a little over 32% in 2020, and the following year, LSAC reported that the 2021 admission cycle produced the most diverse law school class in history as almost 35% identified as students of color. The increase in applications for that year can be attributed to a resurfaced desire for social and racial justice. Earlier this year, though, the number of applications decreased.

Fowler’s diversity numbers over the past three years have seen a steady decrease. This year, Fowler saw a minority enrollment of 49%. 2021’s enrollment was at 52%. In 2020, the minority enrollment rate was almost 55%.

According to results that The Panther obtained from Kaplan Inc. Senior Communications Manager Russell Schaffer, the test prep organization’s 2022 law school admissions officers survey found that half of the 82 ABA-approved law school admissions offices polled would be “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to keep the LSAT requirement regardless of the ABA’s decision. 

Four schools stated that they would be “somewhat unlikely” or “very unlikely” to get rid of their requirement, and the remaining 37 said they weren’t sure what they would do.

“We know schools over rely on the LSAT in their admission decision-making for purposes of rankings, so ridding of the standardized tests will force schools to improve their evaluation process away from that metric,” one university said in response to a poll question asking about their level of support for the ABA’s then-potential decision.

The LSAT exam becoming optional comes on the heels of a trend surrounding standardized testing in general being made optional. During the COVID-19 pandemic, at least 1,800 colleges across the U.S. got rid of their SAT and ACT testing requirements for undergraduate applicants.

In a September 2021 report released by the Common App, an organization seeking to simplify the admissions process for public and private universities nationwide, only 40% of student applicants reported test scores in 2020-21 compared to 73% in 2019-20 and 70% in 2018-19. 

Mississippi and Arkansas ranked as the top two states that had the highest reporting rates, just a little above 75%. California ranked much lower on the list with a reporting rate between 25% and 50% of applicants.

As for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) for medical school applications, almost all U.S. medical schools and many Canadian schools require students to submit their scores, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The organization itself does not require students to submit scores.

MCAT scores are used by a lot of schools since they can serve as an indicator of how well a student will perform on the United States Medical Licensing Examination, which contains three steps that are taken throughout the student’s time in medical school. The first step is usually taken after the second year, while the second step occurs in the fourth year. The final step is taken during or after an internship or the first year of a residency program.

Should the decision to make the LSAT optional be approved in February, law schools would have until fall 2025 to figure out how to evaluate student applications.