BREAKING: ABA votes to uphold LSAT requirements

The House of Delegates (HoD) of the American Bar Association (ABA) voted down a resolution that would have made LSAT testing optional.

The vote occurred today at the 2023 Midyear ABA meeting in New Orleans. 

The initial suggestion of removing LSAT requirements occurred last May as well as the vote in favor of elimination by the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which occurred in November, as Campus Reform previously reported. 

Now, the resolution will be sent back to the Legal Education section for revision.

Resolution 300 was drafted so that “each of the 196 ABA-approved law schools would be able to determine for themselves whether to require a test score among other factors in the admissions process,” according to the meeting agenda.

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The amendment to the current standards on admissions and admissions testing states that it “will give law schools more flexibility to innovate regarding their admissions processes.”

A chief argument in favor of removing LSAT requirements was that it will “lead to an increase in the diversity of applicants and admitted law students since alternative admissions practices could be developed that do not disadvantage underrepresented applicants in the same way as standardized admission tests,” according to the resolution.

Critics, however, suggest that there will be unintended consequences to removing LSAT requirements.

A memo issued by 60 law school deans in September contends that “[w]ithout the LSAT as a factor, law schools may be less willing to take a chance on students who do not perform well on GPA or other metrics because they worked to put themselves through school, had to care for family, or other reasons.”

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Campus Reform Higher Education Fellow Rob Jenkins contends that the movement to eliminate all standardized testing as a metric for entrance into higher education is an attack on meritocracy.

“[I]n the war between equity and merit,” according to Jenkins, “the former currently has the upper hand—and it cannot tolerate its antithesis, which exposes equity for the sham that it is. Anything that smacks of merit—that suggests one student might actually be superior to another—must be eliminated, starting with standardized entrance exams.”

Campus Reform has reached out to the ABA for comment. This is a breaking story, and it will be updated accordingly.

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