American bar association may drop LSAT requirement?
Exam: LSAT Test - Law School Admission Test: Logical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension, Analytical Reasoning
The Law school admission test is an exam that has been around for years now and so many aspiring law students have undertaken this exam at a point in their life. The exam mainly will assess the candidate's ability, skills and knowledge in the field of law. Many law schools use this exam as the admission test for enrollment into their school. The exam is structured to ensure that only students who are likely to succeed in the law profession will get into good law colleges. The LSAT is much related to American Bar Association (ABA). The ABA is an elected bar association for law students and also lawyers. It is not under any specific jurisdiction in the US. The main reason of the formation of the ABA is providing and setting of academic standards for the law schools in the United States and also the formation of ethical codes that are related to the legal field and profession. The LSAT is one of the requirements that the ABA requires for s student to get into law school. Of late, there has been news that the American Bar Association is considering dropping the LSAT requirement.
Why would the American Bar Association want to drop LSAT requirement
Just recently, a committee met and discussed the end to a requirement of the LSAT by the law schools. If this decision is approved, law school will have more flexibility about the LSAT. They could either make it optional or drop it completely. So why this decision? You find that many schools are complaining about the privileges and flexibility that the LSAT denies students in the admission process into the law schools. This is due to the reason that they have to make a report the scores to the magazines that publish the rankings each year. Many schools want to maintain their high rankings, so they end up turning always student who they would want to admit into their schools.
The dean of the law school in Santa Clara University, Donald J. Polden, who is the chairman of the ABA committee over viewing the standard, stated that (in two prior discussions) that a great number of committee members indicated that they would like to drop the LSAT requirement. He continued further explaining, via e-mail, that there were good arguments for dropping the LSAT as part of the admission requirement. Polden further stated that by having the LSAT removed, it would provide more flexibility to law schools in order to achieve different goals when admitting their students.
The LSAT does provide an ideal assessment for law students who want to pursue a profession in the legal world. It helps in identifying students who will likely be successful once they get into a good law school. It also aids law schools in not admitting students who will likely fail or are incapable of being successful. Even if the LSAT is dropped, in the future it would still be viewed as an important factor in the admission of new students.
The ABA committee suggests that it still considers the LSAT paper to be quite important, but they may not require law schools to use it anymore since the accreditation of other bodies for other professions are not as strict as the LSAT.
How would the drop of the LSAT affect Law School Admissions?
Many believe that a large part of the law students will still opt to do the LAST exam, especially if it's made optional. The LSAT has become and proven to be the best benchmark criteria for most law schools. Even if the exam is dropped as a requirement, it will remain an important factor to most law schools. Many top-rated law schools will probably still continue requiring the LSAT for admission. However, you may find the low leveled law schools may decide not to require the LSAT scores for admission. By dropping the LSAT exam, it will increase the risk of having students who will not be successful admitted to law schools. This will lead to an increase of dropouts and also more students failing the bar exam.
The only reason that top-rated school might not stop requiring the LSAT paper is not to be punished by the U.S News rankings. They want to maintain their high rankings every year. The low leveled law school have nothing to lose even if the decide to drop the LSAT exam. By having the ABA passing the decision of dropping the LSAT, it would boost the chances of more law students getting into school, but it would also increase the chances of more students failing the course.
There is one school, the Massachusetts School of Law, has been fighting the ABA's LAST requirement for some years now. Since Massachusetts Law School stopped requiring the LSAT exam as a benchmark for student admission, they have been in a tug of war with the ABA. ABA took the school to court and won the battle and since then Massachusetts Law School has been operating without ABA recognition and also without LSAT requirement. Currently, they just require their students to take interviews and take an essay test that they have set. The law school says that this is a much better way to identify skills and talents in their students who could not have scored well in the LSAT exam.
It is unlikely that top rated schools will follow in suit of what Massachusetts Law School did, but if the LSAT is dropped many law schools will be principally affected. Many schools do not want the LSAT requirement dropped but if it is dropped, top rated law schools will still use it as a cut off point for admitting new law students.