In aftermath of ABA vote, UCLA law school to allow more GRE applicants

The American Bar Association’s movement toward scrapping the mandate that law school applicants take an admissions test is expected to prompt more institutions to permit LSAT alternatives.

Already on Monday, UCLA School of Law’s faculty voted to more broadly allow prospective students to apply on the basis of GRE scores starting with the next admissions cycle.

The ABA legal education council’s decision Friday to jettison the standard requiring applicants to have taken a “valid and reliable” admissions test must be approved by the ABA’s House of Delegates to become effective. A House vote on the proposal, which would instead make an admissions test a factor in assessing a school’s admissions policies, is expected in August.

UCLA School of Law Dean Jennifer L. Mnookin praised the ABA council’s action, which she said allows for increased flexibility in admissions.

“Different schools can legitimately have different pathways and approaches to their assessment of candidates,” Mnookin said in an email.

In its most recent admissions cycle, her law school started permitting applicants enrolled in or applying to joint degree programs at UCLA to submit GRE scores if they had not taken the LSAT. Two students have committed to next year’s class under the policy, Mnookin said.

The University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law was the first ABA-accredited school to announce it would accept GRE-only applicants, and it welcomed its second class under that policy last fall.

Several other institutions have since followed suit, though Arizona law dean Marc L. Miller said he expects an acceleration of the trend in light of the ABA’s action that left him “thrilled.”

“With this change, it wouldn’t surprise me if 100 schools next year said, ‘We will consider the GRE as an alternative,’” Miller said.

He said his school will now consider allowing prospective students to apply without any standardized test score, such as those from other graduate or professional programs at the university.

“The door is now open to diversifying who comes in to study law and how they are assessed,” Miller said.

Barry Currier, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education, said he expected schools would continue to use admissions tests, with the LSAT the likely choice for the foreseeable future.

“But the use of tests other than the LSAT, including the GRE, may add to the group of individuals who wish to study law, and that might be a positive development,” Currier said in a statement.

He also noted law is the only profession requiring an admissions test in its accreditation standards.

The LSAT is administered by the Law School Admission Council. Kellye Testy, the organization’s president and CEO, said she was glad the ABA council’s recommended change still encourages schools to use a valid and reliable admissions test.

“Once this recommendation is finalized by the ABA House of Delegates in August, we expect that our member schools will continue to use the LSAT for substantially all of their admissions to provide transparency and fairness by evaluating all applicants using common and consistent standards,” Testy said in a statement.

The admissions council recently reported that the number of LSAT takers in the 2017-2018 admissions cycle was up 18 percent compared to a year ago. The increase is the largest since 2001-2002 and has coincided with a 9 percent uptick in law school applicants.