Admissions test change withdrawn from ABA consideration

A measure designed to give law schools more flexibility in the admissions tests they require applicants to take, or whether they mandate such exams be taken at all, was withdrawn from consideration by the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates on Monday amid opposition.

Resolution 111D would have eliminated the accreditation standard that ABA schools ensure applicants have taken a “valid and reliable admissions test.” Most law schools require prospective students to take the LSAT in order to comply, but in recent years more than two dozen schools have started permitting, or announced plans to allow, the submission of Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores.

The ABA’s legal education council proposed as an alternative to the test requirement that a school whose admissions policy and practices were called into question would presumptively be out of compliance with the accreditation standards if it did not mandate a valid and reliable admissions test.

The resolution’s withdrawal took place during the ABA’s annual meeting in Chicago. The ABA’s Young Lawyers Division had voted against the proposed change during its assembly on Friday, and a couple of opponents lobbied against the house resolution, said Christopher Jennison, a young lawyer delegate from the Maryland State Bar Association.

“I opposed Resolution 111D, in its current form, because the proposed change in standards would have allowed subjectivity in admissions, and could have allowed for backsliding in the advances we as a society have made in diversifying law schools and the advances we have made in recognizing that a legal education is not the exclusive purview of the economically and socially privileged,” Jennison wrote on Instagram Monday.

“A move away from the #LSAT should neither simply open up applications to one other test, such as the #GRE, nor blindly allow schools to reinstitute processes that allow for admission based on patronage, established networks, or other indicators … to the further exclusion of marginalized communities,” he continued.

The testing issue will now head back to the ABA’s legal education council.

“The concerns that our delegates heard from other members of the house will be reported to the council, and the council will determine how it wishes to proceed,” Barry Currier, the ABA’s managing director of accreditation and legal education, said in a statement.

The Law School Admission Council, which administers the LSAT, said it looked forward to collaborating with the ABA on the issue so schools would have clarity and guidance.

“Today’s decision gives us all time to work together to consider how to proceed in the best interests of applicants and law schools to promote access and equity in law school admission,” Kellye Y. Testy, the admission council’s president and CEO, said in a statement.

Daniel B. Rodriguez, dean of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, said prior to Monday’s events that the ABA eliminating the admissions test standard would be “a great imprimatur on innovation in testing.”

“Everyone understands and respects the fact that law schools need to have a valid indicator of student performance and further respects that law schools should be accountable for only admitting students who can succeed,” Rodriguez said in an interview Saturday. “But we know enough now to know there are a variety of ways of doing that, including a variety of tests.”