Most students at Osgoode know that once upon a time new law students were required to learn Latin. I heard this little bit of trivia in an Ethical Lawyering class during my first week. The point that my professor was trying to make was that the Law Society used to throw up all kinds of barriers to keep “certain people” out of the practice. The idea was absurd enough that my classmates and I all had a good laugh. After all, we knew that Latin ultimately has very little to do with the practice of law.
It could be argued that these discriminatory practices have been discontinued. Much to my own relief, Latin is no longer a requirement for law school admission. But, then again, the LSAT exists and has been in use for the last sixty-eight years. I fear that, for many, the LSAT does a convincing impression of the old language requirements. And, with this in mind, I think that sixty-eight years is enough. It long past time to seriously reconsider what role the LSAT plays in law school admissions.
Some of the statistics related to the LSAT are impressive. Not only does it correlate with first year averages in law school, but it is also a better predictor of first year grades than undergraduate averages. With that in mind, it could be argued that the LSAT is a valuable tool for selecting students that are likely to succeed at law school. Furthermore, it correlates with future earnings, meaning that students who succeed at the LSAT are also more likely to succeed in their careers. However, we ought to wonder what is really being measured.
The Law School Admission Council (LSAC), the organization that administers the LSAT, collects a number of statistics about their test. One, however, is absent and its absence is telling. LSAC does not collect income information for prospective students who write the test. It’s easy enough to see why. It only takes one look at the questions for someone to realize that the LSAT isn’t easy. My first crack at a sample test was disgraceful and the fact that I was able to succeed demonstrates that whatever the LSAT measures, it’s not something innate to the test taker. Instead, it must be something that is learned.
While LSAC remains unhelpful, other standardized testing organizations are more transparent. If we look at the SAT as a proxy, we can see the general effect of family income on scores. A study on seniors taking the SAT showed that students from wealthy families tend to score, on average, seventy points higher than students from poorer families. Another study found that social factors like family income and parental education are among the best predictors for SAT success. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Any post-secondary school is expensive and some applicants need to devote time and energy to working to help pay for it. The less financially burdened the applicant is, the more time and energy they have to devote to the standardized test. This gap is magnified when one considers the cost of prep courses, which can cost over $1,000.
The other statistic that is relevant here is race, which LSAC does track. A 2013 study found that certain ethnic groups typically score lower on the test than others. Puerto Ricans tended to average around 138, African Americans around 143 and Hispanics around 147. For reference, the admittance average for most Canadian law schools seems to hover around 160. There is a well known age gap between people of colour and Caucasians, so it is not unreasonable to predict that part of this test score gap relates to income as described above. However, a recent study has shown that, in California at least, race is a better predictor of LSAT scores than family income or parental education. I think that the best explanation for this is that the LSAT’s content must skew unfavourably away from the social and cultural knowledge that non-whites possess. If that is the case, applicants of colour start the race at a disadvantage.
I’d propose that what the LSAT actually measures isn’t the potential for future success. It’s the ability to prepare for the test. Given enough time and coaching, almost anyone can pass the test. Those who have the advantages that allow them to score high on the LSAT don’t lose those advantages when they enter law school. They still have more time, energy and money to devote to their schooling and their connections, if they have them, give them access to better advice and better job opportunities.
So, what purpose does the LSAT actually serve? If it is not allowing law schools to select the best students, its only purpose must be exclusionary. And, if it is exclusionary, who is it excluding? The answer seems to be students of colour and students from low-income families.
This is a fundamental problem that we, as law students, have to be unafraid to confront. Our profession has always excluded certain groups and, in the last few decades, we have finally started to change things. But, change means letting go of things that once seemed common sense. It is time to let go of the LSAT. The argument that it predicts a lawyer’s success is outdated and the truth is that all it serves to do is keep good people from becoming good lawyers.