2 ms·

If they feel like they can just ignore the US News rankings because their brand name is enough, that's a power move but this is all being triggered by the poten

If they feel like they can just ignore the US News rankings because their brand name is enough, that's a power move but this is all being triggered by the potential ban on race based discrimination for admissions. They didn't decide this X years ago, it's probably not a coincidence. It coincides with the Bar decision. I guess I am still wondering why affirmative action is a societal good more important than the previous standards we had for lawyers. Lawyers can do a lot of harm or good. If you are accused of a crime, you hire a lawyer. You are tried before a judge, who is a lawyer. We have to trust these people for it to work. Maybe it's to deflect against bad press and not a societal benefit. Maybe they don't care what happens. Maybe I am overestimating the impact of lowering standards. idk.

gnicholas 4y ago
It's actually a little more complicated because there's also the bar exam as a gatekeeper. It doesn't test the same things, but you definitely do need to have a pretty good grasp of logic to do well. The upshot is that the de-emphasis of the LSAT on the admissions side may result in (1) some additional new lawyers who are not as analytically capable, (2) some additional new lawyers who are just as capable, but are bad test-takers, and (3) some additional new law students who are unable to pass the bar. Without knowing the proportion of these three groups, it's hard to say if the net effect will be positive or negative. But I would venture to guess that if schools dramatically relax their LSAT standards, the "beneficiaries" will have much lower bar pass rates than their classmates. They will be saddled with the same $200-250k of debt, though. This trend is apparent at UC Hastings, whose admissions selectivity dropped significantly in the years following in the last decade, and whose bar pass rate plummeted. [1] (Many schools became less selective around 2010, when potential applicants heard about how the graduates of 2009 and 2010 had a very hard time finding jobs, let alone jobs that can service $200k debt loads.) If these new policies/procedures do result in students being admitted to law school who can't pass the bar (or have to take it multiple times), these students could reasonably be upset for having been misled about their prospects. Of course, the schools are already lobbying for the Bar exams to be made easier, so perhaps the end result would just be that marginally-prepared students would be lifted up over another hurdle, and plopped down in the laps of unsuspecting clients. Not surprisingly, one of the law schools pushing hardest for lowering Bar standards is UC Hastings. [2] 1: https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/12/who-is-to-blame-for-uc-hastings-horrific-51-bar-pass-rate.html https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/12/who-is-to-b... 2: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/more_law_school_deans_call_for_lowering_california_bar_exam_cut_score https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/more_law_school_dean...
- onetimeusename 4y ago
  that's really interesting, thanks. I guess it remains to be seen how this situation evolves.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  If we still gave the LSAT to everyone we could take students who almost passed it and give them a scholarship to a year of legal-prep. Then there wouldn't be lawyers and affirmative-lawyers. By the time they hit law school everyone would be in the same open system.

gnicholas 4y ago

It's actually a little more complicated because there's also the bar exam as a gatekeeper. It doesn't test the same things, but you definitely do need to have a pretty good grasp of logic to do well. The upshot is that the de-emphasis of the LSAT on the admissions side may result in (1) some additional new lawyers who are not as analytically capable, (2) some additional new lawyers who are just as capable, but are bad test-takers, and (3) some additional new law students who are unable to pass the bar. Without knowing the proportion of these three groups, it's hard to say if the net effect will be positive or negative. But I would venture to guess that if schools dramatically relax their LSAT standards, the "beneficiaries" will have much lower bar pass rates than their classmates. They will be saddled with the same $200-250k of debt, though. This trend is apparent at UC Hastings, whose admissions selectivity dropped significantly in the years following in the last decade, and whose bar pass rate plummeted. [1] (Many schools became less selective around 2010, when potential applicants heard about how the graduates of 2009 and 2010 had a very hard time finding jobs, let alone jobs that can service $200k debt loads.) If these new policies/procedures do result in students being admitted to law school who can't pass the bar (or have to take it multiple times), these students could reasonably be upset for having been misled about their prospects. Of course, the schools are already lobbying for the Bar exams to be made easier, so perhaps the end result would just be that marginally-prepared students would be lifted up over another hurdle, and plopped down in the laps of unsuspecting clients. Not surprisingly, one of the law schools pushing hardest for lowering Bar standards is UC Hastings. [2] 1: https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/12/who-is-to-blame-for-uc-hastings-horrific-51-bar-pass-rate.html https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/12/who-is-to-b... 2: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/more_law_school_deans_call_for_lowering_california_bar_exam_cut_score https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/more_law_school_dean...

onetimeusename 4y ago
that's really interesting, thanks. I guess it remains to be seen how this situation evolves.
LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
If we still gave the LSAT to everyone we could take students who almost passed it and give them a scholarship to a year of legal-prep. Then there wouldn't be lawyers and affirmative-lawyers. By the time they hit law school everyone would be in the same open system.