The American Bar Association votes to end the LSAT requirement as of Fall 2025
At the end of last year, the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted to end the standardized testing requirement for law school admission. This change is set to take effect in the fall of 2025. In February of this year, the ABA’s House of Delegates will have the opportunity to reject this change before it is finalized.
The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) has been an integral part of assessing law school candidates for admission in the United States and Canada for the past 75 years; the first LSAT was administered in February of 1948. Although Canadian law schools have yet to take a stance on this decision, the ABA’s move sheds light on what law school admissions could look like in the future.
Some argue that removing the LSAT requirement would negatively impact diversity; law schools would have to place greater emphasis on candidates’ undergraduate grade-point averages, recommendations, the reputation of undergraduate institutions, and extra-curricular experiences, among other metrics. Law school candidates who have had to work during their undergraduate studies to pay for their education or to care for their family may be at a disadvantage without the ability to show a high LSAT score. However, other commentators point to previous testing score data, which contradicts the assertion that the LSAT creates more diversity in law schools.
The debate about whether the LSAT requirement should be abolished remains a contested issue in the legal community.
