However, one law school professor recently defended the LSAT from those who argue it's a form of racial discrimination. While he admits that the LSAT may not be a perfect predictor of ability in law school, he argues that it serves a valuable purpose, and in the absence of anything better, we'd might as well keep it.
Here's a key excerpt:
While we do need supplemental measures for prediction to get students who can make it through law school into the profession, we also need to know about those who cannot. Hard as it is to take in, there are apparently 150,000 law school graduates who have never passed the bar exam, and they deserved the law schools’ best judgment regarding their likely success as much as do those more likely to succeed. Ethical issues are not the only ones in play. Who is going to defend the law schools when these students sue, claiming that they were taken advantage of much like the borrowers in the housing debacle who succumbed to the blandishments of the mortgage brokers? The larger point is that law schools need to think harder about these students. Test critics, only somewhat understandably, completely ignore their existence.
See pages 378-388 of the PDF for the entire section about the LSAT. He also discusses some potential alternatives to the LSAT.
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What do you think? Does the LSAT racially discriminate? What real alternatives, if any, do we have?
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the LSAT requires a diverse exposure to journals, academic literature and advanced reading....that is not discriminatory....put your big boy or girl pants on and get going...
ReplyDeleteThis has nothing to do with "putting on your big boy or girl pants" and everything to do with the disparities in the quality of instruction within our educational system. As a person of color from the inner-city, I do not feel that the LSAT inherently discriminates against anyone or that it should no longer be used in the admissions process. In my opinion, to get rid of the LSAT in order to increase the number of minorities in law schools would be a mistake -- it would ignore the real issue at hand, which is the fact that many students are not adequately prepared for the exam, let alone for law school. The LSAT is already a difficult exam for many students coming from some of the best colleges/universities in the nation. For someone without the right foundation of reading and analytical skills, doing well on the LSAT will simply be impossible. No amount of test prep will be able to provide a student with the skills necessary to do well on the exam or in law school without the student already possessing those skills to some degree. Perhaps the best way to deal with this issue would be to place emphasis on better K-12 education across the board and improving access to higher education as well, not to get rid of the LSAT.
ReplyDeleteWell, we could define our terms a little better. Is there a disparate impact on certain minorities? Of course. Same with essentially every other test (standardized or otherwise) on the books. Is there a discriminatory purpose? Almost certainly not (see, e.g., all the diversity measures out there in the universe). To the extent that there is a disparate impact, should we care? Maybe. But surely the efforts that law schools are taking to offer need-based aid and to increase their students-of-color numbers are sufficient to address the problem?
ReplyDeleteDOES THE LSAT RACIALLY DISCRIMINATE?
ReplyDeleteFirst, the LSAT is a test for students that want to enter Law School and OBEJECT DOES NOT discriminate. And, second the question should read; “Does the LSAC racially discriminate MINORITIES in the U.S.A.?”
Answer: YES. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
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WHAT REAL ALTERNATIVES, IF ANY, DO WE HAVE?
Answer: The LSAC should provide every single LSAT Test in different languages here in the U.S.A., since many students taking the LSAT English is not their native language. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS A MELTING POT OF CULTURES. This is a reason why our country is so unique.
While mono linguistic assumptions of the lsac are problematic, do you not think that these assumptions play out in the greater field of law? Scotus decisions are in English, statutes are written in English, etc. This means that the ability to reason in English is particularly at issue here, given the hegemony of mono linguistic norms. In conditional logic, we could say that reasoning in English is a necessary condition for practicing law. Your criticism suggests it is an insufficient condition, but to have a sufficient condition for that sort isn't really a problem since the primary purpose of the test is negative. I.e., the contrapositive, that not being able to reason in English is sufficient to know that one would have significant trouble practicing law in the US, perhaps is a valuable function of the test.
DeleteYes the LSAT is for the privileged! The LSAC and especially the LSAT does implicitly discriminate minorities by discriminating against the poor. Lets put it this way, I and and many others I know would not have gotten a 164 on the LSAT without having to spend a few thousand dollars and a lot of time to study for the Logic games. The LR section may be easy for some but for most of us it does not come naturally, it's a skill we have to acquire. Also there is zero evidence that the LSAT is a predictor of law school success, thats just a mantra the LSAC parrots to justify it's existence.
ReplyDeleteSo who are the "many" who argue that the LSAT discriminates against minorities? Race leaders who want to continue expanding their grift on society for their own financial gains? As you can see from the comments, there isn't any evidence of even argument to support there is racism or discrimination against minorities in the LSAT. The only 'argument' is that the wealthy have a better opportunity to prepare for the exam by taking a course - which the very best starts at just $700. This has nothing at all to do with race. It has gotten to the point where I can see employers terrified to hire minorities who might complain that even equal treatment is insufficient. This has gone far enough.
ReplyDelete