A New Standard of Admissions for Law Schools

-- By AlexHu - 19 May 2009

Law school admissions are a joke

While it is unclear precisely how potential law students are admitted to law school, one thing is for certain: this process weighs extremely heavily on two factors: undergraduate GPA and LSAT score. Though law schools also require recommendations and a personal statement, and claim that work and life experience are all “important” factors, it is evident that these “soft” factors are quite secondary to the all important GPA/LSAT numbers. Law schools justify this process by asserting that it is one of meritocracy—only those that are quantitatively the “most qualified” are admitted. This, they claim, provides a better quality of education, because all law students at a particular school are surrounded by similarly “qualified” students. Further, by taking only those that are quantitatively the most qualified, law schools will dedicate their resources to training the best and brightest minds. This might seem fair—until one realizes that there is a significant mismatch between the standard used to evaluate applicants and the purported justifications for this standard.

• Law school admissions may indeed be a joke, but I don't think this is the punch line. The total dependence of law school admissions systems on LSAT score can be criticised effectively on all sorts of grounds, which you don't do, but the punch line is that it's enforced on us by a guy who runs a defunct weekly news magazine and the applicants and parents who believe in his rankings. Once he publishes measurements showing that the median of a "top ten" school's LSAT score is in the 99th percentile, all top ten schools must then fill half their class from the rather random collection of bozos and non-bozos who scored in the top one percent, but who are in no significant respect different than the much larger number of people (including, of course, a much larger absolute number of non-bozos) who scored in the top 10% on the exam. All by himself, the US News and World Report guy (named Mortimer Zuckerman) has caused us to have an insane policy, and to hold to it with insane rigidity. That's true no matter what your definition of what makes a bozo (or what you call "the wrong type of people") might be. So that's the punch line. Too bad you didn't know the joke.

This admissions process fails to filter out the “wrong” type of people

If law schools are supposed to train the lawyers, politicians, and policymakers of the future, then the law school admissions process is simply another bit of “legal magic” that is perpetuated because of its purported basis in logic. The process is flawed because the starting assumption is flawed: that having some combination of a high undergraduate GPA and high LSAT score is the formula for future lawyerly success. Because this process is, at best, only arguably discriminatory on the basis of some type of intelligence, it cannot effectively filter out the “wrong” type of student. As a result, law schools often end up accepting and training people who may not really be suited for the practice of law—for example, those people who attend law school simply for a stable job that pays well. As a result, many lawyers ultimately end up unhappy, disillusioned, and unfulfilled by their careers, and turning away from the practice of law, waste a costly education.

• No one has ever supposed that people who want a stable job that pays well are the wrong sort of people. People who want a stable job that pays well and don't care whether what they do has meaning to them and is good for their community might be people in a selfish and ultimately painful frame of mind, but that wouldn't make them the wrong sort of people, either.

A new standard of admissions: medical school admissions model

Fortunately, other graduate schools’ admissions processes can serve as models for a more effective law school admissions process. Perhaps, the most relevant model would be the medical school admissions process, as medical schools and law schools are very similar with regards to the difficulties facing their admissions committees. While law school classes on the whole tend to be larger than medical school classes, both of these schools have to deal with large, diverse applicant pools and applicants who apply to many schools.

In light of these similarities, it may seem remarkable, then, that the medical schools’ admissions process is so drastically different from the law schools’ process. While quantitative factors (GPA, MCAT) are still important, two major differences make the medical schools’ process far more thorough. By requiring more essays and an interview, medical schools are much better able to get a holistic view of the applicant, filter out unsuitable candidates, and select those who will best utilize its resources.

• So that's it? Your big suggestion is to put more blanks on the form and to conduct an interview? But we had a problem of substance: a need to define for ourselves who we want to train to be lawyers. This is a procedural proposal that assumes an answer to our difficulty without ever addressing it.

The multiple essays required for medical school are far more reaching than the generic personal statement required for law school. Forcing applicants to write these essays provides a number of benefits. Firstly, it serves to filter out those who would apply on a whim—by increasing the burdens of applying to medical schools, less motivated applicants drop out. Secondly, these essays force the applicant to think carefully about his true motivations and reasons for applying to medical school, and to verbalize them more completely. Thirdly, these essays allow the admissions committee to better see the applicant’s commitment and consistency. Finally, these essays serve as a pre-selection tool by allowing an admissions committee to whittle down the applicant pool for those they are interested in interviewing.

The interview also plays a critical part in selecting the most suitable applicants. By forcing applicants to interview, medical schools gain an important dimension with which to evaluate the applicant—a human, face-to-face evaluation, where sincerity, passion, and dedication can be better gauged. Also, by erecting another barrier in terms of cost and time, less serious applicants are dissuaded from participating in the application process.

Thus, it seems that by placing a greater emphasis on factors which (1) raise the barrier of applying, and (2) give the school more dimensions to evaluate applicants, medical schools are better able to filter out and gain a more honest understanding of their applicants. As such, they have better tools to select the student body that will best exemplify their educational and professional missions.

How can this model be applied to law schools?

Directly implementing the medical school admissions process may be difficult for law schools for a number of reasons. Firstly, law schools seek to enroll more students. As such, more students would need to be interviewed, and the costs involved with this interview process may become prohibitive. Secondly, schools with easier admissions processes may end up drawing more applicants, and may be able to raise their ranking through statistical inflation.

The solution to these problems has to come from compromise and the willingness of law schools themselves to implement this type of admissions process. Costs of interviewing can be overcome—even a cost-effective phone interview would give the school important information about the applicant, and after all, if medical schools can afford the interview process, there should be no reason why law schools cannot also find the budget for it. And while there is the possibility that a rigorous application process will funnel applicants to other law schools, the goal of educating the “best” and most suitable minds should be the paramount mission of all law schools—simply put, there needs to be a cooperative effort to adopt these practices.

In conclusion, even though adopting these practices may cause the hard numbers of some law schools to dip, the entering class will be better selected to serve the law school mission of training the “best” minds, providing the best quality of education for all of its students, and producing successful lawyers.

-- AlexHu - 19 May 2009

• I think it would be useful to focus not on the mechanics of running an admissions office but on the definition of the students we are seeking to enroll. You said you wanted to discuss a standard, which seemed like a good idea to me. In the end you tried to move the office furniture around, which isn't about standards at all. The topic is a good one, and I think you'd be successful if you wrote about it.

My proposal is the Chinese/pre-reform Japanese model which opens the bar exam to everyone who has a bachelor degree and in the mean time maintains a relatively low bar passing rate. -- XinpingZhu - 24 May 2009