Top Law Schools

Law school professor defends the LSAT from those who suggest it's a form of racial discrimination.

Abstract

From pages 385-386:

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.

Oh common Steve, why did you post this here in the LSAT prep forum? The issue has nothing to do with preparing for the test.

You know better, it's only going to create a $hit ton of nasty arguments and vitriol between posters that want to argue/fight to the death about the issue and distract from legit quality prep discussions. There are other areas of the forum for people to have endless angry pointless debates and this exact topic has been fought endlessly in other parts of the forum since the creation of TLS.

Good thing it is the "LSAT Prep and Discussion Forum," dude. Cool story about these forums, though: you can stay away from this thread, and your prep assistance can continue.

bjsesq wrote:Good thing it is the "LSAT Prep and Discussion Forum," dude. Cool story about these forums, though: you can stay away from this thread, and your prep assistance can continue.

I really dont think you should be so snarky towards Jeffort. he has contributed a lot more than you have. and has helped thousands of students.

deebanger wrote:

bjsesq wrote:Good thing it is the "LSAT Prep and Discussion Forum," dude. Cool story about these forums, though: you can stay away from this thread, and your prep assistance can continue.

I really dont think you should be so snarky towards Jeffort. he has contributed a lot more than you have. and has helped thousands of students.

I don't care. I can disagree with him despite his contributions.

Very interesting. Is there also an argument going around that law school education/teaching styles/ grading systems also equal racial discrimination? After all, certain minorities perform, on average, as poorly in law school (as determined by class ranking) as they do on the lsat.

bjsesq wrote:

deebanger wrote:

bjsesq wrote:Good thing it is the "LSAT Prep and Discussion Forum," dude. Cool story about these forums, though: you can stay away from this thread, and your prep assistance can continue.

I really dont think you should be so snarky towards Jeffort. he has contributed a lot more than you have. and has helped thousands of students.

I don't care. I can disagree with him despite his contributions.

Snark be a fundamental right of TLS, bro.

Decimus wrote:

bjsesq wrote:

deebanger wrote:

bjsesq wrote:Good thing it is the "LSAT Prep and Discussion Forum," dude. Cool story about these forums, though: you can stay away from this thread, and your prep assistance can continue.

I really dont think you should be so snarky towards Jeffort. he has contributed a lot more than you have. and has helped thousands of students.

I don't care. I can disagree with him despite his contributions.

Snark be a fundamental right of TLS, bro.

Good to see you, buddy. Hope all is well.

Most def racist

So the LSAT is discriminatory but we need a standardized test. Why not offer an alternative to the LSAT? There's the SAT/ACT for undergrad, the GRE/GMAT for b-schools, but every law school applicant is stuck with the LSAT. We could have an additional "Law School Entrance Exam" (LSEE) focusing on things like time-pressured writing and statute analysis. The latter might be less discriminatory but still weed people out. It's also more like law school exams so it might be a better predictor anyway.

deebanger wrote:

bjsesq wrote:Good thing it is the "LSAT Prep and Discussion Forum," dude. Cool story about these forums, though: you can stay away from this thread, and your prep assistance can continue.

I really dont think you should be so snarky towards Jeffort. he has contributed a lot more than you have. and has helped thousands of students.

You clearly haven't been to the lounge if you think boo doesn't contribute more than an LSAT trainer.

I don't see how your skin color affects your ability to read and think logically (and assuming that race puts a ceiling on your intellect would be racist). Obviously people from different backgrounds will approach the LSAT differently, but that's true for everyone and no excuse for low performance. An engineer might be naturally good at LG, a rich kid might get prep classes paid for and have more free time to study... these are just facts of life. People aren't equal; that's just how it goes.

Discussions like this are stupid. You can try to inject race/gender/sexual orientation into absolutely anything, but very seldom does it actually mean anything important.

And let's not forget the extreme preference URMs seem to get in admissions. Even if the LSAT is discriminatory somehow (which I doubt), the multiple point boost URMs get would more than make up for it.

What if we just get minorities to write standardized tests? I volunteer.

Skin color/race/nationality has no bearing on your LSAT score. There are (to my knowledge) two legal ways to get a high LSAT score: Be really smart or study until you dream about logic games.

I scored a 176 despite English being my second language. So everyone feeling LSAT is unfair due to their race/nationality/upbringing should just shut the **** up. (Not having access to a LSAT prep company / tutor is not an excuse, you can always download PTs and books from various places on the Internet *cough*)

EDIT: You know I am right. So, let that sink in.

Pancakes12 wrote:Most def racist

Racist AND classist.

What does it mean to call a test "racist" or "classist"? Is it enough to simply show that, on the whole, some races/classes do better than others? Or should we expect that the people making the claim be able to point to individual questions on the test that are somehow "flawed" or "biased" in favor of one race/class over another?

Hey, nulli is still around!

JSWright101 wrote:

Pancakes12 wrote:Most def racist

Racist AND classist.

Yeah unlike education in general which has nothing to do with class. Oh wait...

I'm actually ok calling the lsat classist, if that means those from upper classes are more likely to do well. I'm not ok with saying that your skin color affects your ability to read

The question is: does the LSAT correctly measure the performance of minorities in law school.

To the extent that it measures the performance of the majority, it does.

Pancakes12 wrote:

JSWright101 wrote:

Pancakes12 wrote:Most def racist

Racist AND classist.

Yeah unlike education in general which has nothing to do with class. Oh wait...

I'm actually ok calling the lsat classist, if that means those from upper classes are more likely to do well. I'm not ok with saying that your skin color affects your ability to read

This seems like you're being willfully ignorant - obviously there are cultural markers that are split among "racial" lines that clearly affect one's ability to read. The most obvious would be speaking in dialect. If literally all the adults in your life, including ministers, police, and teachers are using a grammar where tenses are expressed differently from formal English, and subject-verb agreement differs, it will be more hallenging to rigorously engage with formal, and especially academic, English.

I taught in a semi rural area in Europe, where the future laborer students literally could not speak the formal version of thei language, although they could read and write it. To pretend like skin color is unrelated to cultural factors isn't beneficial to discussion.

I just want to know why Obama and Sotomayor never released their test scores. Soto herself admitted she was an affirmative action baby. The test, insofar as scoring high, is designed for people who really care about doing well on it. Affirmative action strips away a lot of this care for minorities. They can just ride the free wave of social justice.

mswaz wrote:I just want to know why Obama and Sotomayor never released their test scores. Soto herself admitted she was an affirmative action baby. The test, insofar as scoring high, is designed for people who really care about doing well on it. Affirmative action strips away a lot of this care for minorities. They can just ride the free wave of social justice.

You seem dumb.

nothingtosee wrote:

Pancakes12 wrote:

JSWright101 wrote:

Pancakes12 wrote:Most def racist

Racist AND classist.

Yeah unlike education in general which has nothing to do with class. Oh wait...

I'm actually ok calling the lsat classist, if that means those from upper classes are more likely to do well. I'm not ok with saying that your skin color affects your ability to read

This seems like you're being willfully ignorant - obviously there are cultural markers that are split among "racial" lines that clearly affect one's ability to read. The most obvious would be speaking in dialect. If literally all the adults in your life, including ministers, police, and teachers are using a grammar where tenses are expressed differently from formal English, and subject-verb agreement differs, it will be more hallenging to rigorously engage with formal, and especially academic, English.

I taught in a semi rural area in Europe, where the future laborer students literally could not speak the formal version of thei language, although they could read and write it. To pretend like skin color is unrelated to cultural factors isn't beneficial to discussion.

Yes, it would also be more difficult to perform well in law school, which the lsat measures

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