黄色电影

The LSAT has blown up one of America’s last great social escalators. For generations, eager young minds have crammed over LSAT prep books, learning the unique complexities of the exam and preparing themselves for the rigors of law school. Foremost among the test’s unique attributes was the infamous logic games section, which differentiated the LSAT from the general mathematical and reading comprehension assessments found in other graduate tests.

These games, far from posing an arcane roadblock for aspiring lawyers, served as the essential attribute of a test that predicted, with surprising accuracy, student success in law school. It tested not just raw aptitude, but also tenacity, as logic games are eminently learnable. Many summers ago, I pored over logic game sections of LSAT prep books while earning a quarter-an-hour more than minimum wage lifeguarding at a Cleveland swimming pool. Continuing to struggle, I ploughed these earnings into hiring an LSAT tutor who helped me master logic games. Perhaps a high score on the LSAT predicts success in law school because it is as much a reflection of effort as it is a reflection of raw intellectual power.

While the test is uniquely powerful, it has been under assault for more than a decade. America’s preeminent law schools now also accept the GRE. Other law schools are now test optional. Schools looking to evade recent Supreme Court decisions curbing race-based affirmative action are turning to secretive, black-box, admissions processes where a class can be curated to meet the whims of administrators rather than to reflect the merit of the applicant pool.

The LSAT, in response to this assault, used the pretext of litigation with blind test takers, who claimed the logic games unfairly disadvantaged them, to drop the section. The new LSAT seems to be an undifferentiated general graduate test, and one on which many students will perform strongly with minimal effort.

This weak sauce LSAT poses a disservice to the academy, to the profession, and to our very nation. Great legal education requires students to learn not only from their professors, but from their peers. The old LSAT correctly predicted which students had the aptitude to contribute meaningfully to classroom discussions, but also revealed which students would commit the time and effort to be successful in a program that requires countless hours of independent study. A logic games-free LSAT seems poised to create the illusion of false parity between less talented, and less hardworking, applicants and their peers.

A less qualified, and less prepared, cohort of law students will doubtless contribute to a diminished legal profession. A recent reform of the MCAT led to a more holistic test, but not an easier one. Apparently, we prioritize competence above all else in our physicians. We should demand the same of our lawyers. An LSAT that fails to highlight the most talented and committed aspirants to the profession will lead to a new generation of lawyers who are less well-equipped for the pressures of representing clients.

Law has always been central to the American experiment ­-- its importance even remarked upon by de Tocqueville. One third of our branches of government, the judiciary, is composed entirely of attorneys, and attorneys are strongly represented among our elected officials. The good order of our society depends on the proper functioning of our legal institutions and the rule of law. An LSAT that is complicit in a broader trend of credentialing less and less qualified attorneys is corrosive for our nation’s future.

The LSAT must find a way to ensure that rigor is maintained, or even enhanced, in future administrations of its test. While it must find a way to fairly accommodate those with disabilities, it should not abandon logic games, but instead should celebrate the important role that they have played in maintaining quality across generations of America’s legal profession.