http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-24/the-first-two-law-schools-to-drop-the-lsat-could-be-just-the-beginning
The Culprits: SUNY Buffalo and the University of Iowa: On February 24, 2015, BloombergBusiness published reporter Natalie Kitroeff’s article, which was entitled “The First Two Law Schools to Drop the LSAT Could Be Just the Beginning.” Check out this opening:
“Two law schools said this month that they would begin accepting applicants who have not taken the Law School Admissions Test, a move that may help curb weak interest and plunging enrollments in law schools across the country. The State University of New York-Buffalo Law School and the University of Iowa College of Law said they would admit students from their respective undergraduate colleges based on their grade point average and scores on standardized tests other than the LSAT.
“Taking the LSAT is a pain, and it is expensive,” says James Gardner, dean of SUNY Buffalo’s law school. The test comes with a $170 fee, often in addition to months-long prep courses and tutoring that can cost thousands of dollars. “This is just a way to identify strong-performing students based on perfectly rational criteria that don’t involve the LSAT,” Gardner says.
He acknowledges, however, that the change might be a lifeline to law schools, which have lately been suffering from a persistent lack of bodies. “It does address that problem to the extent that they remove what is, for some students, an obstacle for applying to law school,” says Gardner. In 2014, first-year enrollment at U.S. law schools fell to about 38,000, its lowest point in four decades, down 28 percent since it peaked in 2010. First-year enrollments have declined by around 20 percent since 2011 at both SUNY Buffalo and the University of Iowa.
The two schools are the first to announce that they've taken advantage of a recent ruling by the American Bar Association, which accredits U.S. law schools. In August, the ABA changed its rules to allow law schools to fill up to 10 percent of their class with students who have not taken the LSAT, as long as they were at the top of their college class and scored highly on the the SAT and ACT, college aptitude tests, or on the GRE or GMAT graduate school exams.
Additional law schools will probably follow. Before the ABA loosened its standards, around 15 schools had successfully applied for special dispensation to admit some students without LSAT scores, and Barry Currier, managing director of accreditation and legal education at the ABA, expects these and other programs to take advantage of new rules allowing them to do so without informing the ABA.” [Emphasis mine]
Listening to law school dean proclaim that the LSAT is an expensive pain is priceless, in terms of the comedy gold provided. Sitting in a chair for roughly four hours and shelling out a few hundred bucks is NOTHING compared to three years and incurring $130K+ in NON-DISCHARGEABLE debt for a chance to enter a GLUTTED field.
Perhaps, “law professors” truly have the math aptitude of a toddler. On second thought, even 18 month kids can put the colored donuts/stacking rings in the right order. Overpaid, severely underworked academics complaining about the cost of the LSAT are the equivalent of hardened drug dealers stating that they want neighborhood children to wear bike helmets – in order to look out for their health and safety.
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/02/killing-the-lsat-is-a-bad-deal-for-students/
Other Coverage: Elie Mystal issued a scathing, epic ATL piece – on February 27, 2015. His article was labeled “Killing The LSAT Is A Bad Deal For Students.” He comes out swinging, i.e. telling the truth about this sham:
“Law schools are not dispensing with the LSAT to help you, they’re doing it to trick you. Instead of dropping $170 on a fee, plus whatever you spend on a prep course, to figure out if you might actually be good at law school, they want to strike down any barrier that might make you reconsider taking on $150,000 or more in debt. Oh, you’ll still have to take a massively important standardized test, it’s called the bar exam. But the school will have already gotten your money/debt obligations by the time you sit for it. The house wins the moment you step into the casino.
And those are just the surface problems. Those are just the obvious issues with law schools dropping the LSAT requirement. The news from the University of Iowa and SUNY Buffalo is actually even more nefariously designed to trick students when you start peeling back additional layers.”
Later on, Mystal nailed this situation down PERFECTLY. Behold:
“These law schools are trying to turn the purchase of legal education into an impulse buy. Don’t buy a prep course that costs a thousand bucks, instead spend $150,000 bucks on a lark. This is the law school version of the guy who tells you that he doesn’t use condoms because it “kills the mood.” The LSAT is a de-minimus prophylactic that, if used properly, can help protect students from harm. But Iowa and SUNY just want you to trust them.
IT’S A TRAP. Barry Currier, managing director of accreditation and legal education at the American Bar Association, basically said so:
Currier says doing away with the test might draw people to a career in law who would otherwise go to business or medical school.
Think about that statement for a second. WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT? That’s the problem with law schools right there. Instead of making law school reasonable, affordable, and valuable to people who want to be lawyers, deans are concerned with drawing — suckering — people into law who don’t know what they want to do with their lives.“I wanted to be a doctor, but I went to law school because I didn’t have to take a test.” That’s who they’re trying to sell law school to! That’s freaking evil.” [Emphasis mine]
Conclusion: In the final analysis, the cockroaches at the American Bar Association issued this decision, in order to buoy sagging applications and enrollment at member schools. Real professional schools seek to limit entry to the field BEFORE the pupils take on insane amounts of educational debt. However, we know conclusively, by now, that U.S. “law professors” and administrators DO NOT GIVE ONE DAMN about the students. It is all about the money, and the pigs want to extend this scam for as long as possible.