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&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;The American Bar Association is considering scrapping the LSAT as a requirement for law school admission, according to &lt;em&gt;the National Law Journal&lt;/em&gt;. &amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Is taking a standardized test the only way to determine if someone should be able to go to law school? Schools ought to decide how they want to admit students,&quot; said committee member David Yellen, Dean of Loyola University Chicago School of Law&lt;em&gt;. &lt;/em&gt;Yellen said&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;the role of the ABA was to ensure that law schools produce &quot;students who can enter the practice.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Two main concerns arise. One, noted in the article, is that dropping the LSAT requirement would make it easier for the rankings-obsessed schools to try to elevate their &lt;em&gt;US News&lt;/em&gt; position. The other, not mentioned, is that even with all the reasons why certain people should not be going to law school&amp;mdash;no jobs, a lifetime of punishing debt&amp;mdash;removing a barrier to entry will almost certainly cause the enrollment at lower-tier law schools to shoot up, as they dupe more and more people into mortgaging away their futures. &amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yellen, who thinks that &quot;most schools would keep it,&quot; knows that law schools will use that to their advantage to game the rankings. But he thinks worrying about that consequence should not be part of the ABA&#39;s decision-making process. That left &lt;em&gt;Above the Law&lt;/em&gt;&#39;s Elie Mystal a little perturbed:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;(I&amp;rsquo;m just going to pretend that I didn&amp;rsquo;t hear Dean Yellen blithely say that &lt;em&gt;U.S. News&lt;/em&gt; &amp;mdash; the thing that law students and law schools pay the most attention to &amp;mdash; wasn&amp;rsquo;t something the ABA should take into account. I&amp;rsquo;m just going to pretend the ABA didn&amp;rsquo;t just say that its response to the immense power a for-profit magazine has over &lt;em&gt;legal education in America&lt;/em&gt; is to IGNORE it.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Again, Dean Yellen either misses or is willfully ignorant of the most important point here. We&amp;rsquo;re not worried about the vast majority of law schools who will keep the LSAT. We&amp;rsquo;re worried about the few law school administrations that will gladly drop it. We&amp;rsquo;re worried about their motivations for dropping it. We&amp;rsquo;re worried about the students who will be admitted and charged full price simply because they can pay full price and not because they have any shot at being licensed attorneys. &lt;strong&gt;We&amp;rsquo;re worried about the schools that will have no incentive to attract the best possible students (however defined) and are instead free to go after the most gullible students.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;With a more phlegmatic response, Brian Leiter predicted two consequences, one positive and one negative:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;1) it would permit schools to &lt;strong&gt;focus more on the prior academic record of the applicant and other qualities that might be indicative of likely success in the legal profession&lt;/strong&gt;, both of which would be preferable to emphasizing&amp;nbsp;ability to take a standardized test (especially one that rewards preparation more than ability); and (2) given the continued existence of &lt;em&gt;U.S. News&lt;/em&gt; and its limitless appetite for fake quantitative precision, the rankings would probably just increase the weight of median GPA, which would then undercut the possible beneficial effects in (1), since &lt;strong&gt;schools would then focus on GPA without regard for the difficulty of the&amp;nbsp;course of study.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;The article notes that the committee&#39;s talk about the LSAT requirement is just part of a larger conversation taking place that has to do with changing the way law schools are evaluated. Student-learning outcomes, for instance. How can you evaluate schools without relying so much on factors like the size of the law library or faculty-to-student ratios or bar-passage rates? The committee&#39;s proposal would offer schools more room to define their own educational goals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If losing the LSAT is part of a larger effort to reform the way law schools are evaluated, which would then affect the types of students to admit and to graduate, I applaud that. (Especially because the country seems to be heading in the direction of more tests and more standardization.) But I agree with those who believe the LSAT, unfortunately, too entrenched, too central a part of the machinery at this point to just yank out without a well-thought-out alternative in place.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[National Law Journal]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[Brian Leiter]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[Above the Law]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Related: A Little Less Standardized, A Little More Balanced: Keep The LSAT but Emphasize it Less&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;

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No More LSAT?

The American Bar Association is considering scrapping the LSAT as a requirement for law school admission, according to the National Law Journal. "Is taking a standardized test the only way to determine if someone should be able to go to law school?

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