Another Standardized Test Falls? America's Law Schools Could Stop Using the LSA...

Posted by EditorDavid

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  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 07, 2022 @04:44PM (#62512414)

  enjoy your subjectively qualified doctor soon

  • 2 hidden comments

  • Re:

    100% Bullshit. It is impossible for a test to be "racially biased". You either know something or you don't.

    Great. Let's admit more stupid, unqualified people. What could possibly go wrong.

    Admitting more stupid, unqualified people will mean fewer people able to pass the bar exam, which will result in more pressure to eliminate the bar exam or make it easier to pass. And the downward spiral into a more stupid society continues.
    
    Right now, nobody cares because it's just lawyers and everyone hates lawyer

    • Re: No Standard is the Best Standard in Utopia

      Entitlement taken to the extreme.

      I worked my ass off to get somewhere without college. I just had to pick a profession without stupid bar exams or guilds holding back admission.

      I wasn't able to just complain my way past. I had to figure out how to make something of myself despite coming from less-than-ideal home situations.

      I totally agree with the OP. This is watering down of society.

      • Re:

        And I worked my ass off to get somewhere *with* college. Now I hear they don't even *grade* some classes because it "disrupts the learning experience." I can't think a degree you get under those conditions is going to be worth much. And if you are talented, there's no proof you are any different than the useless ones from those schools.

    • Oddly performance reviews are becoming metric base

      Management performance reviews based on subjective interviews tend to favor people the manager "speaks the same language" with and so many companies are going more and more ti metric based hires and performance reviews to avoid that "he's just like Bob" syndrome where people keep hiring people like themselves.
      Doing away with a metric that is correlated to college success is stupid. If you want diversity you need to add more types of tests not remove standard tests. Otherwise the diversity you get isn't go

    • Re: No Standard is the Best Standard in Utopia

      Sounds like idiotcracy
  • • 2 hidden comments

  • Standardized does not mean "objective."

    It just means you're asking everyone the same questions based on your subjective criteria.
    
    Why should one question be asked and not another? Why should that question be phrased this way instead of that? Simple: Because your subjective opinion thinks it should.
    
    That's fine as far as it goes, but there's no reason to think that question is better asked on an exam than in an interview or a project argument.
    
    Moreover, the subject is admissions, not graduation or professional certification.
• Will that be the end of all competitive sports or online gaming? I can already see a future where competitions are outlawed because losers may be offended.
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  • Will that be the end of all competitive sports or online gaming? I can already see a future where competitions are outlawed because losers may be offended.

    I was thinking about the whole equity thing, and realized that chess masters have no blacks and no women [chess.com].

    Where is the diversity?

    We need to change this. The fact that people of color and women are underrepresented among chess masters worldwide is a clear sign of both sexism and racism, there can be no other explanation.

    We could split chess tournaments into men's and women's leagues, as with (some) other sports. That would solve the sexism problem, but not the racism.

    I think the best solution is to have diversity quotas among chess clubs, and let the individual clubs figure out how to achieve that. We already do this with corporations and college admissions, the disparity among chess masters is so stark that doing this is a no-brainer.

    Rather than rank chess masters based on their raw scores, perhaps a more nuanced system could be implemented, one that takes into account the player's upbringing and social status. Something like they do at top-end universities today.

    Let's all come together to help bring this archaic system of chess rankings into the 21st century!

    • Re: Equity in chess masters

      There is no difference between men and women, at least for swimming. So chess is perfectly non-sexist because sex doesnâ(TM)t exist.

      • Re:

        I hope you were being sarcastic and it went woosh over my head.

        • Re:

          Probably a reference to the current furor over transwomen winning US college swimming events.

      • Re:

        It seems that women can hold their own against men in long distance swimming (e.g. Channel Crossing, although the current world record holder is a man.)

    • Re:

      The common equalizer in chess is to spot a few pieces. Perhaps chess clubs could create lists of how many pieces to spot for each category of sex, gender, ethnicity, class, social status, upbringing, style and moxie.

    • NFL and Grammy Quotas

      Next the NFL will have to reserve a certain number of first round draft picks for South Asians who are underrepresented minorities in sports. To make sure the existing establishment doesnt keep recruiting from the traditional races all college football scores and statistics will be abolished. College games will be on a purely pass fail basis.
      
      To combat the underrepresentation of East Asians in Grammy awards a cap will be set on how many singers from a single race can be nominated for an award.

    • Re:

      That is hardly a secret. First rule of chess: white always moves first.

• • Social studies

    From the relevant paper:

    In the social sciences, something that explains 13% of the variation is huge.

    Before we dump LSAT testing, how about we first identify a better selection criteria?

    I might suggest first testing the candidate for conscientiousness [wikipedia.org], followed by fluid intelligence [wikipedia.org], and then Creativity [wikipedia.org].

    All of these are well-established in the literature, and easily measured using non-biased tests. Such as the Raven's progressive matrices [wikipedia.org] test for intelligence, which is about as non-biased as one can get.

    • Re:

      It's interesting and ironic that the relatively low correlation of one standardized test, the LSAT, to another, the bar exam, is used as support for the lack of usefulness/fairness/etc. of the former but not the latter.

• • Re:

    I have a brother that is 4 years older than me. He graduated college the same year I graduated high school. After college my brother wanted to go to law school. He thought it would be a good idea to get some practice LSAT tests. He and I both took one cold with no study, I did much better than him. Then he studied for the test for a while and ended up doing well. Other than the fact that he was willing to put in the work, I'm not sure what the score really says.

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    • Re:

      How can you not deduce anything from the score? I can think of a lot of stuff. LSAT is a combination of "reading comprehension, analytical reasoning, or logical reasoning". Maybe some of those things don't come to him naturally, or he didn't retain as much as you did while he went through school.

      • Re:

        FWIW, my brother was in GATE as a kid, honors in high school, National Merit on the SAT, went to a university that you've heard of and graduated with a BA in English, before going to law school. Reading comprehension and reasoning were not shortcomings of his.

    • Re:

      That is what these scores always mean!
      Standardized tests don't measure "intelligence" or "professional skills". But they do measure the "willing to put in the work" factor. Obviously that's far from the only consideration but it is important.

    • Re:

      What does that anecdote tell you? Just that everyone should do a few practise tests.

      This is the same for all aptitude tests, including IQ: practice with the format and question types helps a bit.
      You could try to prevent anyone from preparing, but it is so much easier to have everyone do some practise.
      If the aptitude test is well written, students will soon hit diminishing returns.

    • Re:

      It says you have a basic level of literacy and comprehension. This indicates you were willing to put in some work at some point in your life.

      Do you think it should say something else?

  • Grades are made up

    Test scores are standardized. If grades dont track test scores it means the teacher is just pulling the grades out of her posterior. The worst thing to base admissions on is grades and we figured that out decades ago which is why we have standardized tests. Whites just dont like that Asian kids outperform them when the scales are balanced so they are using Blacks as Latinos to unbaance the scale and make admissions once again a factor of how rich and well connected your daddy is rather than how smart you ar

• Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 07, 2022 @05:03PM (#62512480)

  I've put a kid through law school. It is no picnic and passing the BAR exam afterward is even more grueling than the LSAT. This corporate greed has got to stop. We had a SJW dean of admissions at the medical school I work at and during her tenure she relaxed the school's requirement for MCAT (and as a matter of fact went on the record, saying that we didn't have a minimum requirement for MCAT), and we saw the results in the medical school 3 years after she ruined the students (1 year during the application process and 2 years in the school). She was almost fired, but left on her own accord. The sad thing, we have a whole bunch of students who now owe GOBS and gobs of money and will never be able to pay it back, because there's little chance they'll actually match for residency anywhere. Shame on schools (which are practically corporations) for leading students on.

  • Re:

    From the summary: "America's law schools 'would be given a green light to end admission test requirements . . . under a recommendation from a key committee of the American Bar Association . ..'" that is scheduled for review in a public meeting this month". Read that again: The largest group of professional lawyers is recommending that prospective law students do not need this test. This is not a maverick lone "dean of admissions".
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    • Re:

      The Bar Association exists for the same reason the AMA exists: To make the members money. Usually, this is by making it hard for new members to qualify.
      
      Reducing the entrance requirements makes it easier to get into law school. Keeping the bar exam makes it the same degree of difficulty to enter the profession. The result is more students spending time and money when they shouldn't since they won't make it out the other end.
      
      Who does it help if lowering the entrance requirements also increases the d

      • Re:

        How about this? Require everyone to take the LSAT. Make sure they see their scores both in raw form and how they compare to their peers. Make sure anyone granting a student loan to them also see the scores. Like creditworthiness, loan based on the projected ability to pass the bar exam at the end.

• We really could use less competent lawyers. And no I am not being sarcastic.

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• Subject tests for advanced study are different from general college entrance exams. There are specific and objective knowledge to assess. I looked at the LSAT a few years ago just for fun and it did not seem a difficult test for a well rounded college graduate.

  So a hard science or math, or reading philosophy, tends to maximize the LSAT score. How this degree translates to bar passing rate there does not seem to data. It seems below a 150 there is less than a fifty percent passing rate for the br, which wo

• This will not mean more will graduate, just there will be more paying for a degree they are not good at.

  • Re:

    Most law schools I know have very stringent admissions requirements otherwise and state schools have limited spots for law students. I do not see that changing if the LSAT requirement is removed.

• • Re:

    Yep. This exactly. Soft criteria are open to manipulation in favor of "in groups."
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  • Re:

    Wow. Someone doesn't like you to have modded your insightful comment down to -1.
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• When people become fucked by student debt and no meaningful career opportunities, they are captive voters for life. Facilitating that situation is beneficial.

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  • • Re:

      Well, sure. As Will Rogers said, "Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans."

    • Re:

      The Democrats in power are the Biden-Clinton wing of the Democratic party. Their power base are the unions and white middle class boomer men. These are the same folks who voted for Trump because he was anti immigration. They have no love lost for minorities. They do not want a fair system. They want the system of the 50s when White Men had a privileged position and everyone else worked their asses off. 50s housewives would take meth so that they could do everything epected of them without all the machines
• The demographic that had power in politics, power by wealth were doing well in LSAT and the powerless ones did poorly, LSAT, SAT, ACT were declared "merit", and all admission polices used them a lot. Then came these pesky Asian Americans. These guys were beating the Old Guard in their own game. Now suddenly competitive examns are out!

  Sweet irony here. Between 1970s and the mid 1990s the same Old Guard increased H1B quota and imported highly skilled people from India and China at bargain bottom prices. They worked like dogs and kept the wages low. By Y2K the immigration mix changed. Really highly skilled Asians refused to immigrate, their prospects back were much better. The fresh off the boat Indian skill level is abysmal of late.

  But the original gang that came through the competitive examinations several orders of magnitude tougher than these SAT/ACT/LSAT/GMAT. That gang's children are knocking at the doors of the universities. These are the kids that sweep spelling bee, geography bee, high school quiz and every damn thing that Old Guard touted as a sign of merit.

  When Democracy, Constitution and Rule of Law kept the power in the hands of Old Guard, these were the mantra they were chanting day in day out. The moment their grip on power seems to be shaky, they are willing to sacrifice Democracy itself. Changing the rules of the game to keep the power is the standard operating procedures for them.

  They will pretend they are doing this to accommodate the "traditionally disadvantaged minorities". Don't be fooled it is being to done to keep the power in the hands of current Kings of the Hill.

  • Divide and Rule

    Making Asians and Africans fight each other so that Europeans can rule has a long tradition. THe British empire would send Indian troops to African rebellions and African troops to Indian Rebellions.

    • Re:

      Where did you "learn" that Bullshit?

• Almost all law jobs fall into one of 4 categories

  1) Corporate Lawyers that get rich (aka 1%) from very long hours, after years of long hours working for a firm and/or good connections to litigious clients. But many if not most burn out before they hit the big money. Not everyone can work 20 years doing 70+ hours a week.

  2) Prosecutors and Legal Aid who hope for a political career or want to do good but get paid crap. Middle class salary unless they come from money.

  3) Lawyers in private practice/in house counsel that at best dislike their clients (whether they are criminal defense, corporate, or divorce whatever), who make an Upper Class but never make that sweet sweet 1%er salary.

  4) Lawyers that quit practicing law.

  The LSAT is a crappy prediction of success as a lawyer, or even passing the bar. But it is a GOOD prediction of whether you will graduate law school. Guess which prediction the law schools care about...

  • Good points. I can't add to them, so I'll just leave these other points:

    Q: What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 70?
                    A: Your honor.
    Q: What do you call a lawyer gone bad?
                    A: Senator.
    Q: How does an attorney sleep?
                    A: First he lies on one side and then on the other.
    Q: What's wrong with lawyer jokes?
                    A: Lawyers don't think they're funny and other people don't think they're jokes.
    Q: How many lawyer jokes are there?
                    A: Only three. The rest are true stories.

    And remember the motto, first-years: Just because you’re guilty doesn’t mean you ARE guilty!

  • Re:

    "Success" of a lawyer is pretty nebulous concept (salary? fame?), so it is hard to say.
    But do you have a citation to support the second part of the claim? LSAT may not predict anything about one's intelligence or skills as a lawyer, but it does correlate with capacity to prepare for standardized tests. Therefore I expect it to be a decent predictor of passing the bar.

    From: https://abovethelaw.com/2016/0... [abovethelaw.com]

• legal profession isn't as glamorous or lucrative as people imagine-- When you see a commercial say: "you will speak to a real lawyer". I means there is a law school grad with a JD and passed the bar, sitting at a small counter watching a phone, praying it will ring. They are paid about $60k to try and build up a clientele. You don't get that glamour until you have gotten a bunch of rich guys to bring you their problems. Very high burn out rate. Plenty of trouble paying back loans.

• If law schools don't use LSAT then obviously they will use alternative criteria. What comes to mind:

  GPA. So the thing to do is to drop the academically challenging courses (because you might only get a B or worse) and take the easy ones.

  Letters of recommendation. How many members of the elite (doctors and other professionals...) do you think lower income minority students know--compared to the rich kid whose neighborhood is filled with them?

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• Why bother with an inconvenient, expensive test that tries to measure a candidate's knowledge? All they really need to know is the candidate's skin color and current gender.

• Are less motivated in general but we still need lawyers soâ¦
• LSAT etc. get accused of bias when certain groups do worse than others. This is not bias; it is evidence that some groupts have a bunch of folks who don't cut the mustard very well. Complaining by them that measurement means bias and rejecting the tests is like (as WFBuckleyJr put it) baloney rejecting the grinder. Racism is where people are judged by their color/race. Sense is where they are judged by their virtue and talent. Giving in to left wing fashion and sweeping problems of the less competent unde

• Want to help "underprivileged"? Do it right.

  Don't get them saddled with a useless degree and lifetime of student debts. Even if they graduate, and many will not, they will be unable to find a job.

  What is next? Will you drop BAR exams? Will the reputable firms hire those people with relaxed or removed BAR requirements?

  Think again. The reason these students cannot keep up starts way back, in primary school, or even pre-school. If by 5th grade, you could not teach them proper reading and math skills, they will

• The tests do the job that they are designed to do. They just don't given an outcome that modern leftists want, so they decided to remove the test, instead of asking harder questions (cough, culture) about why various groups underperform. But, that would be actual work, so we can't have that, can we?

  • Re:

    They don't given [sic] any outcome. This doesn't need to be political (despite your whining). If you put a test as an entry requirement then people will teach to the test. Standardised testing is a fucking terrible way of teaching basically anything.

    There's a reason many professional put weight on practical experience, projects or other forms of critical thinking.

    I honestly don't understand why Americans are so infatuated with testing.

• There's a reason doctorates are awarded through projects and thesis defense rather than exams: The former are actual forays into the fields they examine. A standardized admissions test, on the other hand, mostly wastes students' time chasing diminishing returns on trivia.
  
  You can argue that it measures the ability to think quickly, but that's a reason to admit someone into a game show, not a graduate program.