LSAT gone for certain Iowa law school applicants

Iowa's law schools will allow certain undergraduate students to apply for the 2015 first-year class without taking the LSAT, the three-hour admissions test and first hurdle for aspiring lawyers.

The law schools at Drake University and the University of Iowa will consider students who haven't taken the test if they meet strict requirements set by the American Bar Association, which accredits the country's 205 law schools. The change comes as law schools nationwide face an application crisis; between 2010 and 2014, schools saw application numbers plummet by 41.4 percent, according to the nonprofit Law School Admissions Council.

Despite national conversations on the drop, the goal of the admission change is not to significantly boost numbers, said Eric Andersen, senior associate dean at Iowa's law school. Andersen believes the change will get some of the highest-performing of the university's 22,354 undergraduate students who may not have considered a law degree before to do so, through what will be called the Kinnick Law Scholars program that eliminates the burden of prepping for the LSAT and paying its flat $170 fee.

"Our thought is not that this is likely to increase our total applications … but that it may get us some people who might be a good fit for us," he said. "It looks to us like a good way to open the door to highly-qualified applicants."

Application numbers actually increased at Iowa between the 2013 and 2014 school years, from 792 to 1,483. But the number of total students has dropped to 413, down 24 percent from 2011, according to ABA data. At Drake's law school, applications have decreased by 59 percent from a 2009 high of 1,206.

To apply to Drake or Iowa's law school without taking the LSAT, an applicant must have already done undergraduate or graduate work at the respective university. An applicant has to have scored in the 85th percentile on an ACT, SAT or graduate school entrance exam, as well as been in the top 10 percent of their undergraduate class or achieved a 3.5 grade point average over six college semesters.

Law schools can only allow up to 10 percent of their first-year class to be enrolled without taking the LSAT, and simply meeting the requirements does not mean automatic acceptance to law school, Andersen said.

As early as 2011, some law schools were allowed to admit high-performing students who didn't take an LSAT as an ABA committee studied changing the accreditation rule on admissions standards. The rule was made final in June, according to the ABA journal.

Allowing some students to enter law school without taking the test could prove an effective way to keep Iowa and Drake undergrads in the state to practice law, said Iowa Bar Association President Joe Feller. Feller said he supports the change, noting that the option will only be available to a small number of already-proven students.

"If they have high academic performance now, they're probably going to be a high academic performer in law school," he said. "What we're talking about here is just a small group, a very narrow initiative."

Administered four times a year, the LSAT tests potential law students on logic, analytical reasoning and reading comprehension. Law schools use LSAT scores, along with factors like GPA, to project an applicant's potential for success as a first-year law student.

At Iowa's law school, 43 undergraduate students were admitted to the law school for the 2014-15 first-year class, Andersen said. Of those students, 27 chose to go to the law school.

Des Moines lawyer Michael Currie, who graduated from Iowa as an undergrad in 2010 before going on to the university's law school, said he doesn't think the LSAT is spot-on predictor of success. Still, Currie doesn't like the idea of lessening admissions standards. It also seems unlikely that many potential law students would opt out of taking the LSAT because most applicants apply to more than one school, he said.

"To me, it almost seems to cheapen admittance into the University of Iowa (law school). ... To think that 10 percent of people can get in just by doing well in undergrad is a little concerning."