The ABA and the LSAT: How Low is Too Low?

UPDATED November 18, 2017

Although the ABA has been careful not to direct a minimum cutoff LSAT score for law schools to admit individual applicants, if one looks at the law schools that have been found out of compliance with Standard 501 over the last two years, a clear pattern emerges of what the ABA considers acceptable LSAT numbers for the class as a whole.

Below is a list of schools that the ABA has taken action against for violating Standard 501 and the LSAT profiles of their students at their lowest point:

Ave Maria (remedial action)  2014: 148-143-139

Arizona Summit  (probation) 2015 and 2016: 148-143-140

Appalachian (out of compliance letter) 2014:  148-144-141

Charlotte (probation) 2014: 146-142-138

Florida Coastal (out of compliance letter) 2014: 147-143-140

Texas Southern (censured) 2015: 146-143-141

Thomas Cooley  (out of compliance letter) 2015 and 2016: 147-141-138

Thomas Jefferson (probation) 2016 147-143-141

Valparaiso (censured) 2013 148-143-141

One other data point worth considering:  the ABA for a brief time refused to give provisional accreditation status to UNT in part because of concerns over compliance with Standard 501.  The LSAT profile of their 2014 entering class was 151/147/143. In 2015, when the site team visited, it dropped to 150/146/143.  So these LSATs seem right on the margin of what the ABA considers acceptable.     

There is one other school that received a letter of noncompliance with Standard 501 recently and that was John Marshall Law School (Atlanta).  Frankly, this is a bit of a head-scratcher for me.  John Marshall's LSAT numbers aren't anything special, but they are nowhere as bad as the schools noted above.  In 2015 their LSAT profile was 150-147-145 and in 2016 149-148-145. This is four points higher at the 25th percentile than any of the other schools that have been found out of compliance, a significant difference.  So perhaps the ABA is trying to ratchet up its standards, which I would fully support.  But I predict that after John Marshall gets an opportunity to respond to the ABA letter, they will ultimately not be found out of compliance with Standard 501.

To provide some context, here are some LSAT scores with the corresponding percentiles*:

151   48%

150  44%

149  40%

148  37%

147  33%

146  30%

145  27%

144  24%

143  21%

142  18%

141  16% 

140  14%

139  12%

138  10%

137  8.5%

Here is another way of thinking about LSAT scores, based on the risk of LSAT takers failing out of school or flunking the bar exam:

David Frakt’s LSAT Score Risk Bands 

156-180           Minimal Risk

153-155           Low Risk

150-152           Modest Risk

147-149           High Risk

145-146           Very High Risk

120-144           Extreme Risk

I believe that even "opportunity schools" should admit very few students from the very high risk category, and only if they have better than average college grades, and even fewer from the extreme risk category, and only with much better than average grades.  Although students with LSATs in this range occasionally succeed, when a law school enrolls a significant percentage of such students, it is almost certain to have very high attrition rates, and very low bar passage rates.  Admitting too many very high and extreme risk students is also likely to overwhelm the academic support staff, and forces the faculty to dumb down their classes, which hurts the stronger students.  A reasonable 75/50/25 for an opportunity school would be 151/149/147 (and preferably higher in California).  Keep in mind that this still means that up to 24% of the students will be below 147 and therefore in the very high or extreme risk bands.  150/148/146 would be pushing the envelope.  Anything below that is a recipe for disaster.

Right now, any school with a current or recent LSAT profile at or below 149-145-142, especially if coupled with poor recent bar results, should expect a letter from the ABA, and start taking voluntary steps to raise their admission standards.  Based on this, my pick for the school most likely to hear from the ABA soon:

Southern - 2016 LSATs 146-143-141  GPA 3.16/2.86/2.52. Southern has had bar pass rates in the 50s for the past few years. 

Other potential candidates for ABA concern:

NC Central - 2016 LSATs 149-144-141 

Charleston - 2016 LSATs 149-145-141

Both of these schools have also struggled on recent bar exams.  When the 2017 Standard 509 Reports come out in a few weeks, I will update this list.

 

 

* LSAT conversion percentiles may vary a bit, usually less than one percentage point, from test to test.

 

 

 

Comments

[twbb]

I think sometimes we focus too much on the quantitative side and not enough on the qualitative side. Getting under 150 means you almost certainly got most of the questions wrong. Can anyone look at the LSAT questions themselves and legitimately argue that someone who gets basic, high school-level reading comprehension.

My proposal is that if a law school wants to admit someone with sub-150 LSAT scores, they should be required to:

(a) Place tuition funds into an escrow account that will only be released on bar passage;
(b) Have to approve the student's admission through a formal committee process, with written minutes.
(c) Be given, and forced to review, a copy of the LSAT the student took with their answers.

That way not only do they have skin in the game, but the ABA accreditation committee will have something to interrogate admissions officials with. "So as you can see here, this student got this question wrong, despite the fact that it probably could be successfully answered by a junior high school student. Didn't this cause concern for you?"

Of course, step (a) above would probably obviate the need for the remaining steps.

[twbb]

Oops, didn't finish the second sentence in the first paragraph (yes, ironic I know, considering my argument).

Can anyone look at the LSAT questions themselves and legitimately argue that someone who gets basic, high school-level reading comprehension wrong has the ability to function as a lawyer?

[David Frakt]

twbb -

Thank you for raising this point. I think a lot of people involved in the admissions process, including law professors and law Deans, are willfully ignorant about the kind of people they are admitting. A student graduating with a 2.6 from an undistinguished college today is often barely literate. And a student with a 144 or lower LSAT is struggling to operate at a very basic level of reading comprehension and analytical reasoning, and often can't make simple logical connections. Virtually all law professors went to elite law schools, or excelled at schools just below the elite level. It is hard for people like that to understand how hard law school is, and how daunting a bar exam will be, for people of average (or lower) intellectual capabilities. The idea that anyone can be a lawyer if they just work hard at it is a fantasy, and also demeans the profession as a whole.

[anon]

David

Indeed, this is true. And, in large first-year classes, where a few of the students who "get it" raise their hand for every question, the 50% of a student body at high or extreme risk, according to your scale, is simply lost and even more intimidated. THis often results in the professors at the bottom feeders "dumbing down" the material to the point of basically just teaching rules and telling the students what will be on the exam. THis, in turn, leads to even greater failure on the bar exam, which leads to greater attrition and more dumbing down.

No one wants to admit it, but it is a fact that bottom feeders, more and more, are simply larding up on bar exam coaches, AND THEY STILL CAN'T GET RESULTS. THis is because the vast majority of the professors are not able to teach, and the majority of their students aren't able to learn.

Whoever thinks that earning a JD at Harvard means you know how to teach law, especially if you've done nothing in your life that even resembles a real law practice (or real work o any kind), is as arrogant and obtuse as a post.

What a mess.

That is the reason it is so important to shutter the bottom feeders. They aren't giving the folks they fleece an "opportunity" - they are preying on hope and unlimited federal loans to rip off every single class they admit: and they know it.

[Anon]

The article claims that students with a 137 are in the bottom 8.5 percentile. The LSAT is graded 120-180, which offers a 60-point range. That means there is a 17-point range (between 120 and 137) for classifying test takers in the bottom 8.5? Why is that? Such granularity at the very bottom of the scale seems wholly unnecessary. Why should approximately 1/3 of the possible point scale be used to classify only the bottom 8.5 percent of test takers? Why not have a score of 126 correlate to the 8.5 percentile? Such a recalibration would leave a wider range of scoring options available to distinguish among better performing test takers with a real chance of getting into law school. For that matter, do the scores matter at all - are the percentiles the only relevant piece of LSAT info?

[David Frakt]

Anon - I don't know why the LSAT uses the 120 to 180 scale, but I do know the scoring distribution is a classic bell curve with very flat ends. So yes, the bottom 17 scores are for the bottom 8%. It is similar at the top. 165 is 92% and 173 and up are all for the top 1%. The one thing that I really don't understand about LSAT scores is that 150 is neither the average nor the median score. Average is between 151 and 152. And there is a big drop off below that. So people see a 149 and they think the person is basically average, but actually they are at the 40th percentile, which is already getting into a high risk category. So yes, the percentiles are far more important than the raw score.