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October 6, 2005
Law School Admissions: Are Faculty Just Choosing Themselves?
Peter Friedman, of Case Western Reserve's law school, agrees with Gladwell, and thinks that law faculties cling to the LSAT for self-referential reasons:
"Law schools ... are run by their faculty, and the principal qualification to be a law professor is that you were a top law student. So a law faculty is like any other group that succeeds within a given system--they tend to believe the system that picked them out is a well-functioning meritocracy. It recognized their merit, didn't it?"
There is much to what Peter says. I do think, though, that Peter might overstate the extent to which the existing admissions systems at law schools today reflect conscious (or even subconscious) faculty preferences. It is technically true that "law schools are run by their faculty," but in my experience on the faculty at a couple of law schools, I have the impression that admissions tends to run as a sort of semi-autonomous unit within the school rather than as an actively faculty-designed and faculty-managed enterprise.
The result is that a school's current admissions system is far likelier to reflect an antiquated set of judgments modified by years of slight bureaucratic modifications and kept in place by the considerable forces of academic inertia, than it is to reflect a snapshot of what the faculty might currently prefer.
We might well be better served by an admissions model that emphasized aptitude for the skills top lawyers must possess, rather than the skills top law students must possess. Peter cites a recent study that suggests such an admissions model might be possible. But until law faculties are smacked in the face with evidence that the current system is truly broken, there will be little support for fixing it.
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Posted by Eric at October 6, 2005 10:13 AM
Comments
Eric,
Do you have any thoughts on what contitutes "aptitude for the skills top lawyers must possess"?
Barry
Posted by: Barry Winston at October 6, 2005 10:48 AM
I have not met a law professor who has not impressed me. If you want to find the most intelligent, insightful members of society, round up the law professors. Often their intellect is only matched by their passion for the law and for justice.
I seriously doubt changing the admissions requirements would have kept these individuals from realizing their destinies.
Posted by: David Marshall at October 6, 2005 5:10 PM
Aside from professors, I've been amazed at how little one's law school background factors into the quality of a specific attorney. Really, no one cares and to mention one's path means . . . weakness.
Posted by: Submitted? Motion denied at October 7, 2005 12:54 AM
I really think that to be a good student means a lot. And of course at school you have to are to obtain academic knowledge of the subject that can often be quite far from what we have in practice. that's why there exsist internship institute.
Posted by: School Teacher at November 23, 2005 3:30 PM