Predicting Lawyer Effectiveness: Broadening the Basis for Law School Admissions Decisions

Law school admission decisions are heavily influenced by a student’s undergraduate grade point average (UGPA) and Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score. These measures, although predictive of first-year law school grades, make no effort to predict professional competence and, for the most part, they do not. These measures also create adverse impact on applicants from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. This article describes the rationale for and process by which we explored new tests to predict lawyer effectiveness rather than law school grades and reports results of a multiyear empirical study involving over 3,000 graduates from Berkeley Law School and Hastings College of the Law. Tests measuring personality constructs, interests, values, and judgment predicted lawyering competency but had little or no adverse impact on underrepresented minority applicants. Combined with the LSAT and UGPA, these broader tests could assess law applicants on the basis both of projected professional effectiveness and academic indicators

Admission to Law School: New Measures

Standardized tests have been increasingly controversial over recent years in high-stakes admission decisions. Their role in operationalizing definitions of merit and qualification is especially contested, but in law schools this challenge has become particularly intense. Law schools have relied on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and an INDEX (which includes grade point average [GPA]) since the 1940s. The LSAT measures analytic and logical reasoning and reading. Research has focused on the validity of the LSAT as a predictor of 1st-year GPA in law school, with almost no research on predicting lawyering effectiveness. This article examines the comparative potential between the LSAT versus noncognitive (e.g., personality, situational judgment, and biographical information) predictors of lawyering effectiveness. Theoretical links between 26 lawyering effectiveness factors and potential predictors are discussed and evaluated. Implications for broadening the criterion space, diversity in admissions, and the practice of law are discussed

Measuring Merit: The Shultz-Zedeck Research on Law School Admissions

Law schools profess a commitment to racial diversity both for the educational benefits diversity confers and for its contribution to the profession. But they admit students based on standards that, while not discriminatory in a legal sense, undeniably favor white applicants. Today the question of who belongs in any given law school, or law school at all, turns almost exclusively on an applicant’s score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). Law schools are not blind to the racial impact that accompanies this narrow measure of merit. But rather than taking a hard look at whether legal educators have adequately, or accurately, identified what qualities best qualify students for law school, the admissions process largely relies on affirmative action to ameliorate the current process\u27s negative effects. That approach is imperfect for a whole host of reasons, not least of which is that affirmative action’s legal use in higher education may be about to end. Should race-conscious admissions practices be banned, every law school that truly values diversity will have to explore race-neutral means of achieving it. The good news is that research conducted by Marjorie Shultz and Sheldon Zedeck suggests that this is possible - that qualities relevant to effective lawyering can be defined and predicted without recreating the LSAT\u27s disparate impact. This essay describes that research and the promise that it holds for improved, race-neutral, admissions processes