Heil Myself: The Legal Theater Works on Its New Musical -- Auf Wiedersehen LSAT, Guten Tag Legal Skills

"The Law School Admissions Test is a rite of passage for aspiring lawyers, but could go from mandatory to voluntary under proposed changes to the American Bar Association's law school accreditation standards" reports NLJ's Karen Sloan in ABA panel considering making the LSAT optional. I do prefer the New York Lawyer's title for the virtually identical article by Sloan, Hasta la Vista, LSAT? Hey, ALM knows how to re-purpose the same content it has readily available just like the Big Boys!

From the NLJ article with the less catchy title:

The committee reviewing the standards is leaning toward dropping the rule that law schools require J.D. applicants to take a "valid and reliable admission test," chairman Donald Polden, dean of Santa Clara University School of Law, said on Wednesday.

"A substantial portion of the committee believes that provision should be repealed," said Polden, noting that about 10 law schools already have waivers from the ABA allowing them to admit some students who haven't taken the LSAT.

Following the new rhetoric, Loyola University (Chicago) Law Dean David Yellen, who is a member of the ABA's the standards review committee,  said "I think an accrediting body ought to ensure that law schools are producing students who can enter the practice." This is the new draft script inspired in part by AALS's recent annual meeting. See the Chronicle's Law Schools Are Urged to Focus More on Practical Skills and Less on Research.

So rhetorically speaking, most of the 21-188, if not the 11-188, ranked law schools are getting on the same page for script-reading purposes. Well, perhaps we should acknowledge that many residents in the bottom 50% of US News ranked law schools have been focusing on producing students who are prepared to practice their chosen profession as institutional missions. So the aspiring actors trying to catch up by rehearsing the new script are more likely to be working in law schools ranked between 11 or 21 to 100. They are the schools full of the typical tenued-tenure-track law profs driven by status envy (I am not referring to the typically treated as second-class citizens who make up the rank-and-file of clinical and LRW members of the legal academy.)

All this is kind of like taking the play out on the road to see if any of the theater troupes have a chance for an Off Broadway venue. Whether many of the 21 11-100 ranked law schools actually have the talent in their entrenched cast of players to make it to Off Broadway remains to be seen. The legal academy knows how to talk the talk; even some who made careers of following the old "scholarship, scholarship, scholarship" script have changed their tune. You know who they are. They've been "below the title" performers in faculty meetings, ones championing the cause for smaller teaching loads, and encouraging the hiring of more profs to get to the promised land of an under 10:1 faculty-student ratio, half that required by the ABA, to free up more time for "scholarship, scholarship, scholarship" few read and fewer cite. But can they walk the walk? Can they sing and dance? This is going to be a musical where many in the legal academy can't hold a note, can't execute any group choreography for long, if they don't have a center stage solo performance.

Slone reports that "[t]he {ABA standards review] committee is still in the relatively early stages of discussing the LSAT. It is closer to finalizing its recommendations in several other areas, including so-called 'student learning outcomes.'" So-called indeed. Wait for a playbill in your local amateur theater for an updated version of "Heil Myself." Yes, inspired by the widely popular law prof Hitler parody videos. [JH]