LSAT dropping in popularity for the second year in a row?
Certification: Test Prep LSAT - Law School Admission Test
The LSAT, or Law School Admission Test, is the half-day standardized exam you need to take in order to get into Law School, if you live in Canada, the United States or Australia, or some other countries. If you want to get into Law School, you know of it, you fear it, and… you may not take it after all?
Statistics
The number of people taking this test has been in decline since its peak in 2010, when it stood at a staggering 171,514. The number of examinees has always fluctuated along the years, but never so severely. The last period of decline was back between 1991 and 1998, when the exam structure and question type changed. The number of examinees fluctuated between 145,567 and 103,991. (Source) However, that one was understandable, since the exam had just changed so radically, and most importantly, the annual change was usually small, usually under 6% with the exception of two years in which it reached 10 and 8% respectively. These days the percentage is rarely reaching lower than 9%, with a total range from -6.2% to -16.2%. Last year there were only 105,532 examinees, and at this rate, this year the number will barely scrape 100,000.
Is the exam at fault?
To be fair, the exam is hard. Examinees have to go through 6 sections, each around 35 minutes each, 4 of which are scored, 2 of which aren’t. There are two logical reasoning sections, each around 24-26 questions each, 1 reading comprehension section (26-28 questions), and 1 analytical reasoning, or “Logical-games” section (22-24 questions). Other than that there are two unscored sections, one of which is a way for the examiners to test out new questions for future examinees, while the other one is a writing section that is provided in scanned copy to the university or college you are applying to. Most colleges will look at your LSAT scores in order to judge if they should accept you, but they rarely regard the written sample as more than a bonus: between the handwriting and the scan quality, few colleges find much worth in it. Each type of section is clearly explained on the LSAT main page, so I will not bother to explain them here, however I will take an examples to test out their difficulty.
So here is an analytical reasoning question. The passage reads such: ”A corporation budget committee must cut downjust five of eight areas of expenditure — A, L, M, T, B, R, G, and C — in accordance with the following rules:
- If both A andG are cut down, C is also cut down.
- If T is cut down, neither R nor G is cut down.
- Of the following three L, M, and R, exactly two are cut down.”
- If Bis cut down, L is not cut down.
The question is a follows: “If both M and R arecut down, which one of the following is a pair of areas neither of which could be cut down?” and a number of choices containing pairs of two letters are given. Not so hard you say? Well think how long it took you to solve that, know that you have about 20 more of these, and just under 35 minutes to finish them, and, once you’re done, you can start all over again about 3 times more. Think it’s hard yet?
Also the exam hasn’t underwent major remodeling ever since its last one in 1991, that does help with the preparation for it, but the lack of modernization might be apparent in the long hours it takes. It’s all on paper. Taking up to 3 ½ hours, not counting the breaks makes for quite a lot of a stress time.
But no, it’s not the fault of the exam the number of applicants is dropping. Hard as it is, there are quite a few question samples on the main website, complemented with in-depth explanations for each question-type, an array of learning materials, including free-videos, buyable books (“Cracking the LSAT”,”The Official LSAT Preptest 68”, “LSAT Explained: Unofficial Explanations for the Next 10 Lsats”, etc). Plus, if you really want to, you can take it again, and again, but never more than 3 times each 2 years.The reason for the drop is that fewer and fewer people are looking towards a career in law.
The job market for lawyers
A few years back a career in law meant to most students a free-ticket to big paychecks, and I mean big. Six figures big. Unfortunately, for most new lawyers the only 6+ figure is the debt he has to repay. How big a debt? Well let’s see what our friends at Columbia University charge: Tuition: $58,292(not including other fees of up to $2,000), Accommodation: $21,300 for a grand total of… ~ $86,000 /year. I especially like the: “But wait! There’s more!” feel in the “fees and tuition” department… in total makes for a fine 6 figure debt, right? Especially if you think that an average full-time lawyer earns about $50/hour.
As for the market, it continues to be lousy, at least in the US (Canada seems ok though with an employability of about 94%). In some US states (Michigan, Missouri, Massachusetts), there are 4+ graduates for each position available on the market. I’m no economic analyst, but that sound bad.
Due to an increase in technological means, it is now cheaper to conclude low-end legal work overseas, meaning internal market drops. And for years, the salaries that Law Schools promised have been singled-out by students as “highly inflated or exaggerated”, a fact that might well be true seeing as most people still believe lawyers earn quite a sum. The number of LSAT examinees dropping, however, doesn’t lower the number of BAR graduates, but rather the number of law school applicants, which will in time hurt the tuition-fee-dependent schools (serves them right, eh?).
Conclusion
So, is it dropping? Short answer: Yes. And not just the second year in a row, but rather the 5th. Will it continue to drop? Seeing as the number of BAR graduates hasn’t decreased enough for the market to revive, very probably. Good news is, it probably will be the last time. I’d reckon the year after this one we’ll see a new increase in popularity for the LSAT exam. In the meanwhile though, there’s never a better time to study.