Passing the bar/succeeding in law school with a low lsat score

[Goblin King]

FWIW, I scored a 166 on the lsat two days after being released from a  mental hospital and I routinely worry that I’m not cognitively up to scratch for law school. Self-doubt feels natural. It’s natural to feel like you don’t belong, that they made a mistake letting you in, especially when there’s good evidence to suggest that those feelings might be right. If it’s unnatural, I might have to start paying my therapist more, and that’s a no go. 
 

Some comforting news: people who don’t study for the lsat score between  145 and 153. So your raw cognitive abilities as tested by the lsat are on the lower end of average, assuming you barely studied. This makes the tenuous assumption that the folks who don’t study are just as inherently skilled as those who do. But it’s something I personally would cling to. 

Edited August 7, 2021 by Goblin King

[BlockedQuebecois]

17 minutes ago, Parker said:

One thing no one has really talked about yet is that an admissions committee admitted you, even with your LSAT score being the bottom 26th percentile. They clearly think you can succeed or at the very least that you have a better chance of succeeding then plenty of other applicants (that in all likelihood had a higher LSAT than you). I personally put a decent amount of faith into admissions committees - they do their best to judge all applicants and pick the best ones with little to no bias. 

 

By definition half the people law schools admit will be below average students, and Canadian law schools admit all kinds of idiots who become borderline incompetent lawyers due to the general policy of not failing anyone out of law school. Your faith in AdComms is misplaced. 

[Psychometronic]

3 hours ago, TrickyHunter said:

Yeah part of my original question was whether people who score low in general should go to law school.

I think this has to be viewed on a case-by-case basis. People fumble on the LSAT for all sorts of reasons. If you spent months studying (with proper study methods) and continue to struggle with basic logical reasoning, then that would be an obvious red flag. Since this was basically a diagnostic score, no one knows. Maybe you're one of those people who'd improve by double digits if you studied. Or maybe you're not. 

It's rare to be admitted with a score in the 140s these days, especially given how competitive the last cycle was. Maybe admissions saw something in your application that indicates you might succeed in law school.

[Parker]

10 minutes ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

By definition half the people law schools admit will be below average students, and Canadian law schools admit all kinds of idiots who become borderline incompetent lawyers due to the general policy of not failing anyone out of law school. Your faith in AdComms is misplaced. 

Students that are below average (bottom 50%) can be successful lawyers, depending on your definition of success. They won't get the best jobs or land on bay st. but there are plenty of below average lawyers that still have good jobs that they like. OP could (and their LSAT score indicates they likely will) end up being a below average student, but that doesn't mean that it's a mistake to go to law school. If that were the case, than 50% of all law school students are making a mistake. 

You're right, my faith could very well be misplaced, but I think people largely become incompetent lawyers because of lack of effort in law school (and later on in their jobs) because they can't fail out (which is an unfortunate policy), not because they never had any potential, are idiots by nature, and the school admitted them anyway. AdComms make mistakes and some idiots slip through, for sure, but I still think it's a positive indicator of OPs potential to succeed in law school that an admissions committee who's job it is to assess one's ability to succeed picked them over plenty of other applicants. 

[BlockedQuebecois]

@Parker I think for a huge number of people going to law school, particularly an Ontario school, is a mistake. It might not be 50%, but I think it’s >25%. That’s why I said there’s an interesting discussion to be had about whether someone should go to law school if they are more likely than not to be a below average student.

I also think you’re putting a weird emphasis on AdComms still. It’s trite to say that the AdComm thinks OP will be a better law student than the people they arent letting into their school. But that’s not really the question—the question is whether they will be a better law student than the other law students. For all we know, the AdComm let OP in expecting them to be in the bottom decile of the class. 

Edited August 7, 2021 by BlockedQuebecois

[TrickyHunter]

Everyone has actually been so helpful. I learned that I would likely pass law school and the bar. But I will probably be below-average to an average student. 

Now for an extreme change of topic, sorry. As a solid B student (hopefully not worse), will I have difficulty finding jobs in one of my three main interest areas? 

I am interested in:  

1. Labour and Employment Law (my M.A. is related to this)
2. Criminal Law
3. Health Law

[Yogurt Baron]

1 hour ago, Parker said:

AdComms make mistakes and some idiots slip through, for sure

I think a lot of this conversation - not just you - is conflating the idea of adcomms getting the best class they can (this happens!) with the idea that admission automatically means success.

I'm not an expert in law school admissions, but you know what I am an expert in? "American Idol". Every year, there's somebody completely hopeless who makes the Top 36, and then they're terrible, and then they get voted out, and then the internet explodes: "Well, why did the judges even put them in the Top 36 if they weren't any good?" And everyone gets all twisted up in, "It was all rigged!" But actually, what happens is, some years they only have 35 good singers. Or eight. Or...zero. And they've got to fill out the cast with somebody. "This person was honestly the 36th-best person they had" and "this person was honestly never going to be the next Kelly Clarkson" are not mutually exclusive.

I think adcomms admit the best classes they can; whether those students can all be Kelly Clarkson, I don't know.

[Parker]

1 hour ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

@Parker I think for a huge number of people going to law school, particularly an Ontario school, is a mistake. It might not be 50%, but I think it’s >25%. That’s why I said there’s an interesting discussion to be had about whether someone should go to law school if they are more likely than not to be a below average student.

I also think you’re putting a weird emphasis on AdComms still. It’s trite to say that the AdComm thinks OP will be a better law student than the people they arent letting into their school. But that’s not really the question—the question is whether they will be a better law student than the other law students. For all we know, the AdComm let OP in expecting them to be in the bottom decile of the class. 

I do think it's very interesting discussion, and I think it changes student to student largely depending on what their goals are. 25% is a lot higher that I would have guessed but I usually defer to more experienced posters in these situations, like yourself.

It wasn't my intention, but I am putting a weird emphasis on AdComms, I can see that. I brought it up because no one had when I wrote the post and I do think it's a positive indicator that it's not a mistake to go to law school and I tend to like to add a positive (but realistic) note to these forums when I can. Factors like they're GPA and LSAT score are far greater indicators but it's still something that could maybe give OP some peace of mind. I definitely don't want OP (or anyone else in a similar situation) to think that just because they got admitted that means they're as equally skilled or likely to succeed as other law students. I think there is a good probability that OP will be a below average student, even with a lot of effort, but if they are ok with the opportunities that come from being a below average student and still want to be a lawyer, than I don't think it's a mistake. 

Edited August 7, 2021 by Parker

[Rashabon]

20 minutes ago, TrickyHunter said:

Everyone has actually been so helpful. I learned that I would likely pass law school and the bar. But I will probably be below-average to an average student. 

Now for an extreme change of topic, sorry. As a solid B student (hopefully not worse), will I have difficulty finding jobs in one of my three main interest areas? 

I am interested in:  

1. Labour and Employment Law (my M.A. is related to this)
2. Criminal Law
3. Health Law

This may just be a nuance of language but I don’t think you “learned” those things. You heard opinions (generally well-reasoned ones) about your potential and your chances. But that shouldn’t be taken as a guarantee of any of those things. You will likely pass law school because almost everyone does, but don’t assume your relative placement or your chances on the bar. The key is you’ve heard your LSAT, as a predictor, is not positive, so you can go in eyes wide open and work hard to try and overcome the predictions.

[TrickyHunter]

Just now, Rashabon said:

This may just be a nuance of language but I don’t think you “learned” those things. You heard opinions (generally well-reasoned ones) about your potential and your chances. But that shouldn’t be taken as a guarantee of any of those things. You will likely pass law school because almost everyone does, but don’t assume your relative placement or your chances on the bar. The key is you’ve heard your LSAT, as a predictor, is not positive, so you can go in eyes wide open and work hard to try and overcome the predictions.

I would say that it was a nuance of language. I know the difference between opinions and facts. Most of the facts here relate to statistics that I already know from public sources like LSAC and some Canadian studies with results that showed that the LSAT is the only factor with any predictive validity for 1l grades.

[TrickyHunter]

11 minutes ago, Rashabon said:

This may just be a nuance of language but I don’t think you “learned” those things. You heard opinions (generally well-reasoned ones) about your potential and your chances. But that shouldn’t be taken as a guarantee of any of those things. You will likely pass law school because almost everyone does, but don’t assume your relative placement or your chances on the bar. The key is you’ve heard your LSAT, as a predictor, is not positive, so you can go in eyes wide open and work hard to try and overcome the predictions.

And yes I will go in with eyes wide open because most of the unexplained variance in grades is probably effort which can't really be measured. 

[123]

This doesn't really apply to OP, who has lawyers in the family and probably knows a lot of this. It's possible that others know this too. But when we lost the old forum, we lost a lot of these more novice level posts, so maybe it's helpful to spell some of this out. 

I think the more useful starting point is not whether someone should go to law school. It's whether they should be a lawyer. I guess it's sort of the same thing. Law school is the first stage of the licensing process, which is how you become a lawyer. But these questions tend to focus almost exclusively on grades and OCIs and job prospects immediately out of the gate. That misses the point in my opinion. Law school is a step that take three years. Practicing law might be decades. The latter should get more weight, when you're making your decision.  

You're going to law school to get a license to practice law. The first question any applicant should ask themselves is whether they want that. I'm guessing if you're applying, your answer is yes. But that's not a question you should answer lightly. Being licensed is both a privilege, and an obligation. There are definite benefits. Your license gives you access to a regulated job market with high barriers to entry. As a result, you have relatively good prospects of securing an above average, middle-class income for the foreseeable future. You are given an opportunity to do meaningful work. Lawyer jokes aside, you have social capital. 

There are obligations. For many, you have debt. That poses a short-term obligation that may constrict your lifestyle and career choices for the first few years. Longer term, the greater and more onerous obligations arise from your private practice. Lots of lawyers work in private practice, and it's not unreasonable to expect that you will too, at some point after graduation. Specifically, the thing about private practice is that it's stressful. In my opinion, that stress arises from two constant, somewhat conflicting pressures: (1) profit and (2) competency. On the one hand, there’s pressure to bring in business and bill. Your ability to attract clients, keep them happy, and spend time on work for which you can charge them determines your value to your firm. In turn, that determines your job security and earnings. You’re highly incentivized to maximize the time you spend doing this work.

On the other hand, as a member of a licensed profession, you have certain obligations. You have a duties of candour and loyalty to your clients. The first one means that if you’re doing your job properly, you’re giving a lot of bad news. Sometimes that’s before the retainer is signed, when you’re telling someone that their case is probably a loser, even if that costs you a client. Other times, it means fighting your client on a decision. I have full-blown shouting matches with clients during prep meetings and consultations, because they want something that can’t be done, and it’s my job to tell them.

The duty of loyalty means a lot of things, but for me, these are the most impactful. It means that you can’t fire your clients without a good reason. That’s inconvenient. I have clients who I hate, and I mean hate in a preoccupied, almost psychotic way. They’re disrespectful, self-indulgent people who make my life more difficult everytime I come across them. But I have to get up and advance their interests just as forcefully as my favourite clients, because that’s the job.

Loyalty also means that I have to do things I don’t like. I’ve cried in the bathroom after I cross-examined sexual assault survivors. I’ve been berated at length by judges and adjudicators for doing my job. I recently had a hearing where opposing counsel asked my witness a pattern of abusive and irrelevant questions about their sex life, and about decades old mistakes they told with no bearing on the proceeding, and I was repeatedly admonished for objecting to the questions. That was a shitty day. But I still have to push through those days, and so will you. The upshot is no secret. Lawyers are famously depressed people. And while some of that is self-selection into the profession, some of it’s the toll of having a stressful job that cuts into your private life.

I always told myself that I wouldn’t let the pressures of practicing law change me -- that I’d set boundaries, and I’d get out if it got too bad. But it is, in some senses, inevitable. At least for me. I have pre-existing depression and anxiety that have gotten much, much worse since I became a lawyer. Sometimes the problem is working stretches of two or three months without a day off. Sometimes, it’s the individual days – I have days where there’s just a creeping, endless to-do list of thankless jobs that makes me fantasize about quitting practice and doing anything else. But the end result is that I sleep less, my weight fluctuates more, and I’m far, far more anxious than I was before I went to law school.

The point is that no one needs to do this. There are literally thousands of ways to earn a living, many of which also get you a middle-class lifestyle, an opportunity to do meaningful work, but without the headache of demanding clients and billable hours.  I have friends doing things I’d never heard of, making good money with reasonable hours, who seem entirely happy with their choices. If you’re smart and motivated enough to be a good lawyer, I have faith that you’re probably going to find one of these jobs, at some point. No doubt these jobs still have their issues. But they also have a whole different set of benefits, that law may not have. No one should be too quick to jump into the legal profession, without having at least opened their minds to the universe of other possibilities.

As it pertains to this thread, the kinds of considerations here – will I be a good law student, how good do I need to be to get jobs X, Y, Z, etc, should only take place after someone has seriously engaged with the broader question of whether they really want to get licensed to practice law. And to the extent that there’s a nexus between the two questions, I think it’s this: the less successful student has fewer options. OP framed this purely as area of practice. But even if you work in your preferred area of practice, a weak job application means that you’re more likely to article and practice somewhere without adequate mentorship and pay, which makes you more vulnerable to the kind of acute stressors that give rise to mental health and addictions issues.

I don’t want to be too negative here. It so happens that for me, I probably would become a lawyer again, if I had to redo it. I have a practice which allows me to earn a decent living. But for me, it’s important that I get to do work that aligns with my values. I do. My work gives me a sense of purpose and meaning everyday. I'm passionate about my cases, and feel they're worth fighting for. That makes the stress and obligations tolerable, and so I wouldn’t change what I’m doing.

In any case, this was long and unsolicited. But we’re coming up on the next application cycle. And OP’s question – am I making a mistake – is something every law applicant should seriously ask themselves, at least for a minute. Because you can rest assured, the legal profession is going to ask for a lot of you.  

Edited August 8, 2021 by realpseudonym

[GreyDude]

1 hour ago, realpseudonym said:

In any case, this was long and unsolicited. But we’re coming up on the next application cycle. And OP’s question – am I making a mistake – is something every law applicant should seriously ask themselves, at least for a minute. Because you can rest assured, the legal profession is going to ask for a lot of you.  

This is extremely helpful advice, offered with candor and wisdom. As someone who has been planning my application (as a mature student) since 2018, and just finishing up my PS this evening so reflecting carefully on my decision to apply, I just feel the need to say "thank you!"

Edited August 8, 2021 by GreyDude

[Diplock]

Okay, this thread has moved past when it initially caught my attention, but here's some related information at least. I looked up the student I knew who went into law school with a LSAT in the 140's and extremely strong grades. She's had a career to this point that many would consider enviable. She's objectively much more successful than I am, though in non-comparable ways. If she showed up at a career day she'd have a line of students wanting to talk with her, put it that way. For whatever that's worth.

I share the view that no matter what any student or recent graduate on this board cares to speculate about, Admissions Committees put as much effort as they can - and with far more experience - into identifying the best candidates they can find. And of course they are eying both success in law school and in the legal field on graduation. If they think someone with a LSAT in the 140's and extremely strong grades and other measurables is a strong candidate, then I'm sure as hell not going to argue with them. Would that end up being someone who got in nearer the bottom of their admissions list than the top? I don't know - probably. But I really consider speculation about the idea that maybe the bottom quartile of admitted students is better off not going to be stupid. After we've cut ever program by 1/4 to give effect to that advice, are the students near the new bottom supposed to still go or should they bow out too? It's a dumb thing to speculate about.

The truth is that law depends on a variety of skills and aptitudes, and only some of those are captured by the LSAT. I reject the idea that someone who racked up a near perfect GPA over four years but couldn't be bothered studying for the LSAT somehow lacks work ethic or intellectual capability. I know this is dangerous advice in the wrong hands, but I won't reject giving dangerous advice just because some other idiot might hurt themselves with it. Somewhere there's someone who bombed the LSAT who wants to believe they should still got to law school because they promise to work hard when they get there. If they're reading this thread, this is not universal advice. But in the OP's situation, the LSAT is only one piece of a larger picture, and clearly they DO have wider capabilities.

Quite a lot of law is just doing the job, doing it properly and carefully, and simply giving a shit. A lawyer willing and able to do that, even one who is not good at on-the-spot creative problem solving, is probably going to be better than a lawyer who excels at puzzles but can't handle the grind. Ironically, I'm a guy who gave off all those signs of apparent intellectualism leading into law school but it just hasn't been my thing in practice. I'm a grinder, and I'm fine with that. The work I do isn't intellectually taxing. It's personally challenging on many levels, and I believe I'm good at it in ways few people could touch. But not at all because I got a 171 LSAT. And that girl I know whose LSAT was in the 140s? She has exactly the sort of career you'd expect from a top academic performer. Which she was all along, btw, absent the LSAT.

I know I'm the avatar of tough love around here, and also someone who warns constantly against dangerous validation for under-performers. But success in the legal profession really does take in a lot of things that can't be captured by a standardized test. And that's exactly why GPA also matters hugely. Maybe you can secure strong grades just by reading your books and doing the work on time and conscientiously. But that's exactly the fucking point! You also need to do that in law. And you'd be amazed how many people can't.

Anyway, that's all for now.

P.S. I don't feel a need to prove anything with evidence here. But my personal belief is that studies based on the U.S. are skewed by the fact that their grade inflation is out of control, and grades between institutions can't be trusted to meet even a roughly standard scale. So schools rely more on the LSAT not because it's better, but only because it's all they can trust. For that same reason, correlation between LSAT and success in law school is stronger. I believe Canadian universities have a better handle on things (not perfect, but better) which is why admissions here depends more on GPA. And I certainly believe that success in undergraduate studies - on a level playing field - correlates with success in law school and in the legal profession. It may not get you to the top, but it'll for sure keep you in the middle at least.

Edited August 8, 2021 by Diplock
P.S.

[BlockedQuebecois]

@Diplock I don’t think you’ve really thought through your objection to my comment about the bottom quartile. The idea that some students may be better off not going to law school is the logical extension of the idea that some number of law schools seats is ideal, and after that number the job prospects of graduates drop precipitously. 

Now you may argue that Canadian law schools are at equilibrium and thus there’s no precipitous drop (or even that the market is underserved and more law schools can be added without harming the worst graduates), but I don’t think you would disagree with the central idea that at some point, students are better off not going to law school than attending a bad law school in an over saturated market.  

Of course, the other part of this is that the disadvantage isn’t evenly spread out. I don’t think a bottom decile student at U of T is better off not attending law school, which is why I mentioned that the conversation depends largely on school options. 

[Diplock]

3 hours ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

@Diplock I don’t think you’ve really thought through your objection to my comment about the bottom quartile. The idea that some students may be better off not going to law school is the logical extension of the idea that some number of law schools seats is ideal, and after that number the job prospects of graduates drop precipitously. 

Now you may argue that Canadian law schools are at equilibrium and thus there’s no precipitous drop (or even that the market is underserved and more law schools can be added without harming the worst graduates), but I don’t think you would disagree with the central idea that at some point, students are better off not going to law school than attending a bad law school in an over saturated market.  

Of course, the other part of this is that the disadvantage isn’t evenly spread out. I don’t think a bottom decile student at U of T is better off not attending law school, which is why I mentioned that the conversation depends largely on school options. 

@BQ - I'd prefer to avoid an extended debate on this subject, but even if I accept your premise that the legal profession is saturated to the point that it's a bad bet for those least likely to be employed after law school (and I don't) your suggestion that this should cause the least competitive admits to reconsider attending would only be true if one of two conditions are true. Either (a) that the least competitive graduates of law schools are genuinely not competent to practice at all. Or (b) that employment outcomes of law school correlate properly such that the most capable graduates have the greatest career prospects. And quite honestly, neither of those things are true.

It may be in some environments law schools are accepting so much over-enrollment that the graduates they are turning out are genuinely not capable of practicing law. Witness the dismal bar passage rates of some U.S. schools. But that's not happening in Canada. With rare exceptions, anyone graduating from a Canadian law school can practice law, given an opportunity to do so. And the ones who can't aren't failing due to a lack of basic ability. It's more likely to be mental health crises or the like that stop them - which doesn't preclude the possibility they could be very strong otherwise.

When it comes to career outcomes, the OP has already made this point clear without quite rubbing it in. He comes from a legal family. He's got the right connections. He will be employable exactly because, even if he turns out to be a below average law student, he's still got other advantages. Academic capability does not correlate directly with employability. There's some relationship, but it's far short of 1:1. If your suggestion is that the least likely to be employable law applicants should reconsider attending, that would at least make more logical sense. But then what you'd really be saying is that racialized persons with no networks and from non-traditional backgrounds should consider opting out, because those barriers are more likely to keep someone unemployed after graduation than a lower LSAT will. Note, I am NOT NOT NOT endorsing this position. Or implying that BQ is doing so. Only saying it would be more logically connected with BQ's starting assumptions than the conclusion he arrived at.

Bottom line, nothing is guaranteed in the legal profession, obviously, any more than any other profession. But it remains a good enough bet that anyone strong enough to get into law school - lacking some obvious other barrier to practice - is a strong prospect to find employment following. That could change based on new information. If that person is actually failing after 1L, it'd reconsider. But from a starting place of just knowing someone's admitted, I consider anyone a strong prospect to find a good career afterwards.

[123]

On 8/7/2021 at 4:53 PM, BlockedQuebecois said:

Canadian law schools admit all kinds of idiots who become borderline incompetent lawyers due to the general policy of not failing anyone out of law school.

7 hours ago, Diplock said:

Quite a lot of law is just doing the job, doing it properly and carefully, and simply giving a shit. A lawyer willing and able to do that, even one who is not good at on-the-spot creative problem solving, is probably going to be better than a lawyer who excels at puzzles but can't handle the grind.

Maybe it's that we're in retail law practices, but my experience has been the same as Diplock's.

At some point, it got around in my circles that I'll occasionally do incompetence of counsel JRs/appeals. The work is unpleasant enough that I'm unusual in my practice area, so I get referrals where there was shoddy work in the underlying applications. I'll see paralegal and foreign-trained lawyer work where the writing is awful and nothing they did makes sense. In those cases, I suspect they lack the intelligence for effective advocacy. But I haven't seen much of that from Canadian-trained lawyers. Sometimes it'll be an oversight. But more often than not it's what Diplock says: the work is shit, because the lawyer didn't give a fuck. They didn't spend enough time prepping witnesses, they didn't gather enough supporting evidence, and the submissions are boilerplate. To me, none of that points to a lack of intelligence,  because honestly, basic witness prep and somewhat on-point submissions don't require a lot of intelligence. They require a bit of time, and some mental engagement with the subject matter. Most Canadian grads should be able to do that, if they want to. 

[BlockedQuebecois]

3 hours ago, realpseudonym said:

Maybe it's that we're in retail law practices, but my experience has been the same as Diplock's.

At some point, it got around in my circles that I'll occasionally do incompetence of counsel JRs/appeals. The work is unpleasant enough that I'm unusual in my practice area, so I get referrals where there was shoddy work in the underlying applications. I'll see paralegal and foreign-trained lawyer work where the writing is awful and nothing they did makes sense. In those cases, I suspect they lack the intelligence for effective advocacy. But I haven't seen much of that from Canadian-trained lawyers. Sometimes it'll be an oversight. But more often than not it's what Diplock says: the work is shit, because the lawyer didn't give a fuck. They didn't spend enough time prepping witnesses, they didn't gather enough supporting evidence, and the submissions are boilerplate. To me, none of that points to a lack of intelligence,  because honestly, basic witness prep and somewhat on-point submissions don't require a lot of intelligence. They require a bit of time, and some mental engagement with the subject matter. Most Canadian grads should be able to do that, if they want to. 

So first, I should be clear that I’m not saying a huge portion of Canadian grads are incompetent or borderline incompetent. I have a percentage in mind, but sharing it is likely to cause more arguments than necessary. Let’s just say it’s quite low (and much lower than the 25% or so of students I think likely should consider other career paths—competent lawyers can still be better off doing something else). 

Second, though, there’s a reason I said borderline incompetent, not incompetent outright. The bar for competent counsel in the context of appeals or JR is so low that you’re right, most Canadian trained lawyers would clear it so long as they’re trying.

But I’ve seen a lot of Canadian trained lawyers who just didn’t get the law. Sure, they could string sentences together. But they would read a case that said X, then go and write a factum saying the case said Y. And it’s not that they were writing a factum arguing that even though the case seemed to say X, it actually said Y. They just full-heartedly believed that the case said Y. Or they would be working a case and miss some kind of foundational and incredibly important issue (a jurisdictional issue that is determinative of the whole matter, for instance).

My bar for borderline incompetence is higher than the case law’s definition of competence. It’s essentially “would I be okay with this person representing me in their field, assuming their representation was free”. The lawyers described in the above paragraph don’t hit that, even if they’d likely pass the competence of counsel test on appeal.

As a final note, I would add that I value both your and Diplock’s perspective on this, even if we disagree. I recognize that I have more extreme opinions on these issues than most, and I appreciate the well thought out responses. 

Edited August 9, 2021 by BlockedQuebecois

[CleanHands]

1 hour ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

-Snip-

I think there are two questions to distinguish here that are getting muddled together a tad:

1) Is it a good idea for someone who would make a borderline incompetent lawyer to go to law school for that candidate personally?

2) Is it a good idea for someone who would make a borderline incompetent lawyer to go to law school for society more broadly?

And those are questions that often have different answers, as I am aware of a significant number of lawyers (many Canadian educated although certainly abject incompetence is a more widespread issue among NCA lawyers) who themselves are able to a make a good living and have a respectable career (at least to those outside the field or who aren't familiar with the quality of their work) but who routinely do a terrible disservice to their clients (who by and large lack the knowledge and ability to distinguish between good and bad representation).

In my limited legal experience thus far I've done some ineffective assistance of counsel appellate work myself but (as you allude to) for every file where that's an actual debatable grounds for appeal (@realpseudonym I agree that from what I've seen in these cases it's more common for lawyers to have simply not done their jobs as a result of substance abuse or mental health issues, rather than actually doing the work terribly) there are a hundred dime a dozen instances of just bad work that wouldn't rise to that level.

[CoconutWater]

On 8/7/2021 at 1:42 AM, CleanHands said:

...But if the LSAT means anything and has any application to the practice of law (and I think anyone who claims it does not is fooling themselves), it is going to be a hell of a lot harder and require a hell of a lot more work being a lawyer who has to make use of every imaginable resource before fully grasping a concept than it will be to be a lawyer who can read a statute, case or other source and immediately comprehend the nuances of it (if the former person wants their work products to match the quality of the latter's).

Ignorance of someone who didn't have to work hard to get a good LSAT score. If a person went from 135 to 170 and used every possible resource to do that, they have accumulated the necessary skills to achieve that score. Which include reading comprehension, pattern recognition, seeing nuance in arguments, and whatever skills other 170 test takers have to achieve this score.

I would even argue this person has developed skills and mental fortitude in resoucefulness and dedication. Characteristics I would want in a lawyer who represented me.

Your skills don't just magically disappear because you worked harder to attain those skills.

Edited August 12, 2021 by CoconutWater

[BlockedQuebecois]

33 minutes ago, CoconutWater said:

Ignorance of someone who didn't have to work hard to get a good LSAT score. If a person went from 135 to 170 and used every possible resource to do that, they have accumulated the necessary skills to achieve that score. Which include reading comprehension, pattern recognition, seeing nuance in arguments, and whatever skills other 170 test takers have to achieve this score.

I would even argue this person has developed skills and mental fortitude in resoucefulness and dedication. Characteristics I would want in a lawyer who represented me.

Your skills don't just magically disappear because you worked harder to attain those skills.

Meh. I can answer 95% of logic game questions in my head without diagraming. I don't think most people who had to work to go from 135 to 170 can magically do that—they've just learned strategies to make up for the fact that they're inherently less good at logic games than I am. 

So you're right. The skills don't just magically disappear. They just never existed in the first place. 

[CoconutWater]

5 minutes ago, BlockedQuebecois said:

Meh. I can answer 95% of logic game questions in my head without diagraming. I don't think most people who had to work to go from 135 to 170 can magically do that—they've just learned strategies to make up for the fact that they're inherently less good at logic games than I am. 

So you're right. The skills don't just magically disappear. They just never existed in the first place. 

So they might have strategies you aren't even aware of. The point is, both have the skills necessary to get the score and both will have the skills to do the work required. 

[CleanHands]

1 minute ago, CoconutWater said:

So they might have strategies you aren't even aware of. The point is, both have the skills necessary to get the score and both will have the skills to do the work required. 

People who can intuitively get in the 170s with little effort actually have the relevant cognitive skills being tested for. People who need to spend a year doing 100 prep tests, reading half a dozen different brands of prep books, and attending private tutoring, have just learned how to game a very specific test for a few hours despite their limited faculties. Their innate abilities haven't changed.

[BlockedQuebecois]

13 minutes ago, CoconutWater said:

So they might have strategies you aren't even aware of. The point is, both have the skills necessary to get the score and both will have the skills to do the work required. 

This really isn't a novel or interesting argument. People who have had to work to do well are always of the opinion that they're actually just as smart as the people who didn't have to work, and that's always been a dumb argument. It assumes that the non-workers are actually unable to do work (rather than it just not being necessary), or that even if they did the work they wouldn't improve. Those are both obviously dumb assumptions. 

At ten years old, Magnus Carlson had a 1645 ELO rating. My ELO rating is about 1200. With a lot of work, I could probably get myself up to a 1645 ELO rating. But Magnus Carlson would still be a better chess player than me, because ten year old Magnus hasn't had to do a ton of work and he's as good as I am. And if Magnus did do that work, Magnus would improve (likely faster than I could, because as mentioned, he's much better at chess). As a spoiler, Magnus did do some work, and within a year he was candidate master with a 2127 ELO ranking—a ranking I almost certainly could never reach. 

The fact that I could match 10 year old Magnus Carlson's ELO rating does not mean I'm as good at chess as Magnus Carlson. The fact that you can hit a 170 LSAT after a ton of work does not mean you are as good at the LSAT as someone whose diagnostic was a 170. 

Edited August 12, 2021 by BlockedQuebecois

[CoconutWater]

4 minutes ago, CleanHands said:

People who can intuitively get in the 170s with little effort actually have the relevant cognitive skills being tested for. People who need to spend a year doing 100 prep tests, reading half a dozen different brands of prep books, and attending private tutoring, have just learned how to game a very specific test for a few hours despite their limited faculties. Their innate abilities haven't changed.

You didn't just have an innate ability to recite the alphabet or do simple arithmetic. These skills were taught.

Innate ability can only be truly measured if we were all taught the same things from the getgo, K to 12. Even then, innate ability can be disputed because of environmental factors at home.

Perhaps the person who worked hard never learned nor utilized the skills in question. Whereas the person with "innate ability' had a mom who was a doctor and a dad who was a lawyer who put them in private school and taught them the skills to make themselves believe they have some sort of innate abilities that others can't learn.