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

[CleanHands]

11 minutes ago, CoconutWater said:

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.

I just don't understand why people like you refuse to admit that some people are simply smarter than others. And that intelligence has an impact on how people perform on standardized tests like the LSAT.

I have law enforcement experience and marital arts training. I am a somewhat short and very slight man. It was always very, very obvious to me that I could do weight training 5 days a week and the average guy I trained with would still be physically stronger than me if he were a total couch potato. I was aware of this.

Why are people so resistant to admitting that similar dynamics are at play where mental attributes are concerned?

Yes, environment plays a role, but only in a way analogous to how childhood nutrition would play into physical attributes in my above example. That doesn't mean none of it is generic or innate.

Edited August 13, 2021 by CleanHands

[CoconutWater]

1 minute ago, CleanHands said:

I just don't understand why people like you refuse to admit that some people are simply smarter than others. And that intelligence has an impact on how people perform on standardized tests like the LSAT.

I have law enforcement experience and marital arts training. I am a somewhat short and very slight man. It was always very, very obvious to me that I could do weight training 5 days a week and the average guy I trained with would still be physically stronger than me if he were a total couch potato. I was aware of this.

Why are people so resistant to admitting that similar dynamic are at play where mental attributes are concerned?

Yes, environment plays a role, but only in a way analogous to how childhood nutrition would play into physical attributes in my above example. That doesn't mean none of it is generic or innate.

There definitely are smarter people than me. The problem I had is with your statement that someone who had to work hard to get a high score is somehow going to be lacking vs someone who didn't have to work hard. You than analogized this to the legal profession. There are so many places where this analogy fails.

How do we define outworking soneone in the field?

Sure, maybe your smarter than me at seeing nuance, but maybe I'm better at building relationships with judges and regardless of how smart or clear cut your argument is, the judge chose my less convincing argument because he thought you were a jerk. Maybe I'm better at empathizing with clients because I'm not a genius and can understand where they come from.

[CleanHands]

Just now, CoconutWater said:

Sure, maybe your smarter than me at seeing nuance, but maybe I'm better at building relationships with judges and regardless of how smart or clear cut your argument is, the judge chose my less convincing argument because he thought you were a jerk. Maybe I'm better at empathizing with clients because I'm not a genius and can understand where they come from.

There are many different kinds of skills involved in succeeding in legal practice, and emotional intelligence is very important. That's certainly indisputable.

But my point was only that someone who is better at reading and logical reasoning than someone else will have an advantage. I assumed that "all other things being equal" wasn't a necessary qualification.

This seems like moving the goalposts to me but oh well, if this is the angle you want to take I don't disagree.

[123]

1 hour ago, CleanHands said:

Why are people so resistant to admitting that similar dynamics are at play where mental attributes are concerned?

The older and farther away from school I get, the less I care. A lot of my self-worth used to be wrapped around being smart, mostly because I was insecure. I felt like I didn't have a lot else going on -- I didn't have a tonne of other experience suggesting that I had things to offer, other than being a good student. And since the point of being a good student was to show that I was smart and capable, not being smart would be a real challenge to my identity and self-worth. So despite falling more into the grinder/worker-bee category, I assume I would've been resistant to admitting that I wasn't what I was trying to be. I didn't really know any better. 

Post-graduation, I increasingly value other things. I think I might just have better role models, and that's created a different feedback system. I don't know. I've been lucky to fall in with some kind, compassionate friends and colleagues, who wouldn't have a lot of patience for ego. Being around that has made me care less about seeming smart or impressive. Which honestly makes life a lot easier. It's a relief to let go of the fiction that I'm the smartest person in any room, and now I can focus on things that are more meaningful and gratifying. 

Edited August 13, 2021 by realpseudonym

[CleanHands]

34 minutes ago, realpseudonym said:

-Snip-

Just to be clear:

Law school was very humbling for me and my limited experience in practice has been as well. I'm surrounded by, work with, have to hold my own against, and learn from, people smarter than myself every day.

It's an aspect of this profession that is very appealing and isn't mentioned enough when people mention the upsides to it (presumably because it would come across as arrogant). I say this after spending a decade working a variety of other jobs not requiring the same amount of education or brainpower.

Our intelligence (for the most part) isn't something that we choose or earn. It's largely an immutable characteristic. So it's not something that should be a source of pride. I have much more respect for someone of limited intelligence that works hard and contributes positively to society than I do for an intelligent person who does not.

Also to be honest it becomes less important when one has a JD from a decently respectable school under their belt because there's not so much to prove anymore (to most people, at least).

Now, don't mistake anything I've written in previous posts as contradicting any of this. My point was only that it's incredibly obvious that human intelligence varies between individuals, and that it baffles me that somehow in our current social climate often times people want to pretend otherwise. It's also something I've seen quite a lot on this forum and the one that preceded it, so I just wanted to call bullshit. It's part of a broader confusion I often see whereby people regularly conflate "equality" with "sameness" (manifested in other equally absurd forms such as denial of sex differences in physical capabilities).

Edited August 13, 2021 by CleanHands

[Whisk3yjack]

I'm fashionably late to the party and this has gotten away from the actual issue @TrickyHunter wanted to know about, but I have a couple points that OP should consider. Partially I want to help and partially I'm bored and have thoughts about the LSAT/GPA discussion.

Based on you stats and your post history (you want to try and transfer to Ottawa or Queen's) I'm assuming you got into one of the lower ranking schools (Windsor, TRU, Sask, Lakehead etc). It seems like lots of the advice you are getting is from posters who went to higher ranking schools and I think it would be helpful for you to consider how this issue will play out at the school you're attending. For some context, I go to Windsor. However I am the opposite of you. I had a very low GPA (maybe one of the lowest of anyone who wasn't an access or mature candidate) and a high LSAT that I didn't really have to study for. 

The first thing to consider is that you are going to be fine in law school. It's frankly not that hard and you essentially have to try to fail out. So you have that going for you.

Of course most people want to excel, not just get by. So lets assume that for the most part, to get in to one of the "good" schools you need both high grades and a high LSAT. That means that the students who end up going to the kind of schools that we go to (I don't feel the need to beat around the bush here, I love Windsor but it's clearly not at the same level as other schools) fall generally in to three categories: 

1. High LSAT/Low GPA 
2. High GPA/Low LSAT
3. Average GPA/Average LSAT (neither score is bad, but not competitive enough to get in somewhere else)

I have personally found that the other students I know who fall into the second category tend not to do as well as someone in category 1 or 3. Take this with a grain of salt because it's hard to actually know if people are telling the truth about grades and LSAT scores, plus it's not a huge sample size.

I personally have a pet theory about why this happens with no real way to test it's validity. If you had a high GPA in undergrad you either worked really hard to get it or you were really smart. If you were really smart, you could probably get a high LSAT too. If you just worked really hard maybe you could do that and get a high LSAT too, so you ended up at Osgoode. If the hard work wasn't enough you might end up with a low LSAT. However, this person is likely already operating at the upper end of their potential. Compare this with someone who had a low GPA. They write the LSAT and do really well either because they are naturally smart or they decided to start trying. Either way, this person has not been operating at the upper limit of their potential. When they get to law school they are able to turn it on and do really well, if they choose to do so. I think it's important for you to consider whether you think you can "turn it on" in order to do well.

A 146 is an extremely low score for someone in law school. I personally find it hard to imagine that you are someone who has the cognitive ability to kick it in to high gear and be an above average student. Again, you will still be fine in law school since they don't fail anyone. You will also probably be fine finding a job since it seems like you have connections in the profession. Those are important parts of the equation. Also since your dad is a lawyer I am assuming you won't have debt (maybe you mentioned this earlier, I don't remember) which is another huge factor. 

Given your situation, I would go to law school if I was in your position. It frankly seems pretty low risk if you have family that are lawyers and aren't going to take on debt. But I would not assume that you are going to be in the upper quartile of students. It's not out of the range of possibilities, but it's certainly unlikely. 

[Whisk3yjack]

This is unrelated to OP's questions but about the LSAT, because as I mentioned above I am bored and have strong opinions about this. I think it is both true that it would be practically impossible to actually measure innate intelligence and that people have varying levels of cognitive ability. Two qualities that are related but different.

I agree with @CoconutWater that there are environmental factors that affect cognitive ability, social determinants of intelligence if you will. For example, old fashioned particulate pollution has a huge affect on cognitive development, so someone who lives closer to a busy highway will probably appear on tests to be less intelligent, even if their "innate" intelligence that they were born with was high. Here is a good example if this happening in the real world. Better air filtration causes student's test scores to go up. Other factors like proper nutrition, the quality of your education, and whether you experience a lot of stress growing up have similar affect. Of course we can't accurately measure a baby's intelligence fresh out of the womb, so it's not something we'll ever really know. 

However, it is clearly true that different people have different levels of cognitive ability, which is something that is affected by, but not the same as your innate intelligence. For our purposes we can say cognitive ability is your ability to analyze information, think critically, solve problems, reason logically. That kind of thing. While I kind of agree with @CleanHands that intelligence is immutable,  I absolutely do not think cognitive ability is. I fully believe that is both something that is affected greatly by your innate or natural intelligence but also what sort of activities you parents did with you as a kid, how much food you got growing up, and the quality of the air you breath. It's also something that can be learned. It should be clear to anyone that you can learn to be a better critical thinker and problem solver. That's what school is for. 

However at a certain point that distinction is irrelevant. What the LSAT is measuring, and what I think is important to succeed in law school and as a lawyer, is your cognitive ability. Someone who has a higher cognitive ability will find the LSAT easier. I don't really understand how that is in question. It should then be obvious that if we have two people with a 170 and A studied for months to get that score and B took the test on a whim, that B has a higher cognitive ability. The test was easier for them and it was easier because they had more of the quality the test is designed to measure. Again, I don't at all see how this is debatable. 

However as a caveat, regardless of how you got a 170 you are probably going to be fine. If you had to grind away for a 155 then that's a different story. But a good work ethic is a very important quality to have. If your hard work got you to a 170, a successful score, then it would be a good bet that you would be able to work hard to be successful in other areas. 

Anyways, that was really long winded way of saying that if we were doing a fantasy law student draft, then I'm still picking the kid that got the 170 with low effort because I think they have higher potential.

[AllanC]

5 hours ago, Whisk3yjack said:

I agree with @CoconutWater that there are environmental factors that affect cognitive ability, social determinants of intelligence if you will. For example, old fashioned particulate pollution has a huge affect on cognitive development, so someone who lives closer to a busy highway will probably appear on tests to be less intelligent, even if their "innate" intelligence that they were born with was high. Here is a good example if this happening in the real world. Better air filtration causes student's test scores to go up. Other factors like proper nutrition, the quality of your education, and whether you experience a lot of stress growing up have similar affect. Of course we can't accurately measure a baby's intelligence fresh out of the womb, so it's not something we'll ever really know. 

I’ve been reading this thread with some interest, but have refrained from getting involved. I believe the claims advanced by BQ and CleanHands have some verisimilitude, but that they miss the mark in many ways. Though, to convince them of such would likely take a protracted discussion far from the OP’s original inquiry, and I think as they have come to realize, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

However, I am stepping in now because some of your evidence is much easier to wrangle with / has a clear discussion to be had. The study you cite unequivocally does not provide good evidence for your assertion nor even the assertion made in the paper. There are substantial statistical and philosophy of science issues with the paper. Most notably the author makes the elementary mistake of conflating beta weights with causal weights, which is only true under certain assumptions (namely proper specification and data collection) but provides no theoretical basis for such assumptions. Moreover, the analysis is one of regression discontinuity which can be fraught with numerical complications at the boundary, such as the Runge phenomenon. Please see here where Andrew Gelman and other statisticians and applied mathematicians discuss the paper.

Note: the linked discussion above does not culminate in saying that the posited conclusion in the paper is incorrect, rather that the evidence provided does not lend support for such a conclusion.

Edited August 13, 2021 by AllanC

[BlockedQuebecois]

.

Edited August 13, 2021 by BlockedQuebecois
Not worth the squeeze

[123]

🎩Nvm

Edited August 13, 2021 by realpseudonym

[Whisk3yjack]

17 hours ago, AllanC said:

I’ve been reading this thread with some interest, but have refrained from getting involved. I believe the claims advanced by BQ and CleanHands have some verisimilitude, but that they miss the mark in many ways. Though, to convince them of such would likely take a protracted discussion far from the OP’s original inquiry, and I think as they have come to realize, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

However, I am stepping in now because some of your evidence is much easier to wrangle with / has a clear discussion to be had. The study you cite unequivocally does not provide good evidence for your assertion nor even the assertion made in the paper. There are substantial statistical and philosophy of science issues with the paper. Most notably the author makes the elementary mistake of conflating beta weights with causal weights, which is only true under certain assumptions (namely proper specification and data collection) but provides no theoretical basis for such assumptions. Moreover, the analysis is one of regression discontinuity which can be fraught with numerical complications at the boundary, such as the Runge phenomenon. Please see here where Andrew Gelman and other statisticians and applied mathematicians discuss the paper.j

Note: the linked discussion above does not culminate in saying that the posited conclusion in the paper is incorrect, rather that the evidence provided does not lend support for such a conclusion.

You are absolutely correct. I will admit to being sloppy with my research. I am aware of the literature on environmental effects on cognitive development, though by no means do I profess to have the statistical chops to assess methodology. It's too bad that it doesn't hold up because I always liked that study, but I never really bothered to dig too deeply into it and I'm going to stop using that now.  

I love arguing with strangers on the internet, but I believe you are right about the relative cost/benefit analysis of squeezing fruit for the sake of juice so I will just take this on the chin and concede defeat. 

@AllanC 1 - Whisk3yjack 0

[Diplock]

You know, it's been so long since everyone whipped out their LSAT scores, and started to argue over the relative merits of length vs. girth, and whether or not "how you use it" has any place in the discussion, that I've forgotten how truly stupid his board can be. Seriously, as a stakeholder who now contributes a few pennies every day to ensure this site exists, I feel like it's money not well spent.

OP has his answer now, and more besides, and everyone can argue about this if you want. But I'd like to add something that needs to be part of this discussion, which many of you seem to be missing.

You're arguing over how learning the LSAT vs. having a natural talent for it reflects on one's innate intelligence. You're arguing over effort vs. talent. You're arguing over the theory that some people are just born with the skills to be lawyers, and that people born without those skills just can't develop them to the same degree. And however true or untrue all of that may be, you've made a logical shift that's gone unnoticed and is probably quite unconscious. You've simply taken it as assumed that once you figure out who is smartest you've also figured out who the best lawyers are. And I'm here to tell you - it's not bloody true.

Effective lawyering takes in a lot of different skills and attributes. And just like any area of human endeavor, it would be a contested argument to discuss what "best" even looks like. For the sake of the point I'm making here, I'll define best from a client's perspective. In other words, when I have a problem, who am I best served by? And very often, it isn't the smartest lawyer you could possibly find. Now we could apply other standards too - impact on society, personal and professional success, fame and regard - and almost none of them would suggest that smartest = best. I'm willing to agree that the most accomplished academics and judges tend to be very cerebral. But using a definition of what the "best" lawyer looks like that presupposes the goal of the best lawyers is to stop actually being lawyers...that seems strange to me.

So honestly, keep measuring if you like. You can aim your LSAT scores at each other, and inch together slowly to see who pokes who first. But you're entirely missing the point. The people who depend on lawyers don't give a holy fuck how smart you are in the abstract. They care if you can help them. And obviously that does involve the sort of intelligence captured by the LSAT at times. But it also involves many other things.

You know, I do like most of you, most of the time. But over and above the basic stupidity of this discussion, it's actually a real issue that you can argue about what the best lawyer looks like without considering the perspective of a client who just needs a problem solved. When you forget that law is about clients, just as medicine is about patients, you've lost sight of something important. And it's not a small error.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Diplock

[CleanHands]

4 minutes ago, Diplock said:

You've simply taken it as assumed that once you figure out who is smartest you've also figured out who the best lawyers are. And I'm here to tell you - it's not bloody true.

Effective lawyering takes in a lot of different skills and attributes.

And I like you as well, but not only was this not assumed, but it was even explicitly addressed. It's ironic that you say people here are "missing the point" while acting like something that everyone here has already agreed about was a fresh insight from you.

I don't begrudge that your eyes clearly glazed over and you didn't bother actually reading what you are responding to, but this is a rare swing and a miss from you in any event.

Also, you spent enough time on the previous forums to be well aware that this was the calibre of discussion to expect when you opened your wallet, so the buyer's remorse is entirely on you. 😛

[CoconutWater]

1 hour ago, CleanHands said:

And I like you as well, but not only was this not assumed, but it was even explicitly addressed. It's ironic that you say people here are "missing the point" while acting like something that everyone here has already agreed about was a fresh insight from you.

I don't begrudge that your eyes clearly glazed over and you didn't bother actually reading what you are responding to, but this is a rare swing and a miss from you in any event.

Also, you spent enough time on the previous forums to be well aware that this was the calibre of discussion to expect when you opened your wallet, so the buyer's remorse is entirely on you. 😛

You must be pleasant to work with.

[GGrievous]

What a shitshow this thread became! 
 

I just wanted to say that getting accepted with a 146 is impressive as hell. It’s a difficult thing to do even in access categories from what I understand, so OP must have had a pretty outstanding app otherwise to overcome that absolute dogshit (sorry) score. I have no doubt they’re a special person and will go on to do great things. Though perhaps not at timed tests which is where the “weak correlation” comes from I believe. But anyway, I’m glad admissions overlooks LSAT in some cases, especially with the major issues in access and representation that the field has. Congrats OP! 
 

 

Edited August 15, 2021 by Barry

[LMP]

8 hours ago, Diplock said:

Snip

I don't think people should be faulted for ignoring the aspect you are talking about. You make several very strong points regarding what makes a good lawyer, I wouldn't argue with them. But the question OP asked was about performance in law school. And I absolutely think it is fair to discuss things like effort and talent in this context. 

 

[Diplock]

1 hour ago, LMP said:

I don't think people should be faulted for ignoring the aspect you are talking about. You make several very strong points regarding what makes a good lawyer, I wouldn't argue with them. But the question OP asked was about performance in law school. And I absolutely think it is fair to discuss things like effort and talent in this context. 

 

Yes, and I don't disagree with that. I think the discussion to that point was reasonable, and I stand by my feeling that admissions committees take in GPA as well as LSAT for exactly this reason, but I can also understand why some others feel differently. Where the discussion went after that, in my opinion, was a very strange place.

[Goku560]

I am curious to know which law school were you accepted in?