Understanding the role of the GRE and LSAT in Law school admissions

If you've recently started looking for law schools, you may have already come across two crucial acronyms: GRE and LSAT. Knowledge of the difference between the GRE and LSAT tests is the very first step towards creating an application schedule, as your choice will require various preparations and different applications in each case.

First of all, LSAT stands for the Law School Admission Test. It was created specifically for future lawyers, who should prove their capability of reading complex texts, identifying the weaknesses of the provided argumentation, and solving logic problems in a short period of time. To pass it, no mathematical skills are required; only a score ranging from 120 to 180.

It was the only test accepted by ABA-approved law schools for many years and remains the most popular one.

In addition to the LSAT, there is also the GRE, or the Graduate Record Examination. This exam applies in many different graduate fields, from business to science, and not exclusively law. It contains separate verbal and quantitative reasoning parts, which are graded from 130 to 1,70 as well as an analytical writing part. Unlike the LSAT, the GRE is a general test, so it measures not the skills required for law but for many other academic fields.

The thing that changed the playing field is the fact that more law schools began to accept the GRE instead of the LSAT in their requirements, a policy that was officially confirmed by the American Bar Association in 2021. However, not all schools do so, so you need to check what the specific requirements are at those law schools you plan to apply to.

Neither test is better than the other – they just measure different abilities and can be used by different schools differently. In order to find out which test is right for you, you first need to understand what it actually measures.

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Law school test preferences: Comparing the LSAT and GRE

The question that arises repeatedly in the minds of applicants is the following: Do law schools prefer LSAT or GRE scores? There is no clear answer, but rather a more complicated one, depending on which law schools you apply to.

Traditionally, the LSAT has been the only test option available. Moreover, it was designed specifically to assess performance in law school in the first year, and there are decades of proof that support its validity, which is one of the reasons why LSAT scores are accepted by all ABA-accredited law schools. This long history gives admissions committees a known benchmark to rely on.

The GRE appeared much later, after research proved that it also predicted law school success. In 2021, the American Bar Association recognized it officially as an alternative test to the LSAT, and a significant number of law schools, including the highly ranked ones, accept GRE test results. Those schools accepting both tests usually claim that they assess them equally, translating the results with the help of concordance tables.

But "accepted" does not mean "preferred" or "required by all." A significant number of law schools still require the LSAT either because they have yet to develop a method for evaluating GRE scores, or simply because the LSAT scores seem to be a better predictor among their applicants.

For a practical answer, however, the key question is not which test is more popular with admissions officers in general, nor whether LSAT or GRE scores are preferred. The question is which test is accepted at each particular school you are considering attending. The only sure way to know is to find out what the admission policies of those particular schools are.

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