Navigating Law School and Beyond:
A Practical Guide for Students Who Have Disabilities

4. The Law School Admission Test (LSAT)
One Canadian student’s experience writing the LSAT:

 
"A student was denied accommodation when writing her Law School Admission Test, because her request for occasional breaks during testing was received one day late by the Law School Admission Council. She decided to write the LSAT without accommodation, but could not concentrate because of pain. Unable to complete the test, the candidate scored poorly. She later wrote another LSAT, this time with the needed accommodation, and her score improved "by 25 percentiles".

Almost all applicants to most law schools in the United States and Canada (outside of Québec) must write a standardized Law School Admission Test. The LSAT (often pronounced "Elsat") is intended to gauge the candidates’ suitability/capability for the legal profession. This chapter considers steps taken by the administrators of the LSAT, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) to incorporate the concept of reasonable accommodation (see the Preface) into the administration of the LSAT. LSAC states a commitment to provide accommodations to students with disabilities. Many of the participants in our project surveys and focus groups, however, expressed concern regarding their LSAT experiences. In numerous cases the LSAT process remains an exercise that students who have disabilities find unfair and intimidating.

The LSAT test scores are an integral component of evaluation criteria employed by law schools and greatly influence most students’ chances of admission to a faculty of law. In recent years, LSAC has developed a policy of accommodations for persons with disabilities. Yet many Canadian law students and lawyers have said that their performance on the LSAT was hindered by their disability and/or by inadequate consideration of their special needs during the testing process. These contributors to our project data did not regard their LSAT results as an accurate indication of their ability to succeed in legal studies. We have no reasonably attainable way of discovering how many individuals, if any, believe that they failed to gain admission to a Canadian law school, or to the school of their choice, because of inadequacies in LSAC’s accommodations regime. LSAC permits an individual to take the Test three times within a 2-year period. The law schools to which one applies are informed that the Test has been rewritten.

LSAC pledges that accommodations may be made available to individuals with documented disabilities who wish to write the Test. To receive an accommodation, individuals must request it from LSAC well in advance. One cannot simply show up for the LSAT and expect to have accommodations provided. Applicants can obtain an accommodation request packet in several ways:

1. online at www.lsac.org or via e-mail at lsacinfo@LSAC.org

2. by writing to Law School Admission Council, Test Administration, Testing Accommodation Section, Box 2000-T, 661 Penn Street, Newton P.A., 18940-0995, USA.

3. by calling (215) 968-1001

LSAC also makes information available at all Canadian universities and law schools as well as at student counselling offices. Valuable additional information on the LSAT, for students in any province, may be found on the website of the Ontario Law School Application Service (http://www.ouac.on.ca/olsas/olsas-lsat.html) / Service ontarien de demande d’admission en droit (http://centre.ouac.on.ca/olsas/). For the year 2000-2001, there is a fee of $122 (Canadian) plus tax to write the LSAT. There is a late registration fee of $74 and additional fees related to changing a test centre ($37) or a test date ($37). Fees are non- refundable and are the responsibility of the student.

Some survey participants found that LSAT preparation courses (which can be expensive) were beneficial, while others did not. An alternative or additional way to prepare for the LSAT is to practise with sample questions and/or to study with someone else who will be taking the test. LSAT preparation materials are available for an additional fee from LSAC. A free sample test may be downloaded from the LSAC website.

LSAC offers "reasonable" efforts to provide accommodations specific to the nature of an applicant’s disability. They provide testing in a number of alternate formats, including 18 point print, Braille and audiocassette. Accommodations may include the use of a reader, a scribe, an accessible testing centre, or additional test time. When seeking an accommodation, individuals are requested to refer to any and all arrangements that will be necessary for them to write a more successful LSAT.

Although LSAC says that it will review every request that it receives, the mere submission of an accommodation request does not necessarily lead to a testing accommodation. Evaluation of the request must meet LSAC’s current criteria. The organization reserves the right to make the final judgement regarding testing accommodations.

In order to receive an accommodation, the candidate must be registered to take the exam and must have submitted all of the required forms in the accommodation request packet. This packet will be sent to one’s home by LSAC. Contained in this packet are forms that the applicant and a licensed specialist or doctor must complete. Physical and cognitive disabilities require different supporting documentation. Applicants with cognitive disabilities must provide the results of a neuropsychological or psycho-educational examination, a family history, the results of aptitude testing and a psycho-social history.

People who are requesting accommodations must submit requests before the posted deadline. LSAC will not accept requests for accommodations that are late, incomplete or unsupported by the documentation that LSAC deems proper. LSAC suggests that applicants needing accommodation apply well in advance of the deadline to ensure that their accommodation needs can be met.

Students who apply for additional test time on the LSAT should be aware that LSAC automatically sends a statement to all law schools to which the accommodated student applied, indicating that an accommodation has been given and stating that his or her individual score should be interpreted with sensitivity and flexibility. Further to this, scores that have been achieved with extra time are not averaged in with the scores achieved by candidates who received the standard amount of time, nor ranked according to percentiles. Rather, the raw score achieved by the student is reported individually to the law schools.

Many survey participants expressed reservation about the accommodation request process because they felt they were being forced to prove their disability in order to justify their request. This is particularly true for "invisible" disabilities such as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and chronic fatigue, according to our research input. LSAC treats certain disabilities more restrictively, and candidates dealing with these disabilities have had more difficulty in receiving accommodations. Denial of accommodation occurs frequently enough that the process has come under Justice Department scrutiny in the USA. LSAC has come under fire from some quarters for allegedly being insensitive and unresponsive to special needs and for alleged discrimination.

One U.S. student’s experience with the LSAC:

On January 18, 2000, Lise Dorfsman and others launched a class action discrimination lawsuit against LSAC, after her accommodation request for the LSAT was denied. She argued that she was entitled to special arrangements under federal law concerning disabilities, because she has ADD and bipolar disorder ("manic depression"). Ms. Dorfsman was diagnosed with these conditions in 1997. She had received examination accommodation as an undergraduate, consisting of extra time on exams and a private room for testing. She provided LSAC with reports from a psychiatrist and a neurological diagnostic technician, recommending that she receive similar accommodations for the LSAT. As of June 2000, the litigation was still in the stage of pre-trial motions, with the LSAC seeking to have the case dismissed.

Counsel for LSAC responded that candidates who want special accommodations must provide convincing documentation that they suffer from a "significant" disability. "There is no evidence that Ms. Dorfsman is substantially impaired relative to the general population...[and] test- taking anxiety is not considered a disability under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)." Critics argue that LSAC’s position downplays the difficulty of quantifying the impact that a disability has on a person and of rating it on a continuum. Each person’s case is unique.

Ms. Dorfsman was distressed by what she saw as LSAC’s requirement that she provide conclusive proof of her disability. She reported scoring in the bottom 29.8 percentile when writing a practice LSAT without accommodations. With the desired accommodations, she was ranked in the top 6.7 percentile.

Our survey results indicated that students with physical disabilities also had some difficulties with the LSAT accommodation procedure. Although respondents with physical disabilities generally stated that they received the accommodations requested, the way that the accommodation was given did not always allow them to write the LSAT to the best of their abilities. Individuals taking the Test were not allowed an opportunity to practice a sample LSAT examination with the scribe appointed to assist that individual.

In the experience of our respondents, all scribes and other assistants were chosen by LSAC and the student was not given the opportunity to participate in the selection process. This approach can lead to serious negative consequences. Everyone has his or her own style for drawing diagrams that may be part of an LSAT exam - or for describing or comparing pictorial or graphic images to a scribe. Test takers complained that if they had been given the opportunity to work with the scribe before being tested, or had been able to bring their own experienced scribe, problems encountered in the test could easily have been avoided.

A Few Tips for Individuals Writing LSAT’s

Any student who may require accommodations for the LSAT should visit the LSAT website, obtain the accommodation request package from LSAC right away and immediately contact LSAC with any follow-up questions. The applicant must learn as early as possible exactly which documentation will be needed to bolster the accommodation request and arrange to obtain it from the appropriate experts.

Although it may be disconcerting to be required to prove one’s disability, it is currently the only process for receiving LSAT accommodation. You should recognize that if your application needs to include the opinion of a medical or other expert, it may take longer than you wish to acquire an appointment and a report. You want to be sure that delays in submitting documentation do not cause your registration or request for accommodation to be late. In case any problems arise between you and LSAC with regard to any documentation or accommodation issue, try to leave yourself a span of time to resolve them before the LSAT date.

LSAC’s accommodation practices are challenged in another U.S. case:

In December 1999, shortly before Lise Dorfsman announced her planned lawsuit, the U.S. Justice Department sued LSAC for denying test accommodations to four people with physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy and rheumatoid arthritis.

The sources for information on law suits involving LSAC were articles by reporter Roberto Sanchez in the Seattle Times, on December 22, 1999 and January 8, 2000 and subsequent e-mails among Canadian and U.S. disability rights advocates. After writing to hundreds of top corporate executives seeking financial assistance for her suit, Ms. Dorfsman was reportedly offered supportive financing by Steve Wozniak, who with Steve Jobs had founded Apple Computer in 1976.