Harvard Law School, The GRE, And Moneyball

Following up on my previous posts:

• Harvard Is Second Law School To Admit 1Ls Based On GRE Rather Than LSAT (Mar. 9, 2017)
• NY Times, Will Dropping The LSAT Requirement Create More Miserable Lawyers? (Mar. 19, 2017)
• Bill Henderson (Indiana), U.S. News Eliminates The Rankings Advantage Of The GRE, But Harvard Has Started A 'Quant' Arms Race For Diverse Students Who Will Thrive In A Transformed, Tech-Driven, Disrupted Legal Profession (Apr. 11, 2017)

Forbes, Harvard Law School's Moneyball Moment:

Starting with next year’s admissions cycle, Harvard Law school will launch a pilot program allowing applicants to apply with either the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), the standardized test that nearly all law schools have used for decades, or the GRE General Test (GRE), used by many graduate programs outside of law or medical school. ... 

[M]uch of what makes Harvard Harvard is the quality of the talent it is able to attract. The lure of Wall Street or Silicon Valley, the availability of capital for everything from biotech to software to social media start-ups, and the increasingly tenuous ROI for students ready to invest time and money in an expensive law degree are all siphoning off their share of recent college graduates who might otherwise have chosen law school.

It is to Harvard’s advantage to increase access to top talent and to be able to cast a wider net. As Jessica Soban, Harvard Law School’s Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Admissions, put it, “Harvard Law School works to eliminate barriers to legal education for top talent. We seek that talent from a variety of backgrounds: across different academic disciplines, different countries, and different socio-economic backgrounds.”

Enter the GRE. By accepting the GRE, in one fell swoop, Harvard gets access to 600,000 test takers in 160 different countries and a test that applicants can schedule 360 days a year. The LSAT, by comparison, is administered four times a year in 20 different countries, to about 85,000 students. If you are looking for talent, the GRE pool is far wider and far deeper, in part because the test is far more accessible. ... The wonder is not that they broke with tradition by accepting the GRE, the wonder is that they didn’t do it sooner.

Harvard, it seems, has finally recognized what the rest of the schools have forgotten: it’s not the test that counts, it’s the talent. A friend, whose daughter got a perfect score on the LSAT, was recently complaining about how aggressive the recruiters are from the top schools – solely on the basis of scores. Is it possible that law schools have confused the yardstick with that which is being measured? ...

Harvard, as the uncontested leader of the pack, is uniquely positioned to change the rules of the game without threatening its brand. They have gone where their competitors cannot. In so doing, they have expanded their access to the one essential asset that no school can do without: qualified applicants. They have also shrewdly given themselves an early adopter’s advantage. Like Billy Beane’s Oakland A's, they have broken with tradition and in so doing, have found their own Moneyball moment.

• Paul L. Caron (Pepperdine) & Rafael Gely (Missouri), What Law Schools Can Learn from Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, 82 Tex. L. Rev. 1483 (2004)