Law schools just got three more years to admit students without the LSAT.
On August 21, 2026, the ABA's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Council voted to extend by three years the window for law schools to apply for a variance letting them admit students without a standardized admissions test score, an option first authorized in 2024 and currently used by 21 schools.
By Helena Harper, Editorial Director
The vote
On Friday, August 21, 2026, at the ABA's Annual Meeting in Chicago, the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar Council voted to extend, by three years, the window during which law schools may apply for a variance from Standard 503's standardized-testing requirement, after the original application deadline had lapsed.
What Standard 503 requires
Standard 503 is one of the ABA's core accreditation requirements for J.D. programs. It requires each accredited law school to require every first-year applicant to take a "valid and reliable" admissions test, in practice the LSAT or an ABA-recognized alternative. Interpretation 503-3 had long allowed a narrow exception, letting a school admit up to 10% of an entering class without a test score, without needing special permission from the ABA.
That 10% exception had existed for years as a fixed ceiling. It let a school make room for a small number of applicants whose file was strong on other grounds even without a test score, but it capped how far any single school could go in that direction without the ABA's separate sign-off. The variance program the Council approved in 2024 is that separate sign-off, made available on a school-by-school basis rather than as a change to Standard 503 itself.
How the variance works
In November 2024, meeting in Seattle, the Council approved a broader exception: a variance process letting a qualifying law school admit up to 100% of an entering class without a standardized test score, for a term of three to five years. A variance does not repeal Standard 503 for the school that receives it; it is a time-limited, individually granted permission to depart from the standard while the ABA watches how that departure plays out. José Roberto "Beto" Juárez Jr., who chairs the Council's working group on the variance, has presented on the program at both the 2024 and 2026 meetings.
As of August 2026, 21 of the ABA's 198 accredited law schools have been granted the variance, though not all of them have yet enrolled a class of test-optional admits. Schools that use it take on a reporting obligation in exchange for the flexibility: they must give the ABA data on how the demographics of their incoming class change, how test-optional admits perform academically, and how their attrition and first-time bar-passage rates compare with students who did take a standardized test. The ABA is working with AccessLex Institute, a nonprofit focused on legal-education access, to analyze that data as it comes in.
The original deadline for schools to apply for the variance had lapsed by the time of the August 2026 meeting, which meant that any school that had not already applied was, for the moment, shut out of the program. The Council's vote extends that application window three more years, so schools that have not yet sought the variance can still apply while the ABA continues collecting outcome data from the schools that already have.
Three consequences for the profession
What the extension means, in practice, for law schools, applicants, and the lawyers who will eventually hire from these classes:
10% became 100%
Interpretation 503-3 had capped test-optional admits at 10% of an entering class. A school that holds the Standard 503 variance can now admit up to 100% of its class without a standardized test score.
21 schools, and counting
Of the ABA's 198 accredited law schools, 21 have been granted the variance so far, and not all have enrolled test-optional students yet. The three-year extension keeps the application window open to others that want in.
Data before permanence
Schools using the variance must report demographic, academic, attrition, and bar-passage data to the ABA, which is working with AccessLex Institute to analyze it before any decision on making test-optional admissions a general, permanent option.
The Council's own framing keeps this squarely provisional. The stated purpose of the extension is to gather more data on how test-optional admits perform, not to declare the standardized-test requirement obsolete. Standard 503's baseline testing requirement remains in force for any school that has not sought or received a variance, and a school that does hold one is still bound by the three-to-five-year term and the reporting obligations that come with it.
For law schools weighing whether to apply, and for legal employers watching how bar-passage rates track across cohorts, the next few years are the evidence-gathering phase the ABA says it wants before deciding whether test-optional admissions becomes a standing option rather than an exception granted school by school.
Archivar
The Archivar Editorial Desk
Fact-checked against the authorities listed below. This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice.
Sources: American Bar Association, Standard 503 and Interpretation 503-3, ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools; ABA Journal, "Legal Ed council extends test-optional admissions variance" (August 2026) and "Aspiring law students could skip standardized testing under new ABA variance" (November 2024); Law.com/ALM, "ABA Council Extends Test-Optional Admissions Variance by 3 Years" (August 24, 2026); 2Civility.org, Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism.
