Is an economics degree good preparation for the LSAT?

ABSTRACT

Those aspiring to law school must first complete the Law School Admissions Test, or LSAT. When ranking undergraduate majors by mean LSAT scores, economics has proven to be near the very top, if not the number-one major, over the last two decades. The goal of this analysis is the search for additional evidence that an economics degree is good preparation for the LSAT beyond mean score comparisons. After controlling for pre-college academic ability, collegiate academic ability, variables related to law school aspirations, institutional characteristics, several collegiate experiences, and demographics, the author finds that an economics degree has a positive and statistically significant association with higher LSAT performance.

KEYWORDS:

• economics degree
• Juris Doctor
• law school
• LSAT standardized test

JEL CODES:

• A22
• A29

Acknowledgments

The author thanks three anonymous reviewers for their helpful insight and suggestions.

Notes

1. These include the facts that joint degree programs in economics and law are offered at many leading universities; at least one economist is among the faculty at each of the top law schools in North America; several academic journals are devoted to the intersection of economics and law; some law and economics scholars have become federal judges; Ronald Coase and Gary Becker, who helped create the economic analysis of law, both won Nobel Prizes in Economics; and journal articles using an economic approach are cited in the major American law journals more often than those using any other approach (Cooter and Ulen 2016; Craft and Baker 2003).

2. Although this is more often the case in student surveys, it is important to note that LSAT scores within these data are self-reported.

3. These surveys do identify students with multiple majors. Within the current CIRP TFS/CSS subsample of students who took the LSAT, however, there are exactly zero such students. Thus, no choice needed to be made as to if and how these students should enter the analysis.

4. The SAT is the typical entrance exam required by most colleges and universities in the United States for admission to undergraduate programs. It tests students' reading/verbal abilities and mathematics abilities in separate sub-exams. Because the LSAT tests students' reading comprehension and writing skills, but not mathematical ability, it is particularly useful that the TFS captured individual SAT section scores and not solely overall SAT scores. Estimates from the economics degree indicator do not change if SAT scores enter the models as standardized scores (z-scores) instead of or in addition to point scores.

5. Otherwise identical models with a time trend variable instead of time fixed effects yield highly similar results.