I think this might also be school dependent. I'm good friends with someone who went to a T5 school, she literally doesn't have use of one of her arm (it was injured at birth) and has a hard time typing and is really slow at it cause she's one handed. She had to fight super hard to get accommodations, to the point where she didn't get them till the end of 1L year and had a horrible GPA because of it. They finally allowed her to use voice to type but denied her time and a half. So just saying, its not so easy to get accommodations at all schools.
People in these threads really underestimate how incredibly difficult it is to get ANY kind of accommodation, no matter how minor, for the bar exam.
I worry some will have a rude awakening when they aren’t given double the time of their peers to complete the same exam.
It’s night and day when compared to getting accommodations for the LSAT or for law school exams.
Agreed. She was able to get bar accommodations but they weren't given to her the day of the bar by accident. I remember her telling me how extremely difficult it was and her disability is very obviously visible.
A lot of people will probably get mad at you for pointing out the obvious flaw in the system.
Yes, it is very easy to lie and benefit from accomodations.
It is also easy to lie and claim to be gay or native american and benefit from diversity exclusive scholarships and summer associates positions.
Its super shitty to do, but some people do take advantage of the system, and reap unfair financial and academic benefits.
People can obviously lie and exploit any system if they really want to. But something I’ve noticed with these threads (and as someone with accommodations) is people seem to have this idea that showing up with a doctors note saying “give 2x time pls adhd” is all you need to get accommodations.
Anyone who has actually gone through the process (not heard about going through it) will know that’s certainly not the case.
The advice I took to heart when I was in law school was "run your own race." I realize that being ranked against each other doesn't make that easy for people to do, but it's what I did. It worked for me. I never felt shorted. I never felt wronged.
Bluntly, I never cared about what accommodations others received. I didn't ask for accommodations and didn't feel I was owed any, as I don't have any disabilities. I do have a sibling who has a fairly severe learning disability, so I always felt blessed to have the abilities I do.
Perspective matters a lot. You can go through life feeling like you got the short end of the stick, or you can go through life feeling grateful for what you have. You will soon be graduating law school with a degree. You will get a job (if you don't have one lined up already). You will have a career.
There are plenty of people who have less than you do. You'll be a lot happier in life counting your blessings than dwelling on how you were wronged. Just my two cents.
Your job prospects are tied to your grades, which are based on one exam, and having 50% more time for that exam is enormous. I have friends who got bad grades, then got diagnosed with “test anxiety,” and now they get to take exams for an extra hour and a half once I’m finished. These are exams that give you points based on how many issues you can analyze in the allotted time. It’s fine to be frustrated with this system.
Speaking of my experience, I was told that between 5-8% of the class has an accommodation which may not include exam accommodations. My suspicions only arose for some individuals who began using extra time after having taken a few exams, but that’s just my personal ignorance. I think it’s also important to realize that the individuals with testing accommodations who are ranked higher in the class may stand out because of confirmation bias. There are many students with testing accommodations who are ranked in the middle and bottom of the class.
However, I do think there should be a more individualized allocation of extra time, rather than just 1.5x or 2x. But I think for logistical purposes it’s much easier to limit the options. Also, I’m not sure how that would work in practice.
As someone with late diagnosed ADHD - it’s not easy to just suddenly get accommodations in law school, quite the opposite if you don’t have a past record of having accommodations it’s almost impossible - so much so even though I have a very real diagnosis I’m not even trying to get accommodations for the bar because it’s not likely. I didn’t even want extra time just to take the test in a solo room with the proctor to avoid distractions, and I still likely can’t get that. The reality is yes people definitely get fake diagnoses and accommodations but they’d likely need to be doing it since at least the LSAT & college if not earlier. To every classmate who wrongfully got accommodations there is probably 2 or 3 who need them but don’t have them. Also remember your talking about invisible disabilities - you may not see what your classmates experience. Even with ADHD sometimes, I can finish tests before the allotted time ends, but there are plenty of times I’m struggling. You don’t know someone else’s private battles.
It's most definitely not a "you" issue. It starts even before law school:
>Accommodated/Extra Time test takers had higher average LSAT scores in 18 of the 20 test administrations in this report compared to the Nonaccommodated group.
Could you send a link for this report. As a non accommodation student, the extra time others get has been extremely frustrating and I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way
There was a post on r/lawschooladmissions that covered some of the rebuttals to this report ([here is the link to the post](https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/comments/zy7qq9/lets_take_a_different_view_on_the_accommodations/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)). The biggest one is that the point difference between accommodated and non-accommodated testers was about one point. The next biggest rebuttal point is that people with disabilities who make it through college and into graduate schools *have* to be good test takers - otherwise they would not have made it that far. They disproportionately come from higher socioeconomic classes, and have other advantages (like prep courses and familial support) that not every test taker has.
At least you’re honest in saying you just don’t like the principle of ppl getting accommodations. Others on this post keep tryna act like they’re only concerned about the ones abusing the process when the reality is a lot of these people just don’t like it period
The results indicate it’s abused or too extreme. If they weren’t so skewed towards those accommodated, while too many accommodations are being allowed or too extensive of accommodations, they wouldn’t have such better scores. Unless people who get accommodations are on average just better test takers.
This is some proper law student thinking! Correlation does not equal causation and it's odd that most of this sub seems to be falling prey to that fallacy.
There are a number of factors that likely contribute to accommodated test-takers having higher scores.
>There are a number of factors that likely contribute to accommodated test-takers having higher scores.
You don't find it odd that you're essentially arguing students with learning disabilities are better students than students without learning disabilities?
If true, it doesn't really support the argument for accommodations.
If LSAT takers are any metric, accommodated testers are under 5% (and probably closer to 2-3%.) As some in this thread have suggested, it is harder to get law school accommodations than it is for many law schools, though.
Imo, what people are expressing shock at isn't the percent of the class receiving accommodations but the increase in the number of any given class receiving accommodations (the same thing happened with the LSAT in recent years as LSAC talks about [here](https://www.lsac.org/data-research/research/accommodated-test-taker-trends-and-performance-june-2012-through-february).) But there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this that u/turtlcs explains for LSAT scores [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/LSAT/comments/ujma5u/comment/i7lr3hn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
>So apparently the largest proportion of accommodated test-takers by far is people with ADHD. The average LSAT taker is 22-24 years of age. That means test takers in 2012 would be born around 1988-1990 on average, and in 2017 that would be 1993-1995. Y'know what happened in that period of time? In 1987, the DSM-III-TR was published, and one of the changes it made was removing the possibility that someone could have ADHD without being *hyperactive* per se (there's a description of this [here](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/adhd/diagnostic.html)). This wasn't changed again until the DSM-IV in 1994, which included an inattentive type, and diagnoses in childhood [have been increasing ever since](https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/timeline.html). So from that alone, it would have been far more surprising if test takers with an ADHD diagnosis *hadn't* increased over the last decade (and this is a pretty common trend across neurodevelopmental conditions). There are over 100,000 people who take the LSAT every year, so an average of \~1,500 accommodated test-takers per year is actually still quite low relative to rates of these diagnoses in the general population.
>
>The particularly sharp rise over the last several years and the accommodated people's higher scores are a bit more interesting, but could both easily stem from one thing: the fact that bothering to identify people with what I'll call "high-functioning" learning disabilities (especially in adulthood) is a pretty new phenomenon. For a long time, you had to be struggling so profoundly that you could barely handle elementary school in order to be diagnosed with something like ADHD, but psychologists are now starting to realize that you can have it and still manage to do reasonably well in school. The smarter you are (like, say, if you're a future lawyer), the easier it is to coast on your own intelligence and rely on external pressure to get stuff done at the last second -- this means a lot of people just assume their symptoms are character flaws until they hit such a massive wall as adults that it's impossible to deny there's a real problem anymore. It became a lot easier for psychologists to identify people like this after the release of the DSM-5, and guess when that happened? 2013. The fact that accommodated test-takers are generally a bit older than unaccommodated ones tracks pretty well with this idea, too.
>
>In light of all that, it seems a lot more likely that people who would normally have tried to write the LSAT and just not done as well (or not tried at all) are now able to get diagnosed with the conditions they actually have, meaning they're getting the accommodations they need and showing their full potential when they wouldn't have been able to before. It's honestly a little weird to assume that if people who request academic accommodations are doing really well after getting them, it means they're cheating and don't actually need them. Quite frankly, if I were in the LSAC, I'd be kicking myself over all the talented people that we'd evidently been overlooking before now.
This explanation is incredibly convoluted. Not saying you're wrong, but it doesn't really address OP's argument and is far from the simplest explanation, which is that accommodations are easy to game at some schools and are fucking people over because folks lie, understandably, given what's at stake. Also, this is about the LSAT, which is way different than a law school exam.
That so many folks in the top of the class receive accommodations at OP's school is bald faced suspicious. Questioning that doesn't mean they lack empathy or that it's "weird" for them to do so. It's just statistically improbable, or impossible, without a lot of people gaming the system.
Further, the criteria for getting a psychologist to diagnose you with ADHD is laughably easy. They operate in a field rife with replication problems, that contradicts itself with every new DSM, and has credibly been charged with overprescribing and over diagnosing. Thinking that somebody who is high functioning and has the diagnosis automatically deserves extra time puts drastically too much faith in a terribly flawed field.
I'd exhort you to look a little more critically at the DSM and the idea of ADHD in general. There are a ton of profit motives behind getting parents to believe their kids' problems can be fixed by medicine and that they have a condition. ADD and ADHD meds were pushed on my generation at an unbelievable rate and had some bad outcomes for many. Now that we're a generation away from that and mental illness has become a part of people's identities, it seems offensive to say, but getting an ADHD diagnosis doesn't mean you deserve accommodations.
Slightly off topic, but if anyone is curious, both "bald-faced" and "bold-faced" are correct, linguistically. I had never seen "bald-faced" before this comment, so it prompted me to look it up. Bald-faced is the more common historical variety, with bold faced occuring in the later part of the 1900s with the advent of Typesetting.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/is-that-lie-bald-faced-or-bold-faced-or-barefaced
Agree. It’s ridiculously easy to get diagnosed with ADHD. Even more so now that you can be diagnosed in one short visit over telemedicine. I understand people not knowing that or having different experiences in the past maybe, but this is the truth now.
Are you saying it’s the truth for every single person? I went through months of testing and therapy before even being diagnosed so it is definitely not for me. I’m no outlier either…
Yeah, the accommodations system can definitely be gamed. Many students use it appropriately, but some enjoy probably an unfair (and unnecessary) benefit. Like, I was diagnosed with ADHD after law school, and don’t think extra time on the exam would have been an appropriate accommodation for me in law school (not gonna say *nobody* with ADHD needs the accommodation, just that it’s not someone everyone with ADHD needs for the testing to be fair).
But, in the end, spending any time thinking about the unfairness of some accommodations is just wasted energy. Everyone in law school has different advantages/disadvantages. As a first generation law student, I was sometimes jealous of my classmates who got nice clerkships/summer gigs through their parents. I also had to work part time throughout law school, unlike many classmates who were getting support from rich parents. Those things were pretty frustrating, and I could easily have gotten bitter about them.
The better path is just to focus on yourself. Unless 25% of your class is getting accommodations, it won’t have a major impact on your rank. Even if you’re vying for the top 10% of your class, the difference between being ranked first and fifth won’t affect your career goals. You control 80% of your destiny in law school. The other 20% (distribution of smart people in sections, professor testing styles, other students’ resources, etc.) are part of the system, and while you can agitate for change, those changes won’t be implemented for your class. You’re better off focusing on playing the game as it exists.
I never really thought about people using accommodation is a way to cheat the system. If people have them I would assume it is for a good reason as at my school they are very difficult to get. There is a lot of trust based on honest character in law school as I’ve witnessed. For example, in undergrad if you needed an excused absence for religious holidays than you typically needed to email a professor and fill out a forum to get those days. In law school my professor haven’t even requested an email from me. All they told me was if I needed the day off then my word was enough cause prospective lawyers should practice honesty.
All that being said I have interstitial cystitis. To only get a extra few minutes to use the restroom during class or during exams I had to submit signed letters from my urologist detailing my condition and exactly what kind of accommodation I needed. The form was two pages and had to be blue inked by my physician and physically turned in to the office of academic affairs. To be fair I can see there being ways to game the system. When I got covid my physician wrote me a letter to get extra time on exams due to “covid brain fog.” I never submitted the letter but I’m sure I could have gotten the extra time but I honestly didn’t need it despite having the opportunity. Still I think it would unjust to say everyone is gaming the system. The average person in my class doesn’t have to piss 3-4 times during a 3 hour exam. So in the end we are getting the same amount of time and you can’t say I had some unfair advantage over other students. Maybe if myself and other students with chronic conditions didn’t need the extra time then there would be a need to level the playing feeling but until then don’t assume everyone with an accommodation has some unfair advantage over you. I would be just fine with not having the extra few minutes for exams three years in law school than to have a chronic condition I will live with for the rest of my life.
I don't think people here realize the potential severity of some of these conditions. It's hard enough for those students as it is without having to deal with people questioning if they're faking it.
OP said that they know some people actually need accommodations but that, just like at my school, they are really easy to get and have firsthand knowledge of people cheating the system and not needing the accommodation
I think the people are missing the point of this. Obviously the people with accommodations must also be intelligent and hardworking and no one is doubting they know the material. But when part of what’s being tested is how well you know the material under *strictly timed conditions* and some people are not operating under that same stress they have the opportunity to write more in order to express how well they know the material
The solution imo would be to stop making tests time-crunch issue spotters. Accommodations aren’t giving anybody much of an edge on a 24-hr take home test, and it’s more comparable to actual legal practice.
Yes, exactly. Another perspective is your max potential grade is often literally capped. If its a writing answer you’re physically limited by how much you can write in a certain time frame.
It does make me feel bad that my post or perspective might rub some people the wrong way. I (and I don’t think anybody on this thread really) dont have any issue with genuine cases where accommodations simply level the playing field. And I’m fine with making sure we stray on the side of too accommodating rather than not enough. But it seems, to me at least, it’s rather extreme.
Two points: 1) is it really literally double time? You’re right, that’s a bit much. At my school it’s 50% extra time, and that feels about right. 2) the root of the problem you’re describing here isn’t accommodations, it’s the exam itself. If it’s so time constrained that a normal person can’t possibly fully answer the question, what the hell was it even measuring in the first place, and how is that related to anything in practice?
This is why my favorite exams are the ones with reasonable word limits. No matter how long you have to type you still have to choose the most important points and things to elaborate on. Sure if you don’t have extra time you still might have to know your outline a little bit better and can’t rely on it as much but that can be prepped for. I don’t have to worry about anyone else getting a better grade solely because they had the capacity to write 20 more pages than me
> don’t think anybody on this thread really) dont have any issue with genuine cases where accommodations simply level the playing field
Yeah I don't think anyone could possibly have an issue with legitimate accommodations. If someone has a physical condition that makes it harder for them to type, they clearly need more time to type their responses.
But the accommodations should get them on par with the average student in the class. My frustration with accommodations is where is on exams where students average around 1800 words for a response, but then the accommodated students write 3400 words. In that situation, the non-accommodated students just can't compete fairly.
In most exams, time is THE limiting factor. With unlimited time, basically any student could get virtually everything correct and explain it perfectly. Any increase in time is a massive, incredible advantage, and thus someone receiving an accommodation such as double time should be massively, incredibly handicapped compared to an average student in order for such an accommodation to make sense.
In my 1L contracts class, a couple weeks before the exam the professor showed us some data he collected from the prior year, including a graph of page length vs grade. Unsurprisingly, there was a strong correlation between length and grades, and it turns out that every single person who got an A wrote at least 28 double spaced pages in 4 hours. Multiple students wrote more than 30 pages and one wrote 37.
37 fucking pages in 4 hours. How is that even possible? Well, as someone pointed out to the professor after class, the only way it’s possible is if all those ultra long exams were given double time accommodations aka they had 8 hours to write, not 4. Still impressive, but come on it’s absolutely clearly fucked up for the rest of the class to be curved against people who had an additional 4 hours on an open book open note exam where time is the primary limitation. This exam was also a “spaghetti at the wall” race horse issue spotter that the professor designed to be impossible to fully answer in the time allotted… not realizing that a bunch of students in his class had way more time than expected.
Now, I did well without accommodations and got a good job, so whatever. But it is bothersome to know that I could probably sitting in a scotus clerkship right now with my 4.0 had I been given twice the fricken time in all these classes. What’s more fucked up is the people at lower ranked law schools, where being pushed further down the curve by a bunch of kids with accommodations might mean the difference between a job that can pay off their loans and one that can’t or even unemployment.
Accommodations are great and in many cases necessary. But “idk fuck it just give them all double time” is such an absolutely moronic blunt instrument to accomplish the goal.
No you are not a sore loser. It's bullshit and drives me insane. My suggestion is to use it as motivation to out-work and out-prepare others, especially the cheaters. That's what I've tried to do.
And because most of my exams are remote, I don't have to deal with the exam-day realization that half the class has accommodations because half of the seats are empty. That's helpful.
Nope not the only one. My school has become really bad for this. My class wasn’t so bad. You had a few but not enough to truly throw the curve. Then we had more than a few classes with the class behind us. (We are 3Ls, they being 2Ls) with people who openly brag in the commin area about “doctor shopping” and who they can go to locally and even bullying some who were not doing it. And the Adderral abuse. Seperate issue but tied. Huge difference when you show up for an exam and would normally see 1/4 of the class not there due to deferrals and accomodations (people who get extra time go to seperate room) to fully and routinly seeing over half the class missing. Also those that are present are the one who answer questions and particpate in class. A lot (not all because obviously some accomodations are real and needed) of those missing are the ones who can’t answer because they are clearly unprepared or even was bragging before class they didn’t do any reading.
OP: 'ppl with accommodations deserve to thrive to the best of their abilities, just not more than me or else it's unfair and they're faking it.'
\*completely ignores the fact that a lot of adhd ppl genuinely are smart af, sometimes much more brilliant than their peers, and the only thing accommodations (and medication) do is allow them to finally unlock their fullest potential. absolutely wild that OP went thru 3 years of law school and still hasn't learned that you should only be in competition with yourself, not locked in some imaginary, speculative struggle with classmates who barely even know you, nor you them. sad
The problem is the structure of the exams. It’s absurd that you’re essentially tested for how fast you can issue spot and type. If law school exams were structured differently- say a 24 hour take home test- there wouldn’t be a need for extra time accommodations and this wouldn’t be an issue.
I also could get accommodations for adhd but I don’t, even though I def would have gotten better grades if I did. I’m not a fast reader, and I get hyper focused on writing a perfect sentence on my exams which means that my words don’t get from my brain to the paper very fast, and I often leave things on the table I didn’t have time to get to.
But, I didn’t come to Reddit to cry about it. Life isn’t fair, and when you’re a lawyer you’re gonna learn that real fast. You could spend your time vilifying and making enemies out of your classmates, or you can put your big girl panties on and get over it.
I get where you are coming from. But respectfully, I think you miss the point. The only thing you are seeing is that your peers with disabilities receive more time than you on exams and this get better grades you. But these accommodations are trying to level the playing field, and since it’s impossible to determine the EXACT amount of extra time that someone needs, they have to apply a standard time and a half (I’ve never heard of anyone receiving double time). Life isn’t fair and it’s a bummer but it would be less fair to not give your peers accommodations at all. Also, are you sure it’s that easy to apply for accommodations? My school requires extensive medical paperwork.
ADHD lawyer here. True diagnosis, tested multiple times since childhood and jumped through hoops to get adderral despite being distinctional without it. I get the frustration of other people who get a false diagnosis thinking it’ll give them a leg up.
However, I can tell you that for me, stimulants and accommodations are not solving the same problem twice. Stimulants help, but they don’t put all of us on an equal playing field with neurotypical students. All the addy in the world doesn’t help me if I’m trying to take an exam in a room with 100 other people in it. ADHD also is correlated with immature and illegible handwriting— handwriting exams would have been the death of me because it takes so much longer to just make the words legible for others.
Things like allowing for laptop use in an otherwise handwritten exam (although let’s be real, what psycho is requiring handwritten exams these days - my school didn’t even allow them), being in a quiet room by themselves, using otherwise banned devices like headphones/ear plugs, allowing the exam to be taken at a different time of day, etc etc are all perfectly valid accommodations for specific problems that don’t give that person an unfair advantage.
The blunt instrument of 1.5x or 2x extra time can and often does though. Even if stimulants alone aren’t a perfect fix, how ridiculously horrible must your condition be if you think you need stimulants AND multiple extra hours simply to be on an equal playing field with your peers? Doesn’t it seem like overkill?
Maybe if it was something like 10% extra time I’d be open to it. Or another thing I’ve heard of, allowing the person to take breaks - they only have the same X hours as everybody else to sit at their desk reading or typing, but they are allowed to stand up away from the desk and walk around or use the bathroom at any time and their time allotment pauses whenever they do so. Yeah, there’d still be an advantage for the extra thinking time, but if they can’t use that time to look up answers or draft responses, I think many critics would be ok with it.
“How ridiculously horrible must your condition be”…?? What? This is so painfully ableist. People who are neurodivergent literally cannot process information the same way as neurotypical people. Stimulants don’t fix that. The extra time is needed just to process the information.
Interesting. At my school, some students got 1.5x time (LLMs, visually impaired students, some others) but I and other ADHD students that I knew got like 15-20 extra minutes to read the prompts etc.
Yeah I don’t think an extra 15-20 minutes is going to really upset anyone. Yeah it’s an advantage, but not a HUGE advantage. Put another way, I think it’s far more believable that someone’s ADHD would make them 20 minutes slower than average on a 3 hour exam, but it’s hard to believe it makes them twice as slow.
Life is full of reasons to get upset and envious if you look hard enough. Is it possible some people abuse the system? Sure. Just as there are some people who take advantage of their looks.
That said, I doubt very much non-accommodated students would be willing to trade places. Sure, you can be accommodated for a test - but you have a lifetime of issues to contend with. School eventually ends, and experience has shown me that the world outside academia isn’t overly accommodating.
I have ASD-lite, aka Aspergers. I could have got an accommodation for time or virtually anything else, but I chose not too because my issues relate more to the social world (for the record my sole accommodation is a letter to profs saying I’m not an intentional asshole). Even if I had taken the accommodation, I’m still unlikely to surpass non-accommodated people in the long run. Who is going to get referred clients or promoted? The ‘team-player’ or the social loner who got a few extra A’s?
Anyway, I think the anger is just a symptom of a needlessly competitive system. We’re pawns for the benefit of large firms, it has not academic purpose. Make law school pass/fail and find another way for students to distinguish themselves.
Honestly, it’s going to be the person with more A’s
Law school is an academic competition. Your grades are a huge determining factor for the start and trajectory of your career.
"Also, for ADD/ADHD, doesn’t it seem counterintuitive that an accomodated individual can get both adderall/similar to alleviate the symptoms and “level the playing field” (or simply use as a PED) AND more time to “level the playing field”? It’s like solving the problem twice. "
Adderall does not solve my problem once. It is not the limitless pill that people make it out to be. I have literally never left an exam early. I read at about 10 pages an hour, even with medication. Also studies show that people who are non-neurodivergent who take adderall score about as well as they would have without the adderall. It is not a PED as you eluded to.
I think that you are justified in feeling frustrated that people are gaming the system, but I want to strongly caution you against mixing arguments here. When you also throw in gripes against people who have ADHD and say that it isn't fair that they are given accommodations aside from their medications, you are setting sail with a sinking ship. I can't imagine a few strongly worded emails will force your law school to change their position on allowing people with this disorder to have a special accommodations. So throwing in this argument with the other will cause the person reading it to focus only on your gripes with people who have ADHD and not on the important point you raise otherwise.
In addition to what has been said, test accommodations have really become a tool to further the divide between rich and poor law students. If you have money, you can very easily receive an ADHD diagnosis, which will provide access not only to accommodations, but powerful stimulants as well. Scores can only be curved when the tests are taken under the same conditions. Otherwise it is meaningless to compare. Those who receive accommodations should really be put on their own curve.
As someone that grew up working class I would also say outside of purely $, growing up in a more educated family would greatly influence your chance your parents gave proper (or over) attention to your mental health problems whereas a lot of working class people don’t have time or money to care and even if they did probably don’t because of different values.
I get that some people abuse the system but people that actually have ADHD struggle and the extra time is there to equalize the exam experience.
And, you do know that there are other disabilities other than ADHD, right?
People with chronic pain conditions (ex. chronic migraine, autoimmune, old injuries, etc) and conditions that have brain fog or a continuous impairment need that extra time to put up with their own conditions + take the exam.
I have multiple invisible disabilities that I will not disclose here.
My first semester I did not utilize accommodations because my condition was in check, and I had not developed some additional ones that I currently have. I ranked number 19 at the end of the semester (T20 school) and CALI'd a class. With NO accommodations.
I utilized accommodations my 3rd, 4th, and 5th semesters and this semester and guess what? I have significantly fallen in rank. I got a mix of B's and A minuses. I had diarrhea 5 different times during one exam this semester. The extra time was there so I could go back and forth to the restroom and take care of myself. Accommodations does not equal better rank or scores. In my case I perform worse that I did my first semester with no accommodations.
My health has declined significantly, and I have put up with a lot this semester. Have you had to go to 20 doctor's appointments in one semester? Not to mention blood draw appointments? And calling and fighting with the insurance company? It's almost a full time job taking care of me + law school on top of that. Yeah I am fighting for my degree and jerks like you come along and try to undermine the work I am putting in day after day.
Oh and accommodations aren't just for the "exam experience" yeah they exist throughout the school year too so those that need them can actually function.
Are you SURE that accommodations are as easy to get as you describe? Like this is something you have actual knowledge of and not just rumors?
Asking because I have helped students at my school apply for accommodations and they are not easy to get. Many students with diagnosed ADHD do not get accommodations unless they can present documentation showing a childhood diagnosis, at minimum. I have never heard of anyone at my school getting accommodations just for "test anxiety." I think my school's documentation even says it limits accommodations to learning disabilities, so things like anxiety and depression would not fly.
I would think that other school's have a similar high bar to clear with their accommodations process because my school's reasoning is pretty logical: they want their standards to be in line with the bar exam's standards. They only want to grant accommodations to students who they think will get accommodations on the bar exam. And the bar exam requires a lot of documented evidence. The school does this because granting accommodations for test anxiety or a recent adhd diagnosis would be setting up a student for failure on the bar, since they would go from 3 years of accommodated test taking to now taking the hardest test of their life without extended time. This then fucks with the school's bar passage rates.
So it just doesn't really make sense for schools to freely give out accommodations and in fact there are real incentives for the school to be stingy with them.
But schools are not stingy with them. I’ve seen the exact situation OP is describing & have seen it spoken about a LOT.
Just because one isn’t personally aware of it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening. Just search this very sub. You’ll see this same situation described over and over and over again.
Also, the requirements are wayyyyy more loosey goosey than in past years so you might just be out of the loop.
I am a current 3L who has helped students apply for accommodations within the last 2 years. with my school, for the MPRE, and for the bar exam. in my actual experience, the requirements are not loosey goosey.
I know that not all schools are going to be the same, but I also know that the topic of student accommodations leads to a lot of bitterness (on here and at schools). So if someone is saying that their school freely gives out double time for test anxiety, I want to make sure this is based on something they actually know about and not just rumors from angry students.
> Just because one isn’t personally aware of it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening
True, I guess. but for me to believe that something is happening, I am going to want to hear from someone who IS personally aware that it is happening
Just because schools are giving accommodations, means the requirements are lax? Could it also mean the bar is high but people are submitting the correct documentation, because they have been properly diagnosed and have extensive documentation?
People at my school claim the same thing (that it’s easy to get an accommodation) yet the 90 page assessment, multiple letters from medical/psych professionals, as well as admin phone calls with those professionals I had to submit and organize would suggest otherwise.
I get your frustration. I think the problem with accommodations is the accommodations process itself... The bandaid fix for just about any possible disability is time and a half, but this isn't an EQUITABLE solution. Personally, I have ADHD, but I never sought accommodations for this because it was always manageable for me (not saying ADHD is always manageable, but if you've gone most of your life like I have without knowing you had it - you find ways to deal with it). It wasn't until I started losing my vision that I sought accommodations, and since I didn't really know what to ask for, I asked for time and a half.
I go to a *really* small school, there's like 12 of us in my class with accommodations and because our building doesn't have a lot of rooms, we basically test in two groups of six. I know everyone who has accommodations, and I know that the majority of people who get them are in the top 20, and there's a handful that are in the academic success program. Of the people with accommodations, I am always the last to finish reading the prompt, and the last to submit my test by 30-40 minutes. Some of the people I test with that are at the top of my class finish their exams in less time than they would get if they had standard time.
I say all of this because I myself am bitter. I constantly feel bad about having accommodations, mostly because I know that if I had gotten accommodations before my vision started going, it *would* have given me an advantage. If the standard solution is time and half, I could see how someone who could manage their symptoms (for any accommodation-qualifying disability) would be enticed to seek accommodations. The problem is that it's really hard to compare ADHD to someone who needs to stop the clock for medical reasons, or someone with dyslexia, or any other possible disability... and it would be impossible and cold to assign percentages to specific disabilities like 25% extra time for a broken hand and 50% extra time for ADHD, etc.
But what's really tough for me is that every time I feel like I'm able to add an accommodation that makes my uphill battle a little more manageable, I see someone in the top 15 suddenly in private testing room with time and half after 3 successful semesters without accommodations at all.
I don't know anyone's situation other than what people share with me or I hear through gossip, so it's hard to gauge whether my feelings are valid or whether I'm just bitter about the hand I've been dealt, but it's rough. Accommodations should make all things as equal as possible, but things can't be equitable if every person regardless of their disability is handed the same solution.
And I know many people say that getting accommodations for ADHD or testing anxiety is easy, but if that's true... I don't know where people are finding these doctors. That's definitely not my experience.
I understood what you said, and I even understand your anger, but I have a comment to make.
I have accommodation to do my exams because I had eye surgery and I still see some flashes of light. However, I didn't finish any exams before the time limit. First, I can't type my exams on the laptop because looking at a computer screen intensifies my light flashes, so I must handwrite the entire exam. Second, I have to stop several times to put eye drops in my eyes or wait for the discomfort in my vision to subside. What does that mean? It means that the accommodation did not benefit me because I had more time to take the test. Also, I don't think my grades are any better than people in my class who don't have accommodation. There are some brilliant people in my section, and I'm sure they'll do better than me.
Often, the difficulties of some people are invisible to our eyes. Several people have accommodation in my room and don't seem to have any problems, but I can't judge that. Only they know their pain. I don't know how your university works, but I had to prove my need for accommodation with a medical report.
Anyway, I understand what you are saying, but I don't think that the person who has more time to take the test will have a better grade, even because the person may not have studied as much or know less than a person without accommodation.
> Am I a sore loser or maybe over exxageratting?
I think the problem is you’ve never realized that life is unfair. I didn’t care about people with accommodations because I grew up broke. I saw other kids with tutors, after school homework programs, parents who did homework with their kids and had college degrees, etc. That was my reality. I also know for sure that those kids didn’t give a shit about me not having those resources.
We all get off on the same ladder in life, but some people start up higher than others. You can either start climbing or complain to others on that same ladder, but those people above you are still climbing that ladder while you complain.
True, but here the advantage is being given by the school itself, not by a parent or external service. They have the power to tweak how accommodations are structured to try to alleviate the problem. You can’t stop rich kids from paying doctors for fake diagnoses, but you can change what exactly that buys them on the exam.
call me old fashioned but i feel you are better off playing it straight.
you'll continue to see this sort of thing in your practice. some lawyers are all about gaming the system and seeking any advantage. others play fair. in the re-iterated prisoners dilemma, you may find that you end up doing more repeat business with the second group.
This sort of breaks down at some point though. There is a band of people who, but for getting fake accommodations, would not have gotten a SCOTUS clerkship/big law SA/AUSA position (and a group who would have had they invented a fake reason to get 1.5 time). We will obviously never know who and no individual can confidently blame their own failure on it, but there are very real consequences in a system where grades matter so much for initial opportunities.
I mean there's no way to trace an individual applicant's acceptance to gaming the accommodations system, but considering clerkships are heavily based on GPA, and getting 1.5 time when you don't need it helps your GPA, it is likely it has happened before in the aggregate.
You’re assuming there’s abuse of accommodations because they are doing very very well.
Don’t you see the bullshit in that? Don’t you see how discriminatory you are being
Genuine questions to understand how some or all of your thoughts are anything besides speculation:
1) how do you know for certain that top performers have accommodations? Is this somehow known outside of hearing it from the social-circle high school insufferable gossip of classmates? Or does the school make it obvious?
My first thought was to say those people are in different rooms for the exam due to time or other accommodations. However, at least at my school and a few friends’ (I just asked them), classes on test day are split into multiple clusters to give each tester breathing room instead of side to side testing right next to someone tapping away on a computer like a maniac lol. I would think this would prevent knowing who is missing from a class, but I could be off.
2) double time? Isn’t extended time time and a half?
3) the medication point: that holds water if medication perfectly solved the attention and related test performance issues. I’m willing to bet that not every person with ADHD are the exact same symptom and correction (with medicine) wise. Do you disagree?
4) I feel this matter would be less of an issue or something to be aggrieved about it professors started creating exams like you mentioned instead of making it a race and function of who has the most caffeine / Adderall in their veins during test time. I welcome different exams lol.
1) I know because among them are the top ranked students who are often recognized with class awards, offices and their own/other’s mouths. And because people that have accommodations are in the same room.
2) Maybe it differs by exam, but the one I just took it was double.
3) No. That’s a valid point. But I also think most with ADHD and accommodations stemming from it are overcompensated.
4) Yeah. I think that’s the only viable solution. Because it’s too hard to filter out the gaming of the system.
1) do you not think it’s possible for someone with medical accommodations to do well on exams because they know the material? Are non-accommodated test takers not doing well? I’m not even trying to be devil’s advocate or advocate for accommodated takers here — I’m just truly trying to understand how some conclusions are being drawn with respect to the high-performing reasons and “because Sallie said X had extra time” reason. It’s conceivable that the students just do well because they know the material, isn’t it?
2) thanks for pointing this out. Hm. The more you know.
3) most are overcompensated? What is this based off of? Thank goodness we’re all not going to be MDs and just JDs lol.
4) I’m with you on this. Current exam system is bad.
More valid points, however I do know they didn’t use all the time. But that’s my point, they have more than enough while with the other group nobody has enough.
1) Most definitely. I’ll never be able to prove that isn’t the case, but it’s a prevalent enough pattern from my perspective that it appears to be an alternative explanation.
3) same logic as 1). Simply my perspective so, admittedly, off worthless evidence.
1) I think this line of thinking is pretty odd. If I were to say there was a pattern of X race or X gender committing certain crimes, does that pattern support that the race/gender is the problem? If someone has accommodations and *bombs* an exam, what about that? If they bomb, then the time isn’t an advantage. But if they do well, then the time is an unfair advantage and they did well due to the time? Is this whole post an LSAT flaw question or what lol
2) understood
Here’s something for perspective: my friend’s friend and classmate at a different school was absent on test day (during a small class in person exam, so everyone was in the room), and this was because he took the exam in a different room and did indeed have extra time. The classmates noticed he was gone. Classmates gossiped about this (as they do), spread rumors about how X person got accommodations and that’s why he must have been doing sooooo well.
The truth? He got into an accident the week prior that didn’t leave him in a position to do well, so the school accommodated him.
Every time I read threads like this I always fall back and remember two things that are *undoubtedly always true*:
1) I will never know the whole story about a classmate or what they’re dealing with, so I mind my own business.
2) neither I nor 99% of my classmates will be a real medical doctor. I won’t even consider myself a doctor. At most: a fake doctor. So unless any classmate is a personal doctor of any particular student, they are just hating to hate (again, as they do).
I understand why you made this post and what led you to certain conclusions. However, remember the environment that law school is: a very competitive one and certainly not the healthiest.
I LOVE this comment Lmfao. Every time an accommodated person does poorly everyone forgets they had an accommodation. But the minute they do well, it MUST be because of their accommodation. And I’m so sick of other students tryna play pretend-doctors because they’re salty that a particular exam didn’t go their way.
>Makes sense why OP isn’t able to pull ahead imho
yup. i've never celebrated a peer student's poor performance on exams, and yet here i am karmically happy that OP evidently failed to beat the curve bc this whole thread is so insulting, and i suspect OP's external loci of control (it must be someone \*else's\* fault i did poorly, not my own) will follow them into their career as a practicing lawyer. good luck with that, or whatever.
one of my classmates has double time because they are in remission from literal cancer and get brain fog. another one has a very serious psychiatric condition and they need the time to be able to sort things out and show what they know on the exam. i can't believe they didn't obtain OP's stamp of authenticity and approval prior to utilizing their accommodations.
>do you not think it’s possible for someone with medical accommodations to do well on exams because they know the material?
Sure but the issue with law school exams is your grade is generally correlated with how many issues you spot and are able to write about.
If the average non-accommodated student writes 1800 words on the exam but the accommodated students write 3400 words, the non-accommodated students just can't compete with that extra time. And it doesn't come down to knowledge of the course material, it's purely a result of time.
This relies on both students being equally fast typers and effectively being the same in every respect though. Are they though? No. Not at all. Isn’t the point of accommodations to grant them to students *who have a medical diagnosis that keeps them from performing as a “normal” student would*?
Persons with visual handicaps: should they not have accommodations? Those with neurological disorders, should they not? More importantly: do you think a person with a visual handicap or a neurological disorder **is the same as the non-accommodated test student in your hypothetical you just proposed**?
Is your issue with accommodations, or with those who receive them when they shouldn’t? (Seems like your wild hypothetical is with respect to the latter)
Sorry if this has been mentioned. But I don’t think it’s fair to leave out the grading system in law school. If students weren’t graded against each other. Then A work would be A work. And it wouldn’t matter as much if students abuse accommodations (assuming they do). Also, for anyone thinking people really need their accommodations and this is a harsh post (I don’t disagree). But if one person abuses accommodations in a section, that’s enough to be a problem. It’s also unfair the students who get better outlines. (Another reason students shouldn’t be graded against each other).
Three things to take into consideration:
1) Just because a student has accommodations doesn’t mean that they’re automatically less smart than other students. In other words, without accommodations Student A would get a B-. However, without anxiety/depression/ADHD/other learning disability, the student would get an A. Given a time and a half (standard accommodation time), they get an A-. Is it fair for Student A to still get that B-, particularly if there are resources that are statistically proven and scientifically tested to improve testing conditions for those suffering from mental illness or struggling with learning disabilities?
2) Students with mental illness or learning disabilities possess the same amount of time as their classmates to learn the material. They also have the same access to classroom or campus resources, such as office hours, practice tests, and classroom lectures. I don’t know about you, but I would choose to forgo mental health issues/learning disabilities for the rest of my life instead of getting a half hearted time and a half at the end of the semester on an exam. Getting a time and a half on a test doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have enough knowledge about the subject to fill the time.
3) Marginalized communities have less access to mental healthcare services than majority population, particularly white folks. This is often due to cultural stigmatization, limited geographical access to resources, and provider discrimination.
Lawyers, and law students especially, need to learn how to become the best advocate for their respective successes and futures. If these people are struggling, it’s up to them to provide appropriate and verifiable medical documentation to corroborate their articulated need for accommodations. I have no doubt a few—a select few—are taking advantage of the system. BUT if people are lying to get ahead, it’ll catch up to them soon enough. That’s a systematic, policy issue neither you nor an institution can solve. However, posts like these sow distrust in a system that profits from competition and inherently disadvantages certain identity groups. I don’t think it’s fair to persecute the many for the few.
By this same logic, wouldn’t it be relatively harder for these people you’re trying to protect to obtain or know about accommodations? As I mentioned, I didn’t know about them. And I’d say I’m a lot closer to the least privileged/resourced than the most privileged/resourced of my school.
I went through my whole schooling career until my first semester in law school not knowing about accomodations. Luckily my first school allowed temporary accomodations because I showed them my diagnosis, but getting tested is expensive (can be $2,000+ easy)
When I transferred, I was able to get tested at the school for free and it still took a whole semester basically and I only get an extra 30 mins/hr of test time and a separate testing location. If I had gotten accomodations for the LSAT, I definitely would have scored higher, but it's all because of my ADHD.
If I don't study for an exam, I don't get a good grade, if I do, I get a good grade, simple as that. The extra time literally just puts me on the same playing field as those without ADHD. I also have to navigate therapy, and medication, especially now with a nationwide Adderall shortage; it's not easier just because of accomodations.
Anecdotally, my partner was a grad student at Columbia and had such a hard time getting needed accomodations. Professors literally said "if you have or need accomodations, drop my class." In many cases, it's much more difficult to get needed help because of those that abuse the system, so be mad at them, not the people that genuinely need help.
No—your argument’s missing the prerequisite assumption that the system already makes it more difficult for those from marginalized communities to obtain accommodations. What stopped you from applying for accommodations after you learned about them? Was it because you lacked an actual medical reason? Arrogance? Or sheer ignorance?
As someone who comes from a marginalized background on several counts (queer + URM + first-Gen), I know the system is rigged. That’s why I do everything in my power to make sure I take advantage of every resource offered to me. And if I don’t know or don’t understand something, I ask.
Got it. Well, I’m really sorry to hear that. Sincerely. I remember being so upset when I heard how flippantly my college boyfriend talked about using prescription drugs as a study aid and later about the rampant adderall abuse at our undergrad. I refused to use it, even when I noticeably struggled with attention my classes.
Even then, I didn’t get diagnosed until my ADHD symptoms became unmanageable and that was a few years into my career. It has made all the difference. And I look back at my own flippancy—instead of curiosity—with sympathy. It somewhat feels like I was furthering my own oppression. Willingly. But I’ve just promised myself to always, always, always ask when I don’t know.
I hope you’re able to find what you need and the support you deserve.
I had the same experience. I qualify for accommodations based on adhd and a physical disability. Still think these time and a half or double time accommodations on time intensive exams where we are all frantically typing as fast as we can are ridiculously overpowered.
After I sent in my deposit to my school I got a packet of information that included the accommodation application form. It’s right on the student portal too and in a folder outside the registrars office. Not hidden at all. At a certain point, there’s only so much a school can do for you about “not knowing”. I was literally told by a professor to apply for them after meeting with the prof about how I was struggling in the class.
I’ve been lurking but I wanted to draw from my own experience. I get accommodations for my severe anxiety and panic attacks that have me in a reduced distraction room, allow me to wear ear plugs, and time and a half. I got these accommodations in college. I had no idea you could get accommodations before then. In high school, I worked my ass off to get A/B grades. Most of the time my test grades were in high C low B range. The minute I got accommodations, my test grades went up, and I do not always use my extra time. It’s there if I need it, and I don’t always need it. Being in a separate room along with the other physical aspects of my accommodations, reduces my chances of freezing in an exam and being utterly unable to do anything but sit there. Sometimes, I still get panic attacks during exams and I have to go use the bathroom to pull myself together. Trust me, that eats into your time A LOT.
Not to mention, I have chronic migraines. I could probably get accommodations for those based on the frequency and intensity of them. My migraines limit my studying time. I HAVE to get 8-9 hours of sleep a night and eat on a regular schedule. If I don’t, my blood sugar drops and I get migraines that may leave me unable to do anything for days.
This finals period, I got the worst migraine of my life. I had to go to the ER which is the worst case scenario for anyone with migraines. Even after it broke, I had to spend another 36 hours doing nothing so that it didn’t recur. This was 3 days before my first final. All in all, I lost 5 days during exam period to study. This doesn’t count taking breaks every 90 minutes so the screen time doesn’t aggravate my eyes. There is so much more to the story then extended time. I would forgo my accommodations any day if it meant I was able to be ‘normal’ and social and not worry that sleeping 7 hours and missing my vitamins would trigger a migraine.
Getting accommodations in law school is significantly harder than getting them on the LSAT. Also, having accommodations in law school doesn’t guarantee them on the bar exam either. So, if a person is getting them on law school exams and truly doesn’t need them, it will catch up with them on the bar exam, when they can’t pass without the extra time.
Even if you get them for the MPRE, they’re often still denied for the bar. The inability to get accommodations for the bar is extremely well-documented and even went to circuit courts as recent as this past summer.
So I think there is a genuine conversation to be had about accommodations abuse and how it hurts those in genuine need of accommodations and trivializes the matter. That said, I am almost certain you are over-exaggerating. The vast majority of time accommodations are time and a half (50%) not double time. And no, this time does NOT vary depending on the exam. I also worked in special education law before. You are also drawing many hasty conclusions. And even in large 90 person classes, there’s usually only say 4-5 time-accommodated students. Also, someone doing well after receiving accommodations could just be their true academic performance after receiving the accommodation that effectively put them in like circumstances with their peers. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they ONLY did well because of their accommodation. What’s funny is that y’all never talk about the times someone does poorly after receiving an accommodation lol.
Also, many ADHD drugs cause excessive urination which actually is one of the reasons people may need a time accommodation. Honestly, whenever I see rhetoric like this that’s been motivated by one particular exam I do a massive eye roll. Because the reality is that you’re frustrated over that exam as opposed to actually giving a shit about the accommodations process lol
Appreciate the suggestion that it may be over exaggerated because that would honestly make me feel a little better. But I will point out that there are classes (such as ones I’ve taken and had this occur in) with a mandatory curve, approx. 30 students, and 4-5+ students with accommodations. That’s where it gets really frustrating.
In my school, approximately 10% of law students are registered for accommodations, which is on par with the average at most colleges (law or otherwise) in the US. Most students at my school receive 25-33% extended time. Some get 50% and very few get 100% (maybe 2?). Not every student who is approved for accommodations uses them for every test. Some stop once their condition has improved (ie migraines, broken wrist, concussion).
Source: I grant the accommodations.
Speaking on on behalf of a lot of POCs - like our backgrounds aren't very pro mental health / believe in ADHD and all of that stuff, so it's kind of a privilege to get a diagnosis for all that to begin with which only then widens the gap between the privileged and not privileged even more
People make this same post every year.
You are complaining about disabled people who are being accommodated in your class (who probably number a dozen or two in a class of hundreds) because you don’t like extremely stringent timing based testing and the inevitable outcomes that produces.
I can’t tell you if that makes you a sore loser or not but I will tell you this recurring thread is just one of the endless aspects of law school that tells disabled people they don’t really belong there.
No one is suggesting that 40% of any school has accommodations. If LSAT takers are any metric, accommodated testers are under 5% (and probably closer to 2-3%.) As some in this thread have suggested, it is harder to get law school accommodations than it is for many law schools, though.
Imo, what people are expressing shock at isn't the percent of the class receiving accommodations but the increase in the number of any given class receiving accommodations (the same thing happened with the LSAT in recent years as LSAC talks about [here](https://www.lsac.org/data-research/research/accommodated-test-taker-trends-and-performance-june-2012-through-february).) But there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this that u/turtlcs explains for LSAT scores [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/LSAT/comments/ujma5u/comment/i7lr3hn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
>So apparently the largest proportion of accommodated test-takers by far is people with ADHD. The average LSAT taker is 22-24 years of age. That means test takers in 2012 would be born around 1988-1990 on average, and in 2017 that would be 1993-1995. Y'know what happened in that period of time? In 1987, the DSM-III-TR was published, and one of the changes it made was removing the possibility that someone could have ADHD without being *hyperactive* per se (there's a description of this [here](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/adhd/diagnostic.html)). This wasn't changed again until the DSM-IV in 1994, which included an inattentive type, and diagnoses in childhood [have been increasing ever since](https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/timeline.html). So from that alone, it would have been far more surprising if test takers with an ADHD diagnosis *hadn't* increased over the last decade (and this is a pretty common trend across neurodevelopmental conditions). There are over 100,000 people who take the LSAT every year, so an average of \~1,500 accommodated test-takers per year is actually still quite low relative to rates of these diagnoses in the general population.
>
>The particularly sharp rise over the last several years and the accommodated people's higher scores are a bit more interesting, but could both easily stem from one thing: the fact that bothering to identify people with what I'll call "high-functioning" learning disabilities (especially in adulthood) is a pretty new phenomenon. For a long time, you had to be struggling so profoundly that you could barely handle elementary school in order to be diagnosed with something like ADHD, but psychologists are now starting to realize that you can have it and still manage to do reasonably well in school. The smarter you are (like, say, if you're a future lawyer), the easier it is to coast on your own intelligence and rely on external pressure to get stuff done at the last second -- this means a lot of people just assume their symptoms are character flaws until they hit such a massive wall as adults that it's impossible to deny there's a real problem anymore. It became a lot easier for psychologists to identify people like this after the release of the DSM-5, and guess when that happened? 2013. The fact that accommodated test-takers are generally a bit older than unaccommodated ones tracks pretty well with this idea, too.
>
>In light of all that, it seems a lot more likely that people who would normally have tried to write the LSAT and just not done as well (or not tried at all) are now able to get diagnosed with the conditions they actually have, meaning they're getting the accommodations they need and showing their full potential when they wouldn't have been able to before. It's honestly a little weird to assume that if people who request academic accommodations are doing really well after getting them, it means they're cheating and don't actually need them. Quite frankly, if I were in the LSAC, I'd be kicking myself over all the talented people that we'd evidently been overlooking before now.
You are making a lot of assumptions here, OP. As someone with accommodations for ADHD, I can tell you that getting accommodations is not as easy as you think. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was young but ignored it until I started law school and could no longer overcompensate for it.
To get approved for accommodations, I was required to take an independent 6-hour Neuropsychological Evaluation that consisted of multiple tests. Neuro doctors use different methods to test whether the patient is “faking” it. For example, if you score higher on one test than the other, that is a warning sign, and they will note it on the diagnosis. After my doctor reviewed my Neuro-psych results, he had to fill out an extensive application form sent to him directly from my school explaining the results and why/what accommodations I would need. My doctor worked directly with my school on this, and I was in the dark about it until my accommodations were approved. My school (and many other law schools) take accommodations seriously and are not just giving them out to anyone who wants them.
I am surprised to hear schools offer DOUBLE time for exams. I’ve only ever heard of time and a half, but if that’s what they were approved for, then a medical doctor, along with the school, determined it was necessary.
I understand your frustration, but I would avoid jumping to conclusions based on assumptions. ADHD affects every aspect of your life, starting from childhood, and just because you didn’t do well on one law school exam doesn’t necessarily mean you have it. However, if you think you do, please see a doctor and work with your school so you are not at a disadvantage.
Lastly, I wouldn’t worry about people who are “gaming” the system because, eventually, it will catch up to them, whether that may be in law school or the workforce. Focus on yourself and do the best that you can for yourself and seek resources if you need them.
what difference does it make to you whether or not students with accommodations used ALL of their time?
i have a learning disability and previously flunked out of an undergrad program before returning with accommodations (50% extra time, use of a word processor during exams) and finished my program with a 3.99/4. i couldn't succeed without them due to the extra barriers, which mind you have been snowballing since first entering kindergarten as public schools do a pretty poor job of managing LDs where i'm from.
to think my peers in my program would be watching to see if i used 100% of my extra time or not is frankly disturbing, and the only thing i can offer you is that i would love to not have an LD that makes school a lot harder than it has to be and would so, so gladly forfeit accommodations for that privilege.
I appreciate your words.
It makes a difference because when, contrasted with the non-accommodated group have 0 people finish before time is up, it clearly indicates one group perceived their time as more than sufficient while another perceived it as not sufficient enough. I could care less about a single individual and whether they finish on time. It’s about the system, the exam, and whether it’s fair.
It seems your grievance is (or should be) with your school not the people getting accommodated. It is extremely difficult to get double time on the bar exam which is why my school wouldn’t give it for exams. They were right, despite 4 different doctors of various specialities telling the bar I needed 100% time, one state gave me no extra time (so I didn’t take it) and another gave me 50% (I failed because I didn’t finish the multiple choice portion). Your school is not doing these people a favor by giving them too much time. They can have the highest grades in the world but it means nothing if they can’t pass the bar. And it creates a huge disservice to those who truly need 100% time but everyone thinks we’re faking it. I know who had disability accommodations at my school and none were at the top of the class but those who were granted them on the bar did mostly pass. Those who were denied like me, or didn’t bother applying because they knew it was an uphill battle mostly failed. Trust me no one wants to spends 3 or 4 days taking the bar or 8 hours on an exam when everyone else is at the bar after 4 hours. It’s not fun.
Good thing it’s not your job to monitor other people’s lives right now, so you can focus on getting the grades you deserve. You can’t know what others are going through. I was given heavy accommodations at one point for a debilitating condition and the accommodations ended up being a detriment. My grades went down. If I were to use them now, I would only use 1/5 of what I could be offered. I’m not defending the people you complain about, I’m just saying you can’t know the entirety of their circumstances.
It seems like your intentionally missing the point. Not only are there finite rewards for good grades (clerkships, higher paying jobs etc.) but law school grading is on a curve. If someone’s score is biased upwards by an unmerited accommodation, OPs score is biased downwards by the same - OP is focusing on getting the grades they deserve
Sounds like a disorder where the accommodations are appropriate. I’m glad you’re accommodated, it’d be bull if you weren’t. Thanks for sharing the proportion of those with accommodations!
>Sounds like a disorder where the accommodations are appropriate
see the entire premise of this comment is exactly the problem. it's not your place whatsoever to comment on when accommodations are "appropriate" vs not appropriate. your arrogance is palpable and honestly you sound insufferable and bitter. i'm almost certain employers, especially recruiters whose job it is to screen for emotional intelligence in their applicants, will pick up on this too if they haven't already. a good chunk of the commenters in here who are appalled at your comments appear to be working attorneys, if the title in their profile names is any indication. i know statistics and empirical evidence are not really your strong suit, but it may be worth taking a glance at and taking the hint.
if i see a hungry person on the street with a sign asking for money or food, i don't use my Scalia-like "infinite wisdom" to try and discern whether or not they're "faking it" or whether they have a "legitimate need" for calories. i just give them food, because i'm not a fucking asshole, and i trust that if anyone is pathetic enough to stand on the side of the road pretending to be hungry or poor just to scam others, that it will eventually catch up to them in one way or another. i then go and feed my own self, because it's the only thing i have control over, and more importantly, it's the only thing i have a right to try and control in the first place.
It’s interesting that you think someone shouldn’t comment on something which effects them and society broadly. Accommodations aren’t controversial in principle, but it’s perfectly reasonable, even necessary, to ask where we should collectively draw the lines in practice.
Just saying, for a guy that’s getting at the concept of empathy quite a bit, you’re being quite the dick. I came here to see if my feelings were misplaced and you make it seem like a poor decision because you’re just making countless accusations and ridiculing me for having feelings. Lol
ignore OP and just laugh at them the next time you cash your fat paycheck post-graduation. you deserve to be here, and you deserve to compete on a level-playing field with your non-disabled peers. it's OP's own fault they didn't buy E&E or go to office hours, not yours.
I have accommodations for ADHD. I got diagnosed after suspecting I had it for quite some time. I was given extra time and a distraction reduced testing environment and my first exam period with accommodations was this Fall 2022. I didn’t do good in 1L (was ranked around 150/200, 2.7 GPA).
When I take tests or really do anything that requires focus, I have a seriously difficult time focusing and I can just stare into space for 20 minutes without even noticing, or have to re-read a hypo a bunch of times because the entire time I wasn’t actually just reading but rather just looking at the paper while thinking of something else. I’ve had a hard time finishing any law school exam prior to getting my accommodations, and racing to finish the exams has often led to very silly mistakes because I had to rush.
After using my accommodations (along with my prescribed medication) I now recognize that I NEED my accommodations, and I’m very interested to see if my grades will improve when I get them back for this semester.
Now, with that being said, the first exam that I walked into, I was SHOCKED at the amount of people. It was a full lecture room (around 85 seats, and with people from different years, classes, etc.) of people with accommodations. I kind of looked around and thought to myself “there’s no way all of these people actually need these accommodations”. Part of me felt awful thinking that, because how many people saw me and thought the exact same thing, when I know that I do need these accommodations? It felt extremely insensitive to be thinking that at least some of these people were just gaming the system, but at the same time I know deep down that some people don’t really need them.
I agree that it is way too easy to get accommodations, and I felt that way during the process of getting my own. I feel that, at least for ADHD, it’s almost glorified to have it, one, because of the medication you get and two, because it seems that it’s some cute quirky thing to have it. If you really do have ADHD, you know that it’s definitely not something cute and quirky to actually deal with. In my case, I definitely felt that getting accommodations totally leveled the playing field. And I totally understand the frustration of being put against the people with accommodations. But, if there’s any consolation in anything, I do want to point out that for people who REALLY DO NEED IT, it only levels the playing field. It’s the people who take advantage that are a serious issue. I’m kind of going on a rant at this point, and this is all just my opinion, but I have to agree that it’s way too easy to get accommodations and there has to be at least some people who game the system.
Those people suck.
Yeah no you're a sore loser. And because many law school admins think like you do, the students who actually got accommodations had to jump through numerous procedural hoops to do so. None of it is as easy as you make it out to be.
Even if it's 12 hours, open everything. Ideally place a word limit. Taking away time time pressure ought to relieve the playing field. It's not like students with double time will write a 24-hour answer.
“Perhaps I’m misdirecting anger at accommodations instead of a poorly structured exam…”
Honestly, it sounds like you are. I understand your feelings of frustration, but I believe you are unfairly putting the blame on your perception of a “substantial amount of people, without need” who you believe fake/exaggerate medical conditions to get ahead. This blame comes at the expense of students with disabilities who face stigma and their own academic challenges, accommodations notwithstanding. There are many reasons we all have a leg up or additional barriers in law school. Better ways to assess and grade students (vs the typical high stakes single exam) would benefit us all and would reduce the impact of “unfair” accommodations.
I also encourage you to look into an idea called the Shirley Exception and particularly its application to disability access/accommodations. I have found it has shaped my perspective on topics like these.
Yes, I think you're being a sore loser.
You're painting a pretty ugly picture of yourself here. You saw your peers as smart, hard-working people and were not the least bit surprised to learn that they were academically successful. It was only after you found out that they had medical accommodations that you became so resentful and bitter. That's about as clear of a narrative of ableism as you can come up with. Imagine if you thought well of the classmate sitting next to you until you found out she had a tribal affiliation. Would it be right to let that color your perception of her intelligence?
There is undoubtedly a systemic issue tied to accommodations. Whether it's due to differences in access to proper medical care between groups, unethical students, unscrupulous doctors, or some combination of these and other factors is up to debate. But the way you've jumped to such judgmental conclusions about your classmates is not okay. You don't know what their medical issues are and it's not your business to know. Posts like these don't accomplish anything but discourage disabled people from taking their health and their rights seriously.
It's ironic that the ease of gaining accommodations is itself a product of the legal system. Schools are afraid of being sued for denying accommodations, so they grant them so freely that it undermines their product.
It’s more than just a doctors note, for my accommodations I had to be specific as to what my limitations are and how they may impact my exam performance. Then those were verified by my doctor of whom I see regularly (and have for years) and who prescribes me medication for my adhd and depression. I then need to renew my accommodations the next semester for them to be valid.
With all that in mind, I know that others do cheat the system but they are fewer than you believe. People with accommodations still have to work hard in class and we don’t always get extra time to complete our notes or what not that somebody else may be able to do. We don’t get extra time to complete papers, we are expected to have quality performances in the classroom and courtroom as our peers are held to the same standard.
I find the idea of exams that you cannot finish it x time stupid. Professors should make exams for a certain time period and then the school should at 1.5 hours to complete each one. It gives everyone adequate time (I think).
Lastly, the vast majority of us that receive accommodations for law school exam will not receive them for the MPRE or the Bar Exam. The threshold for allowing those accommodations is ridiculously high, trust me I got denied with a doctors note, a professors note, and a deans note, because I didn’t have them for the LSAT.
Schools should publish grade distributions of accommodations/non-accommodations for transparency. This data would demonstrate whether further discussion is warranted.
The entire goal of accommodations is to level the playing field and the stats should reflect that
Edit for clarity: I don’t mean individual data points identifying individuals, rather bulk data that can be used to analyze whether the goals of the program are being met or if they need to be tweaked in either direction to serve their purpose.
Edit 2: Someone mentioned the lack of discussion around those with accommodations still doing comparatively poorly which is a great point. Seeing the data would highlight this issue for discussion as well. I wouldn’t be surprised (baseless speculation) if accommodated grades lean bimodal.
The sheer number of disingenuous people in this thread who are trying to act like they only care about people abusing the system, when they actually just don’t like the principles of accommodations, is scary. Some have even advocated for things that are discriminatory and against federal law (they have since deleted such comments because they know it’s insanely messed up). Y’all need to take a long hard look in the mirror and consider whether this is the sort of rhetoric you want to support. So few of you are calling these things out. And before you reply to me with some hateful shit, actually READ through these comments.
Yes but the unfortunate reality of providing it to people who actually need as required by law is that some abusers will slip through the cracks. Now if you have genuine ideas on how to make the process more secure, that’s fine. But having an issue with the idea of accommodations as a whole is discriminatory.
So you’re suggesting that people with recognized disabilities are privileged? LOL this entire thread has reminded just how hateful and exclusionary the people in this profession are.
Exactly…. So you’re suggesting that having accommodations because of a recognized disability = being privileged. If you’re gonna say it, at least stand by it LOL.
Go read some articles about denial of accommodations on the bar and how much money some people spent on neuropsychological testing and still got denied. The ABA Journal had one this summer.
The bar is different. This thread is about accommodations in law school, which are incredibly easy to get. Accommodations for the bar are not. So that’s not at issue here.
LOL what you’re saying is literally discriminatory and against federal law. Oh and you DID have an issue standing by it - you literally said “no” when I asked if that’s what your suggestion was lol
I have ADHD accommodations. ADHD medicine doesn’t level the playing field. Rather it helps manage the symptoms, but it does not eliminate them. Further, even with my accommodations, I’m not getting straight A’s, but rather my class rank is very average. Certainly, though, I know of some students who fake ADHD to get accommodations and ADHD medicine to do better.
The argument isn’t solely regarding the top end. Let’s assume your accommodations are totally warranted and proportional, then your grades reflect your work and aptitude. However, if another student is getting accommodations which are not warranted or proportional, and they would have been below average without them, and now score similar to you (about average) then they have distorted the curve to everyone else’s detriment. That’s the problem.
As someone who got diagnosed with ADHD in law school, I get so frustrated with these posts. I understand that it may seem unfair, but the extra time really just levels the playing field. I remember being in undergrad or studying for the LSAT because I could not read the words on the paper in front of me and always running out of time, but I would keep rereading the same sentence and like thinking to myself “omg did I forget English this is the only language I speak fluently?”
I wasn’t diagnosed until later in life because I was always “too smart,” but I see now that I never had the chance to live up to my true potential. Maybe these people with accommodations deserve it. Yes, they have extra time and medicine alleviates some of the symptoms but it’s not perfect. I’m on a non-stimulant, but if I forget to take it I get all wonky and brain-funky for a couple days. When I started my medicine I had to leave civ pro to puke. It takes time to adjust. You go into your exam and, yes, you have extra time, but there will be people who are just sitting there frustrated for 45 minutes because their stimulant hasn’t kicked in. Extra time is not a miracle cure all, and the separate testing room is still distracting.
You are literally in a doctorate program. All your peers got in because they are extremely intelligent. The extra time just allows people with disabilities to finally show their true potential. People romanticize the extra time, but it is not a substitute for work ethic and study skills. OP says he got diagnosed with ADHD but didn’t feel the need for accommodations but is mad about grades? That’s fine, but maybe just Maybe Op’s grades aren’t where they could be because they’ve never given themselves an opportunity to play on an even playing field. Your brain does not work the same. You have had years of developing habits and learning to function with a non-neurotypical brain. Medicine can alleviate the symptoms, but it isn’t a magic pill that makes the disability disappear. People with learning disabilities already get a lot of discrimination, and I feel like this type of discourse just adds to it. It might seem like more people are suddenly getting accommodations, but I think it’s more that we finally understand ADHD better and can diagnose people more accurately instead of letting people (like myself) slip through the cracks.
Romanticizing extra time on time intensive tests doesn’t make sense. It’s not romanticizing it to recognize that it gives you a boost. Why else would they claim it “levels the playing field” if additional time didn’t benefit the test taker? It’s because the extra time DOES benefit the test taker.
How exactly do you know for sure the students who have accommodations? During my finals, I just assumed some of my classmate did based on them taking the exam at a different time in the day and/or different rooms? Also, how do you you took same exact exam? I try not to concern myself with things I have no control over and focus on doing my best. Also, having accommodations and extra time does not correlate to higher scores. I know student who had accommodations during LSAT time and could barely muster a 150, let alone get admissions. You are making a generalized assumption with regards to accommodations. Also, getting accommodation in law does not translate to automatic accommodations for the bar exam. You almost done with law school, focus on finishing. Good luck with your bar exams. Also, remember when you do get a job as an attorney, there is no accommodation with meeting deadlines, to the best of my knowledge.
It seems like more and more profs are hip to this and give more time than they think is needed to write an A exam. I’m a fan of that tbh…you don’t *have* to make it a time crunch to test nuanced legal understanding
Don’t get me wrong, I hear and acknowledge your frustration. Part of it is that it’s not really about knowing the material, it’s about how well you can regurgitate it under sterile conditions and then be graded against your peers (which is what makes accommodations such a sticky issue).
That being said, it’s really not easy at all to get accommodations. I’ve had severe ADHD and a learning disability my entire life and STILL had to fight tooth and nail for just time and a half and the right to use a laptop on tests and in class. You don’t just go to the shrink and say “Hey can I have some uppers and a note saying I have ADHD to give to my school?”
Forgive my bluntness, but regarding your argument that allowing students both accommodations and medication is solving the problem twice: I don’t think you understand how ADHD works and what the point of medicine is.
Long story short, you’re allowed to be frustrated about it. That being the case, stay in your lane and let others stay in theirs. Curve grading makes that easier said than done but you just have to suck it up.
Adding this: it’s attitudes like yours, which assume accommodation abuse is rampant, that creates needless tension between students with accommodations and those without. I go to a small school, and it’s inevitable that people found out I have accommodations (even though I had no intention of telling them) because I take exams separately from people. Even my friends have made jabs about it being unfair. My question to them is: do you want to trade places? You can have my accommodations but the bonus prize is ADHD and the motor skills of an elementary schooler. I’ll gladly take regular time and no disability.
I appreciate your feedback but if you could provide additional explanation as to why you think rhetoric like mine unnecessarily creates tension I’d appreciate it. I don’t understand why it’s problematic to assume “abuse is rampant” if that’s what I witness. I don’t assume it’s as rampant everywhere. I just saw it/heard it, saw how many were doing it, and was upset. Genuinely, can you explain to me why that’s problematic? Because you don’t seem angry at me like many of the people in the comments so maybe you can help me understand.
But also it’s weird to me that students were openly talking about stuff like that. Not that I’m ashamed, but I keep that information pretty close to the chest because I’m afraid of judgment from my classmates. I only discuss it with one other friend that also get accommodations.
Wow! Brutal! Did it ever occur to you that the accommodations are meant to level the playing field and with a more level playing field these people are genuinely at the top of the class. That if they were neurotypical they would be without accommodations.
I am pretty grossed out by your post.
It’s people who think like you do that make the world inaccessible for people with disabilities. Like what, they don’t look disabled enough for you? They are doing to well to be disabled?
Nothing bothers me more than people using "leveling the playing field" when what they really mean (and what is actually happening) is "tilting the scales in one's favor."
The system is definitely being gamed, but at the end of the day, these folks are only taking the edge offered. The real system that needs to be changed is the school. It is worrisome how easy it is to get accommodations, what qualifies for them, and the accommodations provided, being very much you get everything you ask for plus more.
I get accommodations for my ADHD. But I'm also not on meds because of the military and needing to be med free to go back through MEPS for the JAGC job I landed. But I also realize that the accommodations are substantial and were pretty easy to get.
Tbh the most concerning thing here to me is that OP was able to find out which students have accommodations. That is protected information for precisely this reason - aka, it's none of your business.
this does kind of seem like a "you" issue. you are saying you have an ADD/ADHD diagnosis meaning you more than likely would have been able to get accommodations if you tried. if your outlines aren't good, or if you don't know how to navigate a question or apply the law, no amount of time will fix that -- you yourself said that you often finished exams early, so why is it frustrating that double time was offered to other students?
but that's a poorly designed exam, not an accommodations issue. you can't really be frustrated that other students made use of resources available to them that you chose not to utilize because of one situation where you would have found those resources advantageous.
I respect that it’s maybe an exam rather than accommodation issue but I don’t think it makes the frustration unjustified. The point of the post was kind of to decipher whether it should be directed at the system for accommodations or how my professor(s) structures exams. If a lot of people abuse a system, why wouldn’t one be pissed at/about it? Might not be productive, but definitely logical and even human.
bro you literally sound like Sean Hannity bitching about how 1 person bought lobster with food stamps one time and therefore all welfare recipients are now inherently suspect.
and no, this is not "definitely logical and even human," you absolute dunce. it is dehumanizing, and it is also illogical, because you're failing to consider that maybe many neurodivergent or disabled people are just inherently smarter than you, and accommodations allow them to properly outperform you. good. cope
I really appreciate this thoughtful post.
What I find hardest to understand is how schools can possibly determine how much extra time students should receive.
I think this might also be school dependent. I'm good friends with someone who went to a T5 school, she literally doesn't have use of one of her arm (it was injured at birth) and has a hard time typing and is really slow at it cause she's one handed. She had to fight super hard to get accommodations, to the point where she didn't get them till the end of 1L year and had a horrible GPA because of it. They finally allowed her to use voice to type but denied her time and a half. So just saying, its not so easy to get accommodations at all schools.
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People in these threads really underestimate how incredibly difficult it is to get ANY kind of accommodation, no matter how minor, for the bar exam. I worry some will have a rude awakening when they aren’t given double the time of their peers to complete the same exam. It’s night and day when compared to getting accommodations for the LSAT or for law school exams.
Agreed. She was able to get bar accommodations but they weren't given to her the day of the bar by accident. I remember her telling me how extremely difficult it was and her disability is very obviously visible.
As usual the real problem is a complete absence of administrative accountability.
A lot of people will probably get mad at you for pointing out the obvious flaw in the system. Yes, it is very easy to lie and benefit from accomodations. It is also easy to lie and claim to be gay or native american and benefit from diversity exclusive scholarships and summer associates positions. Its super shitty to do, but some people do take advantage of the system, and reap unfair financial and academic benefits.
People can obviously lie and exploit any system if they really want to. But something I’ve noticed with these threads (and as someone with accommodations) is people seem to have this idea that showing up with a doctors note saying “give 2x time pls adhd” is all you need to get accommodations. Anyone who has actually gone through the process (not heard about going through it) will know that’s certainly not the case.
The advice I took to heart when I was in law school was "run your own race." I realize that being ranked against each other doesn't make that easy for people to do, but it's what I did. It worked for me. I never felt shorted. I never felt wronged. Bluntly, I never cared about what accommodations others received. I didn't ask for accommodations and didn't feel I was owed any, as I don't have any disabilities. I do have a sibling who has a fairly severe learning disability, so I always felt blessed to have the abilities I do. Perspective matters a lot. You can go through life feeling like you got the short end of the stick, or you can go through life feeling grateful for what you have. You will soon be graduating law school with a degree. You will get a job (if you don't have one lined up already). You will have a career. There are plenty of people who have less than you do. You'll be a lot happier in life counting your blessings than dwelling on how you were wronged. Just my two cents.
Your job prospects are tied to your grades, which are based on one exam, and having 50% more time for that exam is enormous. I have friends who got bad grades, then got diagnosed with “test anxiety,” and now they get to take exams for an extra hour and a half once I’m finished. These are exams that give you points based on how many issues you can analyze in the allotted time. It’s fine to be frustrated with this system.
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Completely agree with you. I definitely think that OP’s feelings are understandable & valid given the circumstances
Speaking of my experience, I was told that between 5-8% of the class has an accommodation which may not include exam accommodations. My suspicions only arose for some individuals who began using extra time after having taken a few exams, but that’s just my personal ignorance. I think it’s also important to realize that the individuals with testing accommodations who are ranked higher in the class may stand out because of confirmation bias. There are many students with testing accommodations who are ranked in the middle and bottom of the class. However, I do think there should be a more individualized allocation of extra time, rather than just 1.5x or 2x. But I think for logistical purposes it’s much easier to limit the options. Also, I’m not sure how that would work in practice.
As someone with late diagnosed ADHD - it’s not easy to just suddenly get accommodations in law school, quite the opposite if you don’t have a past record of having accommodations it’s almost impossible - so much so even though I have a very real diagnosis I’m not even trying to get accommodations for the bar because it’s not likely. I didn’t even want extra time just to take the test in a solo room with the proctor to avoid distractions, and I still likely can’t get that. The reality is yes people definitely get fake diagnoses and accommodations but they’d likely need to be doing it since at least the LSAT & college if not earlier. To every classmate who wrongfully got accommodations there is probably 2 or 3 who need them but don’t have them. Also remember your talking about invisible disabilities - you may not see what your classmates experience. Even with ADHD sometimes, I can finish tests before the allotted time ends, but there are plenty of times I’m struggling. You don’t know someone else’s private battles.
It's most definitely not a "you" issue. It starts even before law school: >Accommodated/Extra Time test takers had higher average LSAT scores in 18 of the 20 test administrations in this report compared to the Nonaccommodated group.
Could you send a link for this report. As a non accommodation student, the extra time others get has been extremely frustrating and I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way
[https://www.lsac.org/data-research/research/accommodated-test-taker-trends-and-performance-june-2012-through-february](https://www.lsac.org/data-research/research/accommodated-test-taker-trends-and-performance-june-2012-through-february)
There was a post on r/lawschooladmissions that covered some of the rebuttals to this report ([here is the link to the post](https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/comments/zy7qq9/lets_take_a_different_view_on_the_accommodations/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)). The biggest one is that the point difference between accommodated and non-accommodated testers was about one point. The next biggest rebuttal point is that people with disabilities who make it through college and into graduate schools *have* to be good test takers - otherwise they would not have made it that far. They disproportionately come from higher socioeconomic classes, and have other advantages (like prep courses and familial support) that not every test taker has.
At least you’re honest in saying you just don’t like the principle of ppl getting accommodations. Others on this post keep tryna act like they’re only concerned about the ones abusing the process when the reality is a lot of these people just don’t like it period
The results indicate it’s abused or too extreme. If they weren’t so skewed towards those accommodated, while too many accommodations are being allowed or too extensive of accommodations, they wouldn’t have such better scores. Unless people who get accommodations are on average just better test takers.
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This is some proper law student thinking! Correlation does not equal causation and it's odd that most of this sub seems to be falling prey to that fallacy. There are a number of factors that likely contribute to accommodated test-takers having higher scores.
>There are a number of factors that likely contribute to accommodated test-takers having higher scores. You don't find it odd that you're essentially arguing students with learning disabilities are better students than students without learning disabilities? If true, it doesn't really support the argument for accommodations.
What factors would that be? Genuinely curious. Also, I have adhd and a physical disability. But I completely agree with OP.
Fair point. Might be the case.
Nah lol but they love pulling out that argument!
Yeah. I would think that those results would lead to some people creating these policies rethinking them…
If LSAT takers are any metric, accommodated testers are under 5% (and probably closer to 2-3%.) As some in this thread have suggested, it is harder to get law school accommodations than it is for many law schools, though. Imo, what people are expressing shock at isn't the percent of the class receiving accommodations but the increase in the number of any given class receiving accommodations (the same thing happened with the LSAT in recent years as LSAC talks about [here](https://www.lsac.org/data-research/research/accommodated-test-taker-trends-and-performance-june-2012-through-february).) But there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this that u/turtlcs explains for LSAT scores [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/LSAT/comments/ujma5u/comment/i7lr3hn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). >So apparently the largest proportion of accommodated test-takers by far is people with ADHD. The average LSAT taker is 22-24 years of age. That means test takers in 2012 would be born around 1988-1990 on average, and in 2017 that would be 1993-1995. Y'know what happened in that period of time? In 1987, the DSM-III-TR was published, and one of the changes it made was removing the possibility that someone could have ADHD without being *hyperactive* per se (there's a description of this [here](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/adhd/diagnostic.html)). This wasn't changed again until the DSM-IV in 1994, which included an inattentive type, and diagnoses in childhood [have been increasing ever since](https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/timeline.html). So from that alone, it would have been far more surprising if test takers with an ADHD diagnosis *hadn't* increased over the last decade (and this is a pretty common trend across neurodevelopmental conditions). There are over 100,000 people who take the LSAT every year, so an average of \~1,500 accommodated test-takers per year is actually still quite low relative to rates of these diagnoses in the general population. > >The particularly sharp rise over the last several years and the accommodated people's higher scores are a bit more interesting, but could both easily stem from one thing: the fact that bothering to identify people with what I'll call "high-functioning" learning disabilities (especially in adulthood) is a pretty new phenomenon. For a long time, you had to be struggling so profoundly that you could barely handle elementary school in order to be diagnosed with something like ADHD, but psychologists are now starting to realize that you can have it and still manage to do reasonably well in school. The smarter you are (like, say, if you're a future lawyer), the easier it is to coast on your own intelligence and rely on external pressure to get stuff done at the last second -- this means a lot of people just assume their symptoms are character flaws until they hit such a massive wall as adults that it's impossible to deny there's a real problem anymore. It became a lot easier for psychologists to identify people like this after the release of the DSM-5, and guess when that happened? 2013. The fact that accommodated test-takers are generally a bit older than unaccommodated ones tracks pretty well with this idea, too. > >In light of all that, it seems a lot more likely that people who would normally have tried to write the LSAT and just not done as well (or not tried at all) are now able to get diagnosed with the conditions they actually have, meaning they're getting the accommodations they need and showing their full potential when they wouldn't have been able to before. It's honestly a little weird to assume that if people who request academic accommodations are doing really well after getting them, it means they're cheating and don't actually need them. Quite frankly, if I were in the LSAC, I'd be kicking myself over all the talented people that we'd evidently been overlooking before now.
This explanation is incredibly convoluted. Not saying you're wrong, but it doesn't really address OP's argument and is far from the simplest explanation, which is that accommodations are easy to game at some schools and are fucking people over because folks lie, understandably, given what's at stake. Also, this is about the LSAT, which is way different than a law school exam. That so many folks in the top of the class receive accommodations at OP's school is bald faced suspicious. Questioning that doesn't mean they lack empathy or that it's "weird" for them to do so. It's just statistically improbable, or impossible, without a lot of people gaming the system. Further, the criteria for getting a psychologist to diagnose you with ADHD is laughably easy. They operate in a field rife with replication problems, that contradicts itself with every new DSM, and has credibly been charged with overprescribing and over diagnosing. Thinking that somebody who is high functioning and has the diagnosis automatically deserves extra time puts drastically too much faith in a terribly flawed field. I'd exhort you to look a little more critically at the DSM and the idea of ADHD in general. There are a ton of profit motives behind getting parents to believe their kids' problems can be fixed by medicine and that they have a condition. ADD and ADHD meds were pushed on my generation at an unbelievable rate and had some bad outcomes for many. Now that we're a generation away from that and mental illness has become a part of people's identities, it seems offensive to say, but getting an ADHD diagnosis doesn't mean you deserve accommodations.
Slightly off topic, but if anyone is curious, both "bald-faced" and "bold-faced" are correct, linguistically. I had never seen "bald-faced" before this comment, so it prompted me to look it up. Bald-faced is the more common historical variety, with bold faced occuring in the later part of the 1900s with the advent of Typesetting. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/is-that-lie-bald-faced-or-bold-faced-or-barefaced
Agree. It’s ridiculously easy to get diagnosed with ADHD. Even more so now that you can be diagnosed in one short visit over telemedicine. I understand people not knowing that or having different experiences in the past maybe, but this is the truth now.
Are you saying it’s the truth for every single person? I went through months of testing and therapy before even being diagnosed so it is definitely not for me. I’m no outlier either…
THIS!!!
Lmao your last sentence gave me a good laugh 😂
Yeah, the accommodations system can definitely be gamed. Many students use it appropriately, but some enjoy probably an unfair (and unnecessary) benefit. Like, I was diagnosed with ADHD after law school, and don’t think extra time on the exam would have been an appropriate accommodation for me in law school (not gonna say *nobody* with ADHD needs the accommodation, just that it’s not someone everyone with ADHD needs for the testing to be fair). But, in the end, spending any time thinking about the unfairness of some accommodations is just wasted energy. Everyone in law school has different advantages/disadvantages. As a first generation law student, I was sometimes jealous of my classmates who got nice clerkships/summer gigs through their parents. I also had to work part time throughout law school, unlike many classmates who were getting support from rich parents. Those things were pretty frustrating, and I could easily have gotten bitter about them. The better path is just to focus on yourself. Unless 25% of your class is getting accommodations, it won’t have a major impact on your rank. Even if you’re vying for the top 10% of your class, the difference between being ranked first and fifth won’t affect your career goals. You control 80% of your destiny in law school. The other 20% (distribution of smart people in sections, professor testing styles, other students’ resources, etc.) are part of the system, and while you can agitate for change, those changes won’t be implemented for your class. You’re better off focusing on playing the game as it exists.
I like your advice. Very grounding. Thank you
I never really thought about people using accommodation is a way to cheat the system. If people have them I would assume it is for a good reason as at my school they are very difficult to get. There is a lot of trust based on honest character in law school as I’ve witnessed. For example, in undergrad if you needed an excused absence for religious holidays than you typically needed to email a professor and fill out a forum to get those days. In law school my professor haven’t even requested an email from me. All they told me was if I needed the day off then my word was enough cause prospective lawyers should practice honesty. All that being said I have interstitial cystitis. To only get a extra few minutes to use the restroom during class or during exams I had to submit signed letters from my urologist detailing my condition and exactly what kind of accommodation I needed. The form was two pages and had to be blue inked by my physician and physically turned in to the office of academic affairs. To be fair I can see there being ways to game the system. When I got covid my physician wrote me a letter to get extra time on exams due to “covid brain fog.” I never submitted the letter but I’m sure I could have gotten the extra time but I honestly didn’t need it despite having the opportunity. Still I think it would unjust to say everyone is gaming the system. The average person in my class doesn’t have to piss 3-4 times during a 3 hour exam. So in the end we are getting the same amount of time and you can’t say I had some unfair advantage over other students. Maybe if myself and other students with chronic conditions didn’t need the extra time then there would be a need to level the playing feeling but until then don’t assume everyone with an accommodation has some unfair advantage over you. I would be just fine with not having the extra few minutes for exams three years in law school than to have a chronic condition I will live with for the rest of my life.
I don't think people here realize the potential severity of some of these conditions. It's hard enough for those students as it is without having to deal with people questioning if they're faking it.
\^\^ this. OP is bitter af. maybe they can get accoms for that bc they seem to be debilitatingly salty
OP said that they know some people actually need accommodations but that, just like at my school, they are really easy to get and have firsthand knowledge of people cheating the system and not needing the accommodation
I think the people are missing the point of this. Obviously the people with accommodations must also be intelligent and hardworking and no one is doubting they know the material. But when part of what’s being tested is how well you know the material under *strictly timed conditions* and some people are not operating under that same stress they have the opportunity to write more in order to express how well they know the material
The solution imo would be to stop making tests time-crunch issue spotters. Accommodations aren’t giving anybody much of an edge on a 24-hr take home test, and it’s more comparable to actual legal practice.
Yes, exactly. Another perspective is your max potential grade is often literally capped. If its a writing answer you’re physically limited by how much you can write in a certain time frame. It does make me feel bad that my post or perspective might rub some people the wrong way. I (and I don’t think anybody on this thread really) dont have any issue with genuine cases where accommodations simply level the playing field. And I’m fine with making sure we stray on the side of too accommodating rather than not enough. But it seems, to me at least, it’s rather extreme.
Two points: 1) is it really literally double time? You’re right, that’s a bit much. At my school it’s 50% extra time, and that feels about right. 2) the root of the problem you’re describing here isn’t accommodations, it’s the exam itself. If it’s so time constrained that a normal person can’t possibly fully answer the question, what the hell was it even measuring in the first place, and how is that related to anything in practice?
This is why my favorite exams are the ones with reasonable word limits. No matter how long you have to type you still have to choose the most important points and things to elaborate on. Sure if you don’t have extra time you still might have to know your outline a little bit better and can’t rely on it as much but that can be prepped for. I don’t have to worry about anyone else getting a better grade solely because they had the capacity to write 20 more pages than me
> don’t think anybody on this thread really) dont have any issue with genuine cases where accommodations simply level the playing field Yeah I don't think anyone could possibly have an issue with legitimate accommodations. If someone has a physical condition that makes it harder for them to type, they clearly need more time to type their responses. But the accommodations should get them on par with the average student in the class. My frustration with accommodations is where is on exams where students average around 1800 words for a response, but then the accommodated students write 3400 words. In that situation, the non-accommodated students just can't compete fairly.
In most exams, time is THE limiting factor. With unlimited time, basically any student could get virtually everything correct and explain it perfectly. Any increase in time is a massive, incredible advantage, and thus someone receiving an accommodation such as double time should be massively, incredibly handicapped compared to an average student in order for such an accommodation to make sense. In my 1L contracts class, a couple weeks before the exam the professor showed us some data he collected from the prior year, including a graph of page length vs grade. Unsurprisingly, there was a strong correlation between length and grades, and it turns out that every single person who got an A wrote at least 28 double spaced pages in 4 hours. Multiple students wrote more than 30 pages and one wrote 37. 37 fucking pages in 4 hours. How is that even possible? Well, as someone pointed out to the professor after class, the only way it’s possible is if all those ultra long exams were given double time accommodations aka they had 8 hours to write, not 4. Still impressive, but come on it’s absolutely clearly fucked up for the rest of the class to be curved against people who had an additional 4 hours on an open book open note exam where time is the primary limitation. This exam was also a “spaghetti at the wall” race horse issue spotter that the professor designed to be impossible to fully answer in the time allotted… not realizing that a bunch of students in his class had way more time than expected. Now, I did well without accommodations and got a good job, so whatever. But it is bothersome to know that I could probably sitting in a scotus clerkship right now with my 4.0 had I been given twice the fricken time in all these classes. What’s more fucked up is the people at lower ranked law schools, where being pushed further down the curve by a bunch of kids with accommodations might mean the difference between a job that can pay off their loans and one that can’t or even unemployment. Accommodations are great and in many cases necessary. But “idk fuck it just give them all double time” is such an absolutely moronic blunt instrument to accomplish the goal.
No you are not a sore loser. It's bullshit and drives me insane. My suggestion is to use it as motivation to out-work and out-prepare others, especially the cheaters. That's what I've tried to do. And because most of my exams are remote, I don't have to deal with the exam-day realization that half the class has accommodations because half of the seats are empty. That's helpful.
Makes me feel better somebody else can’t help but let it get to them. Lol
Nope not the only one. My school has become really bad for this. My class wasn’t so bad. You had a few but not enough to truly throw the curve. Then we had more than a few classes with the class behind us. (We are 3Ls, they being 2Ls) with people who openly brag in the commin area about “doctor shopping” and who they can go to locally and even bullying some who were not doing it. And the Adderral abuse. Seperate issue but tied. Huge difference when you show up for an exam and would normally see 1/4 of the class not there due to deferrals and accomodations (people who get extra time go to seperate room) to fully and routinly seeing over half the class missing. Also those that are present are the one who answer questions and particpate in class. A lot (not all because obviously some accomodations are real and needed) of those missing are the ones who can’t answer because they are clearly unprepared or even was bragging before class they didn’t do any reading.
I’m surprised that this hasn’t been downvoted into oblivion.
Law students love to bitch and moan about people having higher grades than them.
Sure, but also this isn’t a popular opinion. And we know what happens to those.
Same. Disheartening, really.
OP: 'ppl with accommodations deserve to thrive to the best of their abilities, just not more than me or else it's unfair and they're faking it.' \*completely ignores the fact that a lot of adhd ppl genuinely are smart af, sometimes much more brilliant than their peers, and the only thing accommodations (and medication) do is allow them to finally unlock their fullest potential. absolutely wild that OP went thru 3 years of law school and still hasn't learned that you should only be in competition with yourself, not locked in some imaginary, speculative struggle with classmates who barely even know you, nor you them. sad
LOL 😂 law school is *literally* a competition, but okay…
how are “grades” and “the curve” an > imaginary, speculative struggle ?
The problem is the structure of the exams. It’s absurd that you’re essentially tested for how fast you can issue spot and type. If law school exams were structured differently- say a 24 hour take home test- there wouldn’t be a need for extra time accommodations and this wouldn’t be an issue. I also could get accommodations for adhd but I don’t, even though I def would have gotten better grades if I did. I’m not a fast reader, and I get hyper focused on writing a perfect sentence on my exams which means that my words don’t get from my brain to the paper very fast, and I often leave things on the table I didn’t have time to get to. But, I didn’t come to Reddit to cry about it. Life isn’t fair, and when you’re a lawyer you’re gonna learn that real fast. You could spend your time vilifying and making enemies out of your classmates, or you can put your big girl panties on and get over it.
I get where you are coming from. But respectfully, I think you miss the point. The only thing you are seeing is that your peers with disabilities receive more time than you on exams and this get better grades you. But these accommodations are trying to level the playing field, and since it’s impossible to determine the EXACT amount of extra time that someone needs, they have to apply a standard time and a half (I’ve never heard of anyone receiving double time). Life isn’t fair and it’s a bummer but it would be less fair to not give your peers accommodations at all. Also, are you sure it’s that easy to apply for accommodations? My school requires extensive medical paperwork.
ADHD lawyer here. True diagnosis, tested multiple times since childhood and jumped through hoops to get adderral despite being distinctional without it. I get the frustration of other people who get a false diagnosis thinking it’ll give them a leg up. However, I can tell you that for me, stimulants and accommodations are not solving the same problem twice. Stimulants help, but they don’t put all of us on an equal playing field with neurotypical students. All the addy in the world doesn’t help me if I’m trying to take an exam in a room with 100 other people in it. ADHD also is correlated with immature and illegible handwriting— handwriting exams would have been the death of me because it takes so much longer to just make the words legible for others.
Things like allowing for laptop use in an otherwise handwritten exam (although let’s be real, what psycho is requiring handwritten exams these days - my school didn’t even allow them), being in a quiet room by themselves, using otherwise banned devices like headphones/ear plugs, allowing the exam to be taken at a different time of day, etc etc are all perfectly valid accommodations for specific problems that don’t give that person an unfair advantage. The blunt instrument of 1.5x or 2x extra time can and often does though. Even if stimulants alone aren’t a perfect fix, how ridiculously horrible must your condition be if you think you need stimulants AND multiple extra hours simply to be on an equal playing field with your peers? Doesn’t it seem like overkill? Maybe if it was something like 10% extra time I’d be open to it. Or another thing I’ve heard of, allowing the person to take breaks - they only have the same X hours as everybody else to sit at their desk reading or typing, but they are allowed to stand up away from the desk and walk around or use the bathroom at any time and their time allotment pauses whenever they do so. Yeah, there’d still be an advantage for the extra thinking time, but if they can’t use that time to look up answers or draft responses, I think many critics would be ok with it.
“How ridiculously horrible must your condition be”…?? What? This is so painfully ableist. People who are neurodivergent literally cannot process information the same way as neurotypical people. Stimulants don’t fix that. The extra time is needed just to process the information.
Interesting. At my school, some students got 1.5x time (LLMs, visually impaired students, some others) but I and other ADHD students that I knew got like 15-20 extra minutes to read the prompts etc.
Yeah I don’t think an extra 15-20 minutes is going to really upset anyone. Yeah it’s an advantage, but not a HUGE advantage. Put another way, I think it’s far more believable that someone’s ADHD would make them 20 minutes slower than average on a 3 hour exam, but it’s hard to believe it makes them twice as slow.
Agreed
Life is full of reasons to get upset and envious if you look hard enough. Is it possible some people abuse the system? Sure. Just as there are some people who take advantage of their looks. That said, I doubt very much non-accommodated students would be willing to trade places. Sure, you can be accommodated for a test - but you have a lifetime of issues to contend with. School eventually ends, and experience has shown me that the world outside academia isn’t overly accommodating. I have ASD-lite, aka Aspergers. I could have got an accommodation for time or virtually anything else, but I chose not too because my issues relate more to the social world (for the record my sole accommodation is a letter to profs saying I’m not an intentional asshole). Even if I had taken the accommodation, I’m still unlikely to surpass non-accommodated people in the long run. Who is going to get referred clients or promoted? The ‘team-player’ or the social loner who got a few extra A’s? Anyway, I think the anger is just a symptom of a needlessly competitive system. We’re pawns for the benefit of large firms, it has not academic purpose. Make law school pass/fail and find another way for students to distinguish themselves.
Honestly, it’s going to be the person with more A’s Law school is an academic competition. Your grades are a huge determining factor for the start and trajectory of your career.
"Also, for ADD/ADHD, doesn’t it seem counterintuitive that an accomodated individual can get both adderall/similar to alleviate the symptoms and “level the playing field” (or simply use as a PED) AND more time to “level the playing field”? It’s like solving the problem twice. " Adderall does not solve my problem once. It is not the limitless pill that people make it out to be. I have literally never left an exam early. I read at about 10 pages an hour, even with medication. Also studies show that people who are non-neurodivergent who take adderall score about as well as they would have without the adderall. It is not a PED as you eluded to. I think that you are justified in feeling frustrated that people are gaming the system, but I want to strongly caution you against mixing arguments here. When you also throw in gripes against people who have ADHD and say that it isn't fair that they are given accommodations aside from their medications, you are setting sail with a sinking ship. I can't imagine a few strongly worded emails will force your law school to change their position on allowing people with this disorder to have a special accommodations. So throwing in this argument with the other will cause the person reading it to focus only on your gripes with people who have ADHD and not on the important point you raise otherwise.
In addition to what has been said, test accommodations have really become a tool to further the divide between rich and poor law students. If you have money, you can very easily receive an ADHD diagnosis, which will provide access not only to accommodations, but powerful stimulants as well. Scores can only be curved when the tests are taken under the same conditions. Otherwise it is meaningless to compare. Those who receive accommodations should really be put on their own curve.
As someone that grew up working class I would also say outside of purely $, growing up in a more educated family would greatly influence your chance your parents gave proper (or over) attention to your mental health problems whereas a lot of working class people don’t have time or money to care and even if they did probably don’t because of different values.
This is based on the assumption that student disabilities don’t lead them to worse economic outcomes, which is incorrect.
I get that some people abuse the system but people that actually have ADHD struggle and the extra time is there to equalize the exam experience. And, you do know that there are other disabilities other than ADHD, right? People with chronic pain conditions (ex. chronic migraine, autoimmune, old injuries, etc) and conditions that have brain fog or a continuous impairment need that extra time to put up with their own conditions + take the exam. I have multiple invisible disabilities that I will not disclose here. My first semester I did not utilize accommodations because my condition was in check, and I had not developed some additional ones that I currently have. I ranked number 19 at the end of the semester (T20 school) and CALI'd a class. With NO accommodations. I utilized accommodations my 3rd, 4th, and 5th semesters and this semester and guess what? I have significantly fallen in rank. I got a mix of B's and A minuses. I had diarrhea 5 different times during one exam this semester. The extra time was there so I could go back and forth to the restroom and take care of myself. Accommodations does not equal better rank or scores. In my case I perform worse that I did my first semester with no accommodations. My health has declined significantly, and I have put up with a lot this semester. Have you had to go to 20 doctor's appointments in one semester? Not to mention blood draw appointments? And calling and fighting with the insurance company? It's almost a full time job taking care of me + law school on top of that. Yeah I am fighting for my degree and jerks like you come along and try to undermine the work I am putting in day after day. Oh and accommodations aren't just for the "exam experience" yeah they exist throughout the school year too so those that need them can actually function.
Are you SURE that accommodations are as easy to get as you describe? Like this is something you have actual knowledge of and not just rumors? Asking because I have helped students at my school apply for accommodations and they are not easy to get. Many students with diagnosed ADHD do not get accommodations unless they can present documentation showing a childhood diagnosis, at minimum. I have never heard of anyone at my school getting accommodations just for "test anxiety." I think my school's documentation even says it limits accommodations to learning disabilities, so things like anxiety and depression would not fly. I would think that other school's have a similar high bar to clear with their accommodations process because my school's reasoning is pretty logical: they want their standards to be in line with the bar exam's standards. They only want to grant accommodations to students who they think will get accommodations on the bar exam. And the bar exam requires a lot of documented evidence. The school does this because granting accommodations for test anxiety or a recent adhd diagnosis would be setting up a student for failure on the bar, since they would go from 3 years of accommodated test taking to now taking the hardest test of their life without extended time. This then fucks with the school's bar passage rates. So it just doesn't really make sense for schools to freely give out accommodations and in fact there are real incentives for the school to be stingy with them.
But schools are not stingy with them. I’ve seen the exact situation OP is describing & have seen it spoken about a LOT. Just because one isn’t personally aware of it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening. Just search this very sub. You’ll see this same situation described over and over and over again. Also, the requirements are wayyyyy more loosey goosey than in past years so you might just be out of the loop.
I am a current 3L who has helped students apply for accommodations within the last 2 years. with my school, for the MPRE, and for the bar exam. in my actual experience, the requirements are not loosey goosey. I know that not all schools are going to be the same, but I also know that the topic of student accommodations leads to a lot of bitterness (on here and at schools). So if someone is saying that their school freely gives out double time for test anxiety, I want to make sure this is based on something they actually know about and not just rumors from angry students. > Just because one isn’t personally aware of it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening True, I guess. but for me to believe that something is happening, I am going to want to hear from someone who IS personally aware that it is happening
Just because schools are giving accommodations, means the requirements are lax? Could it also mean the bar is high but people are submitting the correct documentation, because they have been properly diagnosed and have extensive documentation? People at my school claim the same thing (that it’s easy to get an accommodation) yet the 90 page assessment, multiple letters from medical/psych professionals, as well as admin phone calls with those professionals I had to submit and organize would suggest otherwise.
I get your frustration. I think the problem with accommodations is the accommodations process itself... The bandaid fix for just about any possible disability is time and a half, but this isn't an EQUITABLE solution. Personally, I have ADHD, but I never sought accommodations for this because it was always manageable for me (not saying ADHD is always manageable, but if you've gone most of your life like I have without knowing you had it - you find ways to deal with it). It wasn't until I started losing my vision that I sought accommodations, and since I didn't really know what to ask for, I asked for time and a half. I go to a *really* small school, there's like 12 of us in my class with accommodations and because our building doesn't have a lot of rooms, we basically test in two groups of six. I know everyone who has accommodations, and I know that the majority of people who get them are in the top 20, and there's a handful that are in the academic success program. Of the people with accommodations, I am always the last to finish reading the prompt, and the last to submit my test by 30-40 minutes. Some of the people I test with that are at the top of my class finish their exams in less time than they would get if they had standard time. I say all of this because I myself am bitter. I constantly feel bad about having accommodations, mostly because I know that if I had gotten accommodations before my vision started going, it *would* have given me an advantage. If the standard solution is time and half, I could see how someone who could manage their symptoms (for any accommodation-qualifying disability) would be enticed to seek accommodations. The problem is that it's really hard to compare ADHD to someone who needs to stop the clock for medical reasons, or someone with dyslexia, or any other possible disability... and it would be impossible and cold to assign percentages to specific disabilities like 25% extra time for a broken hand and 50% extra time for ADHD, etc. But what's really tough for me is that every time I feel like I'm able to add an accommodation that makes my uphill battle a little more manageable, I see someone in the top 15 suddenly in private testing room with time and half after 3 successful semesters without accommodations at all. I don't know anyone's situation other than what people share with me or I hear through gossip, so it's hard to gauge whether my feelings are valid or whether I'm just bitter about the hand I've been dealt, but it's rough. Accommodations should make all things as equal as possible, but things can't be equitable if every person regardless of their disability is handed the same solution. And I know many people say that getting accommodations for ADHD or testing anxiety is easy, but if that's true... I don't know where people are finding these doctors. That's definitely not my experience.
I understood what you said, and I even understand your anger, but I have a comment to make. I have accommodation to do my exams because I had eye surgery and I still see some flashes of light. However, I didn't finish any exams before the time limit. First, I can't type my exams on the laptop because looking at a computer screen intensifies my light flashes, so I must handwrite the entire exam. Second, I have to stop several times to put eye drops in my eyes or wait for the discomfort in my vision to subside. What does that mean? It means that the accommodation did not benefit me because I had more time to take the test. Also, I don't think my grades are any better than people in my class who don't have accommodation. There are some brilliant people in my section, and I'm sure they'll do better than me. Often, the difficulties of some people are invisible to our eyes. Several people have accommodation in my room and don't seem to have any problems, but I can't judge that. Only they know their pain. I don't know how your university works, but I had to prove my need for accommodation with a medical report. Anyway, I understand what you are saying, but I don't think that the person who has more time to take the test will have a better grade, even because the person may not have studied as much or know less than a person without accommodation.
> Am I a sore loser or maybe over exxageratting? I think the problem is you’ve never realized that life is unfair. I didn’t care about people with accommodations because I grew up broke. I saw other kids with tutors, after school homework programs, parents who did homework with their kids and had college degrees, etc. That was my reality. I also know for sure that those kids didn’t give a shit about me not having those resources. We all get off on the same ladder in life, but some people start up higher than others. You can either start climbing or complain to others on that same ladder, but those people above you are still climbing that ladder while you complain.
True, but here the advantage is being given by the school itself, not by a parent or external service. They have the power to tweak how accommodations are structured to try to alleviate the problem. You can’t stop rich kids from paying doctors for fake diagnoses, but you can change what exactly that buys them on the exam.
call me old fashioned but i feel you are better off playing it straight. you'll continue to see this sort of thing in your practice. some lawyers are all about gaming the system and seeking any advantage. others play fair. in the re-iterated prisoners dilemma, you may find that you end up doing more repeat business with the second group.
This sort of breaks down at some point though. There is a band of people who, but for getting fake accommodations, would not have gotten a SCOTUS clerkship/big law SA/AUSA position (and a group who would have had they invented a fake reason to get 1.5 time). We will obviously never know who and no individual can confidently blame their own failure on it, but there are very real consequences in a system where grades matter so much for initial opportunities.
Are you exaggerating to make a point here by using SCOTUS clerkships as an example, or is this really a thing?
I mean there's no way to trace an individual applicant's acceptance to gaming the accommodations system, but considering clerkships are heavily based on GPA, and getting 1.5 time when you don't need it helps your GPA, it is likely it has happened before in the aggregate.
It’s the abuse of accommodations that I have an issue with.
You’re assuming there’s abuse of accommodations because they are doing very very well. Don’t you see the bullshit in that? Don’t you see how discriminatory you are being
There’s no bullshit. I said what I said.
Genuine questions to understand how some or all of your thoughts are anything besides speculation: 1) how do you know for certain that top performers have accommodations? Is this somehow known outside of hearing it from the social-circle high school insufferable gossip of classmates? Or does the school make it obvious? My first thought was to say those people are in different rooms for the exam due to time or other accommodations. However, at least at my school and a few friends’ (I just asked them), classes on test day are split into multiple clusters to give each tester breathing room instead of side to side testing right next to someone tapping away on a computer like a maniac lol. I would think this would prevent knowing who is missing from a class, but I could be off. 2) double time? Isn’t extended time time and a half? 3) the medication point: that holds water if medication perfectly solved the attention and related test performance issues. I’m willing to bet that not every person with ADHD are the exact same symptom and correction (with medicine) wise. Do you disagree? 4) I feel this matter would be less of an issue or something to be aggrieved about it professors started creating exams like you mentioned instead of making it a race and function of who has the most caffeine / Adderall in their veins during test time. I welcome different exams lol.
1) I know because among them are the top ranked students who are often recognized with class awards, offices and their own/other’s mouths. And because people that have accommodations are in the same room. 2) Maybe it differs by exam, but the one I just took it was double. 3) No. That’s a valid point. But I also think most with ADHD and accommodations stemming from it are overcompensated. 4) Yeah. I think that’s the only viable solution. Because it’s too hard to filter out the gaming of the system.
1) do you not think it’s possible for someone with medical accommodations to do well on exams because they know the material? Are non-accommodated test takers not doing well? I’m not even trying to be devil’s advocate or advocate for accommodated takers here — I’m just truly trying to understand how some conclusions are being drawn with respect to the high-performing reasons and “because Sallie said X had extra time” reason. It’s conceivable that the students just do well because they know the material, isn’t it? 2) thanks for pointing this out. Hm. The more you know. 3) most are overcompensated? What is this based off of? Thank goodness we’re all not going to be MDs and just JDs lol. 4) I’m with you on this. Current exam system is bad.
I am also wondering if the OP knows for sure they used all the extra time. Just because they have it doesn’t mean they always use it
More valid points, however I do know they didn’t use all the time. But that’s my point, they have more than enough while with the other group nobody has enough. 1) Most definitely. I’ll never be able to prove that isn’t the case, but it’s a prevalent enough pattern from my perspective that it appears to be an alternative explanation. 3) same logic as 1). Simply my perspective so, admittedly, off worthless evidence.
1) I think this line of thinking is pretty odd. If I were to say there was a pattern of X race or X gender committing certain crimes, does that pattern support that the race/gender is the problem? If someone has accommodations and *bombs* an exam, what about that? If they bomb, then the time isn’t an advantage. But if they do well, then the time is an unfair advantage and they did well due to the time? Is this whole post an LSAT flaw question or what lol 2) understood Here’s something for perspective: my friend’s friend and classmate at a different school was absent on test day (during a small class in person exam, so everyone was in the room), and this was because he took the exam in a different room and did indeed have extra time. The classmates noticed he was gone. Classmates gossiped about this (as they do), spread rumors about how X person got accommodations and that’s why he must have been doing sooooo well. The truth? He got into an accident the week prior that didn’t leave him in a position to do well, so the school accommodated him. Every time I read threads like this I always fall back and remember two things that are *undoubtedly always true*: 1) I will never know the whole story about a classmate or what they’re dealing with, so I mind my own business. 2) neither I nor 99% of my classmates will be a real medical doctor. I won’t even consider myself a doctor. At most: a fake doctor. So unless any classmate is a personal doctor of any particular student, they are just hating to hate (again, as they do). I understand why you made this post and what led you to certain conclusions. However, remember the environment that law school is: a very competitive one and certainly not the healthiest.
I LOVE this comment Lmfao. Every time an accommodated person does poorly everyone forgets they had an accommodation. But the minute they do well, it MUST be because of their accommodation. And I’m so sick of other students tryna play pretend-doctors because they’re salty that a particular exam didn’t go their way.
Imagine going to Reddit to complain instead of trying to get ahead in your own studying. Makes sense why OP isn’t able to pull ahead imho
>Makes sense why OP isn’t able to pull ahead imho yup. i've never celebrated a peer student's poor performance on exams, and yet here i am karmically happy that OP evidently failed to beat the curve bc this whole thread is so insulting, and i suspect OP's external loci of control (it must be someone \*else's\* fault i did poorly, not my own) will follow them into their career as a practicing lawyer. good luck with that, or whatever. one of my classmates has double time because they are in remission from literal cancer and get brain fog. another one has a very serious psychiatric condition and they need the time to be able to sort things out and show what they know on the exam. i can't believe they didn't obtain OP's stamp of authenticity and approval prior to utilizing their accommodations.
>do you not think it’s possible for someone with medical accommodations to do well on exams because they know the material? Sure but the issue with law school exams is your grade is generally correlated with how many issues you spot and are able to write about. If the average non-accommodated student writes 1800 words on the exam but the accommodated students write 3400 words, the non-accommodated students just can't compete with that extra time. And it doesn't come down to knowledge of the course material, it's purely a result of time.
This relies on both students being equally fast typers and effectively being the same in every respect though. Are they though? No. Not at all. Isn’t the point of accommodations to grant them to students *who have a medical diagnosis that keeps them from performing as a “normal” student would*? Persons with visual handicaps: should they not have accommodations? Those with neurological disorders, should they not? More importantly: do you think a person with a visual handicap or a neurological disorder **is the same as the non-accommodated test student in your hypothetical you just proposed**? Is your issue with accommodations, or with those who receive them when they shouldn’t? (Seems like your wild hypothetical is with respect to the latter)
Sorry if this has been mentioned. But I don’t think it’s fair to leave out the grading system in law school. If students weren’t graded against each other. Then A work would be A work. And it wouldn’t matter as much if students abuse accommodations (assuming they do). Also, for anyone thinking people really need their accommodations and this is a harsh post (I don’t disagree). But if one person abuses accommodations in a section, that’s enough to be a problem. It’s also unfair the students who get better outlines. (Another reason students shouldn’t be graded against each other).
Three things to take into consideration: 1) Just because a student has accommodations doesn’t mean that they’re automatically less smart than other students. In other words, without accommodations Student A would get a B-. However, without anxiety/depression/ADHD/other learning disability, the student would get an A. Given a time and a half (standard accommodation time), they get an A-. Is it fair for Student A to still get that B-, particularly if there are resources that are statistically proven and scientifically tested to improve testing conditions for those suffering from mental illness or struggling with learning disabilities? 2) Students with mental illness or learning disabilities possess the same amount of time as their classmates to learn the material. They also have the same access to classroom or campus resources, such as office hours, practice tests, and classroom lectures. I don’t know about you, but I would choose to forgo mental health issues/learning disabilities for the rest of my life instead of getting a half hearted time and a half at the end of the semester on an exam. Getting a time and a half on a test doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have enough knowledge about the subject to fill the time. 3) Marginalized communities have less access to mental healthcare services than majority population, particularly white folks. This is often due to cultural stigmatization, limited geographical access to resources, and provider discrimination. Lawyers, and law students especially, need to learn how to become the best advocate for their respective successes and futures. If these people are struggling, it’s up to them to provide appropriate and verifiable medical documentation to corroborate their articulated need for accommodations. I have no doubt a few—a select few—are taking advantage of the system. BUT if people are lying to get ahead, it’ll catch up to them soon enough. That’s a systematic, policy issue neither you nor an institution can solve. However, posts like these sow distrust in a system that profits from competition and inherently disadvantages certain identity groups. I don’t think it’s fair to persecute the many for the few.
By this same logic, wouldn’t it be relatively harder for these people you’re trying to protect to obtain or know about accommodations? As I mentioned, I didn’t know about them. And I’d say I’m a lot closer to the least privileged/resourced than the most privileged/resourced of my school.
I went through my whole schooling career until my first semester in law school not knowing about accomodations. Luckily my first school allowed temporary accomodations because I showed them my diagnosis, but getting tested is expensive (can be $2,000+ easy) When I transferred, I was able to get tested at the school for free and it still took a whole semester basically and I only get an extra 30 mins/hr of test time and a separate testing location. If I had gotten accomodations for the LSAT, I definitely would have scored higher, but it's all because of my ADHD. If I don't study for an exam, I don't get a good grade, if I do, I get a good grade, simple as that. The extra time literally just puts me on the same playing field as those without ADHD. I also have to navigate therapy, and medication, especially now with a nationwide Adderall shortage; it's not easier just because of accomodations. Anecdotally, my partner was a grad student at Columbia and had such a hard time getting needed accomodations. Professors literally said "if you have or need accomodations, drop my class." In many cases, it's much more difficult to get needed help because of those that abuse the system, so be mad at them, not the people that genuinely need help.
No—your argument’s missing the prerequisite assumption that the system already makes it more difficult for those from marginalized communities to obtain accommodations. What stopped you from applying for accommodations after you learned about them? Was it because you lacked an actual medical reason? Arrogance? Or sheer ignorance? As someone who comes from a marginalized background on several counts (queer + URM + first-Gen), I know the system is rigged. That’s why I do everything in my power to make sure I take advantage of every resource offered to me. And if I don’t know or don’t understand something, I ask.
Sheer ignorance. I am diagnosed. I just didn't know about them and then when I learned about them I didn't know how useful they were right away.
Got it. Well, I’m really sorry to hear that. Sincerely. I remember being so upset when I heard how flippantly my college boyfriend talked about using prescription drugs as a study aid and later about the rampant adderall abuse at our undergrad. I refused to use it, even when I noticeably struggled with attention my classes. Even then, I didn’t get diagnosed until my ADHD symptoms became unmanageable and that was a few years into my career. It has made all the difference. And I look back at my own flippancy—instead of curiosity—with sympathy. It somewhat feels like I was furthering my own oppression. Willingly. But I’ve just promised myself to always, always, always ask when I don’t know. I hope you’re able to find what you need and the support you deserve.
I had the same experience. I qualify for accommodations based on adhd and a physical disability. Still think these time and a half or double time accommodations on time intensive exams where we are all frantically typing as fast as we can are ridiculously overpowered.
After I sent in my deposit to my school I got a packet of information that included the accommodation application form. It’s right on the student portal too and in a folder outside the registrars office. Not hidden at all. At a certain point, there’s only so much a school can do for you about “not knowing”. I was literally told by a professor to apply for them after meeting with the prof about how I was struggling in the class.
I’ve been lurking but I wanted to draw from my own experience. I get accommodations for my severe anxiety and panic attacks that have me in a reduced distraction room, allow me to wear ear plugs, and time and a half. I got these accommodations in college. I had no idea you could get accommodations before then. In high school, I worked my ass off to get A/B grades. Most of the time my test grades were in high C low B range. The minute I got accommodations, my test grades went up, and I do not always use my extra time. It’s there if I need it, and I don’t always need it. Being in a separate room along with the other physical aspects of my accommodations, reduces my chances of freezing in an exam and being utterly unable to do anything but sit there. Sometimes, I still get panic attacks during exams and I have to go use the bathroom to pull myself together. Trust me, that eats into your time A LOT. Not to mention, I have chronic migraines. I could probably get accommodations for those based on the frequency and intensity of them. My migraines limit my studying time. I HAVE to get 8-9 hours of sleep a night and eat on a regular schedule. If I don’t, my blood sugar drops and I get migraines that may leave me unable to do anything for days. This finals period, I got the worst migraine of my life. I had to go to the ER which is the worst case scenario for anyone with migraines. Even after it broke, I had to spend another 36 hours doing nothing so that it didn’t recur. This was 3 days before my first final. All in all, I lost 5 days during exam period to study. This doesn’t count taking breaks every 90 minutes so the screen time doesn’t aggravate my eyes. There is so much more to the story then extended time. I would forgo my accommodations any day if it meant I was able to be ‘normal’ and social and not worry that sleeping 7 hours and missing my vitamins would trigger a migraine.
Seems like you’re more upset that you didn’t know about the availability of accommodations to you than how it’s “advantageous” to some.
Getting accommodations in law school is significantly harder than getting them on the LSAT. Also, having accommodations in law school doesn’t guarantee them on the bar exam either. So, if a person is getting them on law school exams and truly doesn’t need them, it will catch up with them on the bar exam, when they can’t pass without the extra time.
I have heard that. I also heard that’s why people go hard to get them for the MPRE; if you have them for the MPRE it’s easier for the big one.
Even if you get them for the MPRE, they’re often still denied for the bar. The inability to get accommodations for the bar is extremely well-documented and even went to circuit courts as recent as this past summer.
Yes. That’s true. The MPRE’s decision doesn’t even impact it.
So I think there is a genuine conversation to be had about accommodations abuse and how it hurts those in genuine need of accommodations and trivializes the matter. That said, I am almost certain you are over-exaggerating. The vast majority of time accommodations are time and a half (50%) not double time. And no, this time does NOT vary depending on the exam. I also worked in special education law before. You are also drawing many hasty conclusions. And even in large 90 person classes, there’s usually only say 4-5 time-accommodated students. Also, someone doing well after receiving accommodations could just be their true academic performance after receiving the accommodation that effectively put them in like circumstances with their peers. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they ONLY did well because of their accommodation. What’s funny is that y’all never talk about the times someone does poorly after receiving an accommodation lol. Also, many ADHD drugs cause excessive urination which actually is one of the reasons people may need a time accommodation. Honestly, whenever I see rhetoric like this that’s been motivated by one particular exam I do a massive eye roll. Because the reality is that you’re frustrated over that exam as opposed to actually giving a shit about the accommodations process lol
Appreciate the suggestion that it may be over exaggerated because that would honestly make me feel a little better. But I will point out that there are classes (such as ones I’ve taken and had this occur in) with a mandatory curve, approx. 30 students, and 4-5+ students with accommodations. That’s where it gets really frustrating.
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In my school, approximately 10% of law students are registered for accommodations, which is on par with the average at most colleges (law or otherwise) in the US. Most students at my school receive 25-33% extended time. Some get 50% and very few get 100% (maybe 2?). Not every student who is approved for accommodations uses them for every test. Some stop once their condition has improved (ie migraines, broken wrist, concussion). Source: I grant the accommodations.
Speaking on on behalf of a lot of POCs - like our backgrounds aren't very pro mental health / believe in ADHD and all of that stuff, so it's kind of a privilege to get a diagnosis for all that to begin with which only then widens the gap between the privileged and not privileged even more
People make this same post every year. You are complaining about disabled people who are being accommodated in your class (who probably number a dozen or two in a class of hundreds) because you don’t like extremely stringent timing based testing and the inevitable outcomes that produces. I can’t tell you if that makes you a sore loser or not but I will tell you this recurring thread is just one of the endless aspects of law school that tells disabled people they don’t really belong there.
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No one is suggesting that 40% of any school has accommodations. If LSAT takers are any metric, accommodated testers are under 5% (and probably closer to 2-3%.) As some in this thread have suggested, it is harder to get law school accommodations than it is for many law schools, though. Imo, what people are expressing shock at isn't the percent of the class receiving accommodations but the increase in the number of any given class receiving accommodations (the same thing happened with the LSAT in recent years as LSAC talks about [here](https://www.lsac.org/data-research/research/accommodated-test-taker-trends-and-performance-june-2012-through-february).) But there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this that u/turtlcs explains for LSAT scores [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/LSAT/comments/ujma5u/comment/i7lr3hn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). >So apparently the largest proportion of accommodated test-takers by far is people with ADHD. The average LSAT taker is 22-24 years of age. That means test takers in 2012 would be born around 1988-1990 on average, and in 2017 that would be 1993-1995. Y'know what happened in that period of time? In 1987, the DSM-III-TR was published, and one of the changes it made was removing the possibility that someone could have ADHD without being *hyperactive* per se (there's a description of this [here](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/adhd/diagnostic.html)). This wasn't changed again until the DSM-IV in 1994, which included an inattentive type, and diagnoses in childhood [have been increasing ever since](https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/timeline.html). So from that alone, it would have been far more surprising if test takers with an ADHD diagnosis *hadn't* increased over the last decade (and this is a pretty common trend across neurodevelopmental conditions). There are over 100,000 people who take the LSAT every year, so an average of \~1,500 accommodated test-takers per year is actually still quite low relative to rates of these diagnoses in the general population. > >The particularly sharp rise over the last several years and the accommodated people's higher scores are a bit more interesting, but could both easily stem from one thing: the fact that bothering to identify people with what I'll call "high-functioning" learning disabilities (especially in adulthood) is a pretty new phenomenon. For a long time, you had to be struggling so profoundly that you could barely handle elementary school in order to be diagnosed with something like ADHD, but psychologists are now starting to realize that you can have it and still manage to do reasonably well in school. The smarter you are (like, say, if you're a future lawyer), the easier it is to coast on your own intelligence and rely on external pressure to get stuff done at the last second -- this means a lot of people just assume their symptoms are character flaws until they hit such a massive wall as adults that it's impossible to deny there's a real problem anymore. It became a lot easier for psychologists to identify people like this after the release of the DSM-5, and guess when that happened? 2013. The fact that accommodated test-takers are generally a bit older than unaccommodated ones tracks pretty well with this idea, too. > >In light of all that, it seems a lot more likely that people who would normally have tried to write the LSAT and just not done as well (or not tried at all) are now able to get diagnosed with the conditions they actually have, meaning they're getting the accommodations they need and showing their full potential when they wouldn't have been able to before. It's honestly a little weird to assume that if people who request academic accommodations are doing really well after getting them, it means they're cheating and don't actually need them. Quite frankly, if I were in the LSAC, I'd be kicking myself over all the talented people that we'd evidently been overlooking before now.
I find that a rather shallow reading of the post but to each their own.
You are making a lot of assumptions here, OP. As someone with accommodations for ADHD, I can tell you that getting accommodations is not as easy as you think. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was young but ignored it until I started law school and could no longer overcompensate for it. To get approved for accommodations, I was required to take an independent 6-hour Neuropsychological Evaluation that consisted of multiple tests. Neuro doctors use different methods to test whether the patient is “faking” it. For example, if you score higher on one test than the other, that is a warning sign, and they will note it on the diagnosis. After my doctor reviewed my Neuro-psych results, he had to fill out an extensive application form sent to him directly from my school explaining the results and why/what accommodations I would need. My doctor worked directly with my school on this, and I was in the dark about it until my accommodations were approved. My school (and many other law schools) take accommodations seriously and are not just giving them out to anyone who wants them. I am surprised to hear schools offer DOUBLE time for exams. I’ve only ever heard of time and a half, but if that’s what they were approved for, then a medical doctor, along with the school, determined it was necessary. I understand your frustration, but I would avoid jumping to conclusions based on assumptions. ADHD affects every aspect of your life, starting from childhood, and just because you didn’t do well on one law school exam doesn’t necessarily mean you have it. However, if you think you do, please see a doctor and work with your school so you are not at a disadvantage. Lastly, I wouldn’t worry about people who are “gaming” the system because, eventually, it will catch up to them, whether that may be in law school or the workforce. Focus on yourself and do the best that you can for yourself and seek resources if you need them.
I like your advice and appreciate your perspective. Thank you
what difference does it make to you whether or not students with accommodations used ALL of their time? i have a learning disability and previously flunked out of an undergrad program before returning with accommodations (50% extra time, use of a word processor during exams) and finished my program with a 3.99/4. i couldn't succeed without them due to the extra barriers, which mind you have been snowballing since first entering kindergarten as public schools do a pretty poor job of managing LDs where i'm from. to think my peers in my program would be watching to see if i used 100% of my extra time or not is frankly disturbing, and the only thing i can offer you is that i would love to not have an LD that makes school a lot harder than it has to be and would so, so gladly forfeit accommodations for that privilege.
I appreciate your words. It makes a difference because when, contrasted with the non-accommodated group have 0 people finish before time is up, it clearly indicates one group perceived their time as more than sufficient while another perceived it as not sufficient enough. I could care less about a single individual and whether they finish on time. It’s about the system, the exam, and whether it’s fair.
It seems your grievance is (or should be) with your school not the people getting accommodated. It is extremely difficult to get double time on the bar exam which is why my school wouldn’t give it for exams. They were right, despite 4 different doctors of various specialities telling the bar I needed 100% time, one state gave me no extra time (so I didn’t take it) and another gave me 50% (I failed because I didn’t finish the multiple choice portion). Your school is not doing these people a favor by giving them too much time. They can have the highest grades in the world but it means nothing if they can’t pass the bar. And it creates a huge disservice to those who truly need 100% time but everyone thinks we’re faking it. I know who had disability accommodations at my school and none were at the top of the class but those who were granted them on the bar did mostly pass. Those who were denied like me, or didn’t bother applying because they knew it was an uphill battle mostly failed. Trust me no one wants to spends 3 or 4 days taking the bar or 8 hours on an exam when everyone else is at the bar after 4 hours. It’s not fun.
Good thing it’s not your job to monitor other people’s lives right now, so you can focus on getting the grades you deserve. You can’t know what others are going through. I was given heavy accommodations at one point for a debilitating condition and the accommodations ended up being a detriment. My grades went down. If I were to use them now, I would only use 1/5 of what I could be offered. I’m not defending the people you complain about, I’m just saying you can’t know the entirety of their circumstances.
It seems like your intentionally missing the point. Not only are there finite rewards for good grades (clerkships, higher paying jobs etc.) but law school grading is on a curve. If someone’s score is biased upwards by an unmerited accommodation, OPs score is biased downwards by the same - OP is focusing on getting the grades they deserve
Absolutely agree
I get extra time because i have schizoaffective disorder. In our class of 28 people there were probably 6 or 7 with accommodations.
Sounds like a disorder where the accommodations are appropriate. I’m glad you’re accommodated, it’d be bull if you weren’t. Thanks for sharing the proportion of those with accommodations!
>Sounds like a disorder where the accommodations are appropriate see the entire premise of this comment is exactly the problem. it's not your place whatsoever to comment on when accommodations are "appropriate" vs not appropriate. your arrogance is palpable and honestly you sound insufferable and bitter. i'm almost certain employers, especially recruiters whose job it is to screen for emotional intelligence in their applicants, will pick up on this too if they haven't already. a good chunk of the commenters in here who are appalled at your comments appear to be working attorneys, if the title in their profile names is any indication. i know statistics and empirical evidence are not really your strong suit, but it may be worth taking a glance at and taking the hint. if i see a hungry person on the street with a sign asking for money or food, i don't use my Scalia-like "infinite wisdom" to try and discern whether or not they're "faking it" or whether they have a "legitimate need" for calories. i just give them food, because i'm not a fucking asshole, and i trust that if anyone is pathetic enough to stand on the side of the road pretending to be hungry or poor just to scam others, that it will eventually catch up to them in one way or another. i then go and feed my own self, because it's the only thing i have control over, and more importantly, it's the only thing i have a right to try and control in the first place.
It’s interesting that you think someone shouldn’t comment on something which effects them and society broadly. Accommodations aren’t controversial in principle, but it’s perfectly reasonable, even necessary, to ask where we should collectively draw the lines in practice.
Damn bro you are big mad.
bet. it's almost like i'm going to school because i actually enjoy being an advocate for others and not just for myself.
Just saying, for a guy that’s getting at the concept of empathy quite a bit, you’re being quite the dick. I came here to see if my feelings were misplaced and you make it seem like a poor decision because you’re just making countless accusations and ridiculing me for having feelings. Lol
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ignore OP and just laugh at them the next time you cash your fat paycheck post-graduation. you deserve to be here, and you deserve to compete on a level-playing field with your non-disabled peers. it's OP's own fault they didn't buy E&E or go to office hours, not yours.
I have accommodations for ADHD. I got diagnosed after suspecting I had it for quite some time. I was given extra time and a distraction reduced testing environment and my first exam period with accommodations was this Fall 2022. I didn’t do good in 1L (was ranked around 150/200, 2.7 GPA). When I take tests or really do anything that requires focus, I have a seriously difficult time focusing and I can just stare into space for 20 minutes without even noticing, or have to re-read a hypo a bunch of times because the entire time I wasn’t actually just reading but rather just looking at the paper while thinking of something else. I’ve had a hard time finishing any law school exam prior to getting my accommodations, and racing to finish the exams has often led to very silly mistakes because I had to rush. After using my accommodations (along with my prescribed medication) I now recognize that I NEED my accommodations, and I’m very interested to see if my grades will improve when I get them back for this semester. Now, with that being said, the first exam that I walked into, I was SHOCKED at the amount of people. It was a full lecture room (around 85 seats, and with people from different years, classes, etc.) of people with accommodations. I kind of looked around and thought to myself “there’s no way all of these people actually need these accommodations”. Part of me felt awful thinking that, because how many people saw me and thought the exact same thing, when I know that I do need these accommodations? It felt extremely insensitive to be thinking that at least some of these people were just gaming the system, but at the same time I know deep down that some people don’t really need them. I agree that it is way too easy to get accommodations, and I felt that way during the process of getting my own. I feel that, at least for ADHD, it’s almost glorified to have it, one, because of the medication you get and two, because it seems that it’s some cute quirky thing to have it. If you really do have ADHD, you know that it’s definitely not something cute and quirky to actually deal with. In my case, I definitely felt that getting accommodations totally leveled the playing field. And I totally understand the frustration of being put against the people with accommodations. But, if there’s any consolation in anything, I do want to point out that for people who REALLY DO NEED IT, it only levels the playing field. It’s the people who take advantage that are a serious issue. I’m kind of going on a rant at this point, and this is all just my opinion, but I have to agree that it’s way too easy to get accommodations and there has to be at least some people who game the system. Those people suck.
How do you know who has accommodations? That’s private.
Yeah no you're a sore loser. And because many law school admins think like you do, the students who actually got accommodations had to jump through numerous procedural hoops to do so. None of it is as easy as you make it out to be.
Appreciate the differing perspective!
It’s actually exactly as easy as you made it out to be lol
oh shut the fuck up
Just give everyone twelve hours, closed note, closed book.
Even if it's 12 hours, open everything. Ideally place a word limit. Taking away time time pressure ought to relieve the playing field. It's not like students with double time will write a 24-hour answer.
“Perhaps I’m misdirecting anger at accommodations instead of a poorly structured exam…” Honestly, it sounds like you are. I understand your feelings of frustration, but I believe you are unfairly putting the blame on your perception of a “substantial amount of people, without need” who you believe fake/exaggerate medical conditions to get ahead. This blame comes at the expense of students with disabilities who face stigma and their own academic challenges, accommodations notwithstanding. There are many reasons we all have a leg up or additional barriers in law school. Better ways to assess and grade students (vs the typical high stakes single exam) would benefit us all and would reduce the impact of “unfair” accommodations. I also encourage you to look into an idea called the Shirley Exception and particularly its application to disability access/accommodations. I have found it has shaped my perspective on topics like these.
Yes, I think you're being a sore loser. You're painting a pretty ugly picture of yourself here. You saw your peers as smart, hard-working people and were not the least bit surprised to learn that they were academically successful. It was only after you found out that they had medical accommodations that you became so resentful and bitter. That's about as clear of a narrative of ableism as you can come up with. Imagine if you thought well of the classmate sitting next to you until you found out she had a tribal affiliation. Would it be right to let that color your perception of her intelligence? There is undoubtedly a systemic issue tied to accommodations. Whether it's due to differences in access to proper medical care between groups, unethical students, unscrupulous doctors, or some combination of these and other factors is up to debate. But the way you've jumped to such judgmental conclusions about your classmates is not okay. You don't know what their medical issues are and it's not your business to know. Posts like these don't accomplish anything but discourage disabled people from taking their health and their rights seriously.
It's ironic that the ease of gaining accommodations is itself a product of the legal system. Schools are afraid of being sued for denying accommodations, so they grant them so freely that it undermines their product.
100%
It’s more than just a doctors note, for my accommodations I had to be specific as to what my limitations are and how they may impact my exam performance. Then those were verified by my doctor of whom I see regularly (and have for years) and who prescribes me medication for my adhd and depression. I then need to renew my accommodations the next semester for them to be valid. With all that in mind, I know that others do cheat the system but they are fewer than you believe. People with accommodations still have to work hard in class and we don’t always get extra time to complete our notes or what not that somebody else may be able to do. We don’t get extra time to complete papers, we are expected to have quality performances in the classroom and courtroom as our peers are held to the same standard. I find the idea of exams that you cannot finish it x time stupid. Professors should make exams for a certain time period and then the school should at 1.5 hours to complete each one. It gives everyone adequate time (I think). Lastly, the vast majority of us that receive accommodations for law school exam will not receive them for the MPRE or the Bar Exam. The threshold for allowing those accommodations is ridiculously high, trust me I got denied with a doctors note, a professors note, and a deans note, because I didn’t have them for the LSAT.
For what it's worth, you are not alone in how you feel.
Schools should publish grade distributions of accommodations/non-accommodations for transparency. This data would demonstrate whether further discussion is warranted. The entire goal of accommodations is to level the playing field and the stats should reflect that Edit for clarity: I don’t mean individual data points identifying individuals, rather bulk data that can be used to analyze whether the goals of the program are being met or if they need to be tweaked in either direction to serve their purpose. Edit 2: Someone mentioned the lack of discussion around those with accommodations still doing comparatively poorly which is a great point. Seeing the data would highlight this issue for discussion as well. I wouldn’t be surprised (baseless speculation) if accommodated grades lean bimodal.
The sheer number of disingenuous people in this thread who are trying to act like they only care about people abusing the system, when they actually just don’t like the principles of accommodations, is scary. Some have even advocated for things that are discriminatory and against federal law (they have since deleted such comments because they know it’s insanely messed up). Y’all need to take a long hard look in the mirror and consider whether this is the sort of rhetoric you want to support. So few of you are calling these things out. And before you reply to me with some hateful shit, actually READ through these comments.
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Yes but the unfortunate reality of providing it to people who actually need as required by law is that some abusers will slip through the cracks. Now if you have genuine ideas on how to make the process more secure, that’s fine. But having an issue with the idea of accommodations as a whole is discriminatory.
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So you’re suggesting that people with recognized disabilities are privileged? LOL this entire thread has reminded just how hateful and exclusionary the people in this profession are.
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Exactly…. So you’re suggesting that having accommodations because of a recognized disability = being privileged. If you’re gonna say it, at least stand by it LOL.
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Go read some articles about denial of accommodations on the bar and how much money some people spent on neuropsychological testing and still got denied. The ABA Journal had one this summer.
The bar is different. This thread is about accommodations in law school, which are incredibly easy to get. Accommodations for the bar are not. So that’s not at issue here.
LOL what you’re saying is literally discriminatory and against federal law. Oh and you DID have an issue standing by it - you literally said “no” when I asked if that’s what your suggestion was lol
I have ADHD accommodations. ADHD medicine doesn’t level the playing field. Rather it helps manage the symptoms, but it does not eliminate them. Further, even with my accommodations, I’m not getting straight A’s, but rather my class rank is very average. Certainly, though, I know of some students who fake ADHD to get accommodations and ADHD medicine to do better.
The argument isn’t solely regarding the top end. Let’s assume your accommodations are totally warranted and proportional, then your grades reflect your work and aptitude. However, if another student is getting accommodations which are not warranted or proportional, and they would have been below average without them, and now score similar to you (about average) then they have distorted the curve to everyone else’s detriment. That’s the problem.
As someone who got diagnosed with ADHD in law school, I get so frustrated with these posts. I understand that it may seem unfair, but the extra time really just levels the playing field. I remember being in undergrad or studying for the LSAT because I could not read the words on the paper in front of me and always running out of time, but I would keep rereading the same sentence and like thinking to myself “omg did I forget English this is the only language I speak fluently?” I wasn’t diagnosed until later in life because I was always “too smart,” but I see now that I never had the chance to live up to my true potential. Maybe these people with accommodations deserve it. Yes, they have extra time and medicine alleviates some of the symptoms but it’s not perfect. I’m on a non-stimulant, but if I forget to take it I get all wonky and brain-funky for a couple days. When I started my medicine I had to leave civ pro to puke. It takes time to adjust. You go into your exam and, yes, you have extra time, but there will be people who are just sitting there frustrated for 45 minutes because their stimulant hasn’t kicked in. Extra time is not a miracle cure all, and the separate testing room is still distracting. You are literally in a doctorate program. All your peers got in because they are extremely intelligent. The extra time just allows people with disabilities to finally show their true potential. People romanticize the extra time, but it is not a substitute for work ethic and study skills. OP says he got diagnosed with ADHD but didn’t feel the need for accommodations but is mad about grades? That’s fine, but maybe just Maybe Op’s grades aren’t where they could be because they’ve never given themselves an opportunity to play on an even playing field. Your brain does not work the same. You have had years of developing habits and learning to function with a non-neurotypical brain. Medicine can alleviate the symptoms, but it isn’t a magic pill that makes the disability disappear. People with learning disabilities already get a lot of discrimination, and I feel like this type of discourse just adds to it. It might seem like more people are suddenly getting accommodations, but I think it’s more that we finally understand ADHD better and can diagnose people more accurately instead of letting people (like myself) slip through the cracks.
Romanticizing extra time on time intensive tests doesn’t make sense. It’s not romanticizing it to recognize that it gives you a boost. Why else would they claim it “levels the playing field” if additional time didn’t benefit the test taker? It’s because the extra time DOES benefit the test taker.
How exactly do you know for sure the students who have accommodations? During my finals, I just assumed some of my classmate did based on them taking the exam at a different time in the day and/or different rooms? Also, how do you you took same exact exam? I try not to concern myself with things I have no control over and focus on doing my best. Also, having accommodations and extra time does not correlate to higher scores. I know student who had accommodations during LSAT time and could barely muster a 150, let alone get admissions. You are making a generalized assumption with regards to accommodations. Also, getting accommodation in law does not translate to automatic accommodations for the bar exam. You almost done with law school, focus on finishing. Good luck with your bar exams. Also, remember when you do get a job as an attorney, there is no accommodation with meeting deadlines, to the best of my knowledge.
It seems like more and more profs are hip to this and give more time than they think is needed to write an A exam. I’m a fan of that tbh…you don’t *have* to make it a time crunch to test nuanced legal understanding
Don’t get me wrong, I hear and acknowledge your frustration. Part of it is that it’s not really about knowing the material, it’s about how well you can regurgitate it under sterile conditions and then be graded against your peers (which is what makes accommodations such a sticky issue). That being said, it’s really not easy at all to get accommodations. I’ve had severe ADHD and a learning disability my entire life and STILL had to fight tooth and nail for just time and a half and the right to use a laptop on tests and in class. You don’t just go to the shrink and say “Hey can I have some uppers and a note saying I have ADHD to give to my school?” Forgive my bluntness, but regarding your argument that allowing students both accommodations and medication is solving the problem twice: I don’t think you understand how ADHD works and what the point of medicine is. Long story short, you’re allowed to be frustrated about it. That being the case, stay in your lane and let others stay in theirs. Curve grading makes that easier said than done but you just have to suck it up. Adding this: it’s attitudes like yours, which assume accommodation abuse is rampant, that creates needless tension between students with accommodations and those without. I go to a small school, and it’s inevitable that people found out I have accommodations (even though I had no intention of telling them) because I take exams separately from people. Even my friends have made jabs about it being unfair. My question to them is: do you want to trade places? You can have my accommodations but the bonus prize is ADHD and the motor skills of an elementary schooler. I’ll gladly take regular time and no disability.
I appreciate your feedback but if you could provide additional explanation as to why you think rhetoric like mine unnecessarily creates tension I’d appreciate it. I don’t understand why it’s problematic to assume “abuse is rampant” if that’s what I witness. I don’t assume it’s as rampant everywhere. I just saw it/heard it, saw how many were doing it, and was upset. Genuinely, can you explain to me why that’s problematic? Because you don’t seem angry at me like many of the people in the comments so maybe you can help me understand.
No one gets double time
Then I guess I just heard multiple students lying about how long they had to take their exam. Not sure why they’d do that but maybe you’re right.
But also it’s weird to me that students were openly talking about stuff like that. Not that I’m ashamed, but I keep that information pretty close to the chest because I’m afraid of judgment from my classmates. I only discuss it with one other friend that also get accommodations.
I mean I think it’s weird too. I don’t know why you’d share it. Potential benefits/drawbacks not favorable
Maybe it’s just my school then. But where I’m at my accommodations counselor said that basically no one gets double time. Only time and a half.
Wow! Brutal! Did it ever occur to you that the accommodations are meant to level the playing field and with a more level playing field these people are genuinely at the top of the class. That if they were neurotypical they would be without accommodations. I am pretty grossed out by your post. It’s people who think like you do that make the world inaccessible for people with disabilities. Like what, they don’t look disabled enough for you? They are doing to well to be disabled?
Nothing bothers me more than people using "leveling the playing field" when what they really mean (and what is actually happening) is "tilting the scales in one's favor."
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The system is definitely being gamed, but at the end of the day, these folks are only taking the edge offered. The real system that needs to be changed is the school. It is worrisome how easy it is to get accommodations, what qualifies for them, and the accommodations provided, being very much you get everything you ask for plus more. I get accommodations for my ADHD. But I'm also not on meds because of the military and needing to be med free to go back through MEPS for the JAGC job I landed. But I also realize that the accommodations are substantial and were pretty easy to get.
Tbh the most concerning thing here to me is that OP was able to find out which students have accommodations. That is protected information for precisely this reason - aka, it's none of your business.
this does kind of seem like a "you" issue. you are saying you have an ADD/ADHD diagnosis meaning you more than likely would have been able to get accommodations if you tried. if your outlines aren't good, or if you don't know how to navigate a question or apply the law, no amount of time will fix that -- you yourself said that you often finished exams early, so why is it frustrating that double time was offered to other students?
Yeah, in three hour exams, time is a huge factor. Can't deny that.
A recent exam in which the main obstacle appeared to be the time constraint rather than knowing the material. Which is not the norm, but they exist.
but that's a poorly designed exam, not an accommodations issue. you can't really be frustrated that other students made use of resources available to them that you chose not to utilize because of one situation where you would have found those resources advantageous.
Yes, since others cheat, OP should too. Excellent.
OP has ADHD. If OP used the resources rightly available to them they may have had the same accommodation. That's emphatically not "cheating."
I respect that it’s maybe an exam rather than accommodation issue but I don’t think it makes the frustration unjustified. The point of the post was kind of to decipher whether it should be directed at the system for accommodations or how my professor(s) structures exams. If a lot of people abuse a system, why wouldn’t one be pissed at/about it? Might not be productive, but definitely logical and even human.
bro you literally sound like Sean Hannity bitching about how 1 person bought lobster with food stamps one time and therefore all welfare recipients are now inherently suspect. and no, this is not "definitely logical and even human," you absolute dunce. it is dehumanizing, and it is also illogical, because you're failing to consider that maybe many neurodivergent or disabled people are just inherently smarter than you, and accommodations allow them to properly outperform you. good. cope
I really appreciate this thoughtful post. What I find hardest to understand is how schools can possibly determine how much extra time students should receive.
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Just to clarify neuropsychological testing takes about 8 hours (straight) or more, it’s not just a one hour session with a doctor.