REUTERS/Andrew Kelly Acquire Licensing Rights
Sept 8 (Reuters) – Law School Admission Test takers encountered technical glitches on Friday—the second time in two months that examinees have faced such problems.
The Law School Admission Council, which administers the LSAT through an electronic platform, said that some test takers had been disconnected from the exam as a result of a program outage but that the problem had been quickly resolved.
Council spokesperson Mark Murray said the test platform went down between 10 and 15 minutes around 12:20 E.T. and that "at least several hundred" takers temporarily lost access to the exam. Nearly all of the affected examinees were able to complete the test, he said. The problem impacted in-person and online examinees, who were given their full allotted time to complete the test.
"While this is a different issue than what occurred in August, it's not acceptable," Murray said. "We understand how it affects test takers, and we're deeply sorry it happened."
About 19,000 people are registered to take the LSAT either in-person or online over the course of Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Friday’s problem appears to be much smaller in scope than those that marred the August LSAT, which was the first to be offered both online and at testing centers. The council estimates that about 5,000 August test takers faced problems that included absent online proctors and lack of access to the exam. The council offered several free retake days the week after the initial exam, and also allowed those affected to retake the exam in September.
Murray said any Friday test takers who were disrupted will have the option to retake the exam later this month or at a future date.
Jill Horner said Friday’s outage disrupted her daughter, who was retaking the LSAT after tech issues marred her August exam.
“As a parent, I am angry that [the council] has been allowed to get away with the sloppy approach to something so important that controls futures,” she said.
Horner's daughter declined to comment on her testing experience.
Murray said Friday’s problem was not related to Prometric, the outside testing company the council has contracted with to administer the LSAT.
Read more:
LSAT offers re-test after delays plague first-ever hybrid exam
Demand for in-person LSAT swells after remote exam misfires
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Karen Sloan reports on law firms, law schools, and the business of law. Reach her at karen.sloan@thomsonreuters.com
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