The Law School Admissions Test transitioned to a fully digital platform starting last Saturday, as part of an initiative to increase the exam’s security and accessibility.

From Sept. 21 and onward, every student taking the exam will use a LSAC-provided tablet. The transition is the biggest change in decades to the LSAT, the most widely taken law school admissions exam, according to a Sept. 12 news release by Kaplan Test Prep, a major provider of standardized test preparation services.  

The switch comes after a successful test run in July, when about half of the test takers took the exam on a tablet and half on paper, according to the news release. 

The switch to a digital platform will allow the Law School Admissions Council to administer more tests per year and return LSAT scores more quickly than they were able to with the previous pencil and paper version of the exam, according to LSAT instructor and Senior Manager for Instructional Design at Kaplan Glen Stohr. There will be nine or more exams per year with the digital exam, compared to the previous four times per year. 

The increased availability of the test could contribute to an increase in law school applications this season, Stohr said. 

“I think the additional number of [exam dates] makes it easier for students to take the test and makes it easier for any student to find the right time to take the test,” Stohr said in an interview with The Hoya. “That might make for a few more people sending in applications.”

Students took the LSAT on Saturday using tablets with features including an onscreen timer, software to flag questions and single-click answer selection, Law School Admissions Council Senior Vice President of Technology Products, Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer Troy Lowry wrote in an email to The Hoya.

The helpful new features made aspects of testing easier than the paper version, according to Jacob Maiman-Stadtmauer (COL ’20), who took the digital exam on Saturday.

“It allows you to constantly be aware of how much time you have left,” Maiman-Stadtmauer said. “Also it’s nice to not have to worry about mis-bubbling.” 

On the paper and pencil LSAT, test takers could circle or cross out answers in the test booklet, but they did not get credit for an answer unless the answer was accurately bubbled on the answer grid. Users of the digital interface only have to click on the correct answer. 

The LSAT is the last of the graduate level standardized tests to transition to a digital platform. Unlike other graduate exams like the GRE and Medical College Admission Test, however, the LSAT did not make any changes to the content of the exam when transitioning to digital, according to Peterson’s, an educational services company. 

The LSAT’s later transition allowed the test designers time to focus more on implementing measures to prevent cheating, Lowry wrote. 

“For the past several years, we’ve been evaluating various pathways to deliver the LSAT digitally, with the goal of increasing security, accessibility and the student experience. Most standardized tests have already switched to computer delivery, but the existing methods for ensuring the security and integrity of our test weren’t up to our standards,” Lowry wrote. “That’s why we patented a new system for delivering the LSAT digitally, through the use of tablets.”

The new exam platform increased security, so it will be harder for test takers to bring questions from a tablet out of the exam room than with the paper format of the exam, according to Stohr.

In March, the U.S. Department of Justice brought charges against 50 defendants in the largest indictment concerning fraud in the college application process. Among the individuals indicted, including four parents of Georgetown University students, were parents who paid a fraudulent test proctor to supervise the SAT, according to the charges.

Ensuring the fairness and integrity of the LSAT is especially important after the recent college admissions scandal, according to Lowry.

“The recent scandal involving college admissions is a good reminder that our continued vigilance around the security and integrity of the test is very important,” Lowry wrote.