News is breaking that New York’s Governor, Elliot Spitzer, has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute. Before becoming Governor, Spitzer previously served as New York’s Attorney General for eight years.
As a person who is currently in the process of applying to law school, I have been frustrated by the fact that the law school admission process leaves out the most important facet of assessing whether an applicant will make a good lawyer: whether they posses personal character. It is well known that law schools focus mainly on how an applicant preformed academically as an undergraduate, and also how well they scored on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). Upon hearing the news about Governor Spitzer, I thought to myself, “I bet he had excellent academic and LSAT credentials when he applied to law school.” I did some checking and learned that I was right.
According to the New York Times, Governor Spitzer scored a perfect score on the LSAT before entering Harvard Law School. He became an editor of the Harvard Law Review while attending Harvard. By all accounts Governor Spitzer’s academic credentials were second to none. And yet these academic credentials did not accurately predict his success in the most important aspect of the legal profession: integrity. Sure, in the legal culture Spitzer had reached the pinnacle of success. But does anyone want to defend this as the standard of “successful lawyer?”
