The American Bar Association is asking law schools across the country to change the way they evaluate LSAT scores.

Wendy Margolis, spokeswoman for Law School Admissions Council — the organization which makes the LSAT – said the ABA asked schools to accept students’ highest score instead of the average score as the policy currently is. The new standard is merely a recommendation, she said, and the decision of whether or not to adopt the policy will be made on a school-to-school basis.

Margolis said LSAC is constantly refining the LSAT, testing each item statistically to see if certain parts are too difficult or too easy.

“We have quite a number of people working on the test making sure that it measures success for law school, which is what it purports to do,” Margolis said.

Because law schools are still evaluating the recommendation, it is unknown how, if at all, the ABA’s new reporting method will affect its applicant pool. Any change in applicant quality would affect all the schools that changed its standards equally, said Tobias Loss-Eaton, admissions office spokesman at Harvard Law School.

Harvard Law School administrators said the school, which accepts close to 800 applications each year, will not incorporate the ABA’s recommendation in the near future, Loss-Eaton said.

“We did reevaluate, but we felt that we would stick with our current standards,” he said.

Russel Schaffer, senior communications manager for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions – a company that prepares students for the SAT and LSAT as well as other achievement tests – said students should check carefully to see which schools have adopted the new LSAT policy.

In some cases, he said the chance to show a markedly better score when applying to law school is a great benefit.

“Everybody can have an off-day when they take an exam, and I think the policy would benefit a student in that situation,” he said.