Lawyers and B-School

Hmm, that's not an easy question to answer. Let me give it a shot.

Quantitative skills are very useful at business school, but we're not really talking about serious math skills (certain electives might actually call for higher math skills, but that's unusual). It's more important to be comfortable with numbers, manipulating them, changing fractions and percents, teasing out trends and things like that; the sort of stuff they test you on in the GMAT. It's my opinion (just my opinion) that most people graduating from good college can learn these skills. Some people, like engineers, scientists, economists, etc., are already comfortable with these skills based on their experience, but given the right preparation I believe that most people can learn the required skills. It's simply not that complex or high level. The real challenge in business school are balancing the demands on your time, such as social and outreach activities, group learning, recruiting events, etc. I'm pretty confident that even the people I used to know as an English major and in law school could be taught the necessary math skills in pretty short order. A 6-12 month review course would be more that sufficient.

Law school, on the other hand, calls for a set of skills that some people cannot reach no matter how hard they try (I'm talking about top law schools, which offer a challenging theoretical curriculum as opposed to many schools that are nothing more than a review of local rules and for the bar exam). Again, this is just my opinion, but unlike the math skills required by business school, some people will never be able to develop the logic and reasoning skills required for law school. For comparison, the LSAT also has RC and CR sections, but they are much harder. I finished the GMAT verbal section with 20+ minutes to spare and scored 51V. If I recall, some 90-95% of test-takers do not complete every question on the LSAT (without just filling in answers). You must read really fast, and draw logical conclusions immediately. There's not time to break down the logic and re-read questions; and even at breakneck pace most people won't finish anyways. This translates directly to law school, where you will tackle complex cases that build a complex framework of logical resolutions. If you can't break down the dozens of logical points to reach the end of each case, there's no way to do well with the material.

so, based on my experience, I think pretty much everyone can learn the math skills required to succeed in business school, but a pretty substantial portion of folks can't learn the skills necessary for law school (top schools) no matter how hard they work at it. This isn't a comparison of math a verbal skills. There's definitely math out there that the vast majority of people will never be able to understand no matter how hard they try; it's just that business school doesn't require those skills (for the most part). If you can just get comfortable with manipulating fractions, you've pretty much got it. On the other hand, law school isn't just about verbal skills. It's more than just being able to read quickly. Learning to draw logical conclusions and working through logic games and challenges is essential, and at the top schools you must be able to really quickly. There's just too much material to cover. I think that's why LSAT is a bigger part of admissions than the GMAT is. People who struggle on the GMAT might still be able to succeed in business school, but people who struggle on the LSAT are dead meat in law school. So anyone who has struggled to get to the 90th or 99th percentile on the GMAT verbal, imagine 50% more material per section, more complicated thought processes, and competition from a much more logically/verbally oriented pool of talent and you have the LSAT.