As law school admissions officers load up on sunscreen and charcoal while waiting for the end of the week, we—the general law school admissions fans of which there are

no doubt—face one of the slower weeks of the calendar.

The Fourth of July is a good time for AdComms to take a few extra vacation days. When considering this year’s applicants and admitted students—admissions officers are usually done reading apps and they’re likely holding on to a small waitlist on the chance that one of their deposited students has a change of heart at the last minute. Meanwhile, when looking ahead to the coming cycle—there are a few matters coming up (which we’ll discuss below) but nothing drastic that must be accomplished right now so as to be ready for the coming admissions cycle. So don’t feel like you need to check the law school admissions sub-Reddit or lawschooldata religiously this week for any waitlist activity because it’s unlikely to happen. In that same spirit, let’s take a quicker-than-usual lap around the world of law school admissions to see what’s going on before we, too, make a final run to the store for another pack of hot dog buns and then stop by the pop-up tent in the parking lot for sketchy Roman candles.

August (and June) LSAT Numbers

When we checked in on August LSAT registrations via the LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report in last week’s blog, we had two days before the registration deadline and 20,565 hearty souls had signed up for the first non-Logic Games/new Writing Section exam. We expected a bit of a final rush and the law school admissions public didn’t disappoint:

You do not need to adjust your screen or clean your glasses!

You are seeing that roughly 9,000 people registered for the LSAT in the final 48 hours before the deadline, or roughly a third of the total registrants for the exam. Phew!

Much like the June LSAT that crested at roughly 36,028 registrations at the deadline to 26,719 on test day, we’re sure that the August numbers will also progressively decline in the coming month. We’re currently guessing that the final August LSAT numbers will be in the neighborhood of 22,000 test takers.

While this is an interesting trend to monitor and further evidence of a likely increase in applicants for the coming cycle, we’re seeing something interesting in the June LSAT numbers.

The June LSAT historically has the highest percentage of first-time test takers. For example, 66.7% of the students who sat for the June 2023 LSAT were rookies. But when we look at this year’s numbers right now, the first-timers’ percentage is only at 55.6%. We’ll admit that this is a developing story—thus the right now from the previous sentence—because there could be a few things at play here:

  • We’re still in the window where students can cancel their test scores. Perhaps LSAC counts those students differently until they “accept” their score.
  • Perhaps this lower rookie percentage is the real reflection of Logic Games’ disappearance from the LSAT. Maybe a higher percentage of the students who would normally take the LSAT in April and August decided to try and squeeze in one more round of Logic Games.
  • Maybe there will be a higher percentage of “retake and reapply” students from this past cycle. Logically, this is the cohort who would most likely target the June LSAT because they’ve already done lots of prep for the Logic Games LSATs and would have little interest in taking the new version.

And if it’s really that final option, that could mean that perhaps the higher LSAT registration numbers that we’re seeing at the moment won’t drastically affect app numbers for this year. This isn’t our guess for right now because we’re simple bloggers who believe that the simplest answer (i.e., “higher LSAT test takers means more applications for the coming cycle”) is usually the correct one. But we’ll continue to track this number and compare it versus what we see after when LSAC releases August scores (and the first-timer percentage) around Labor Day.

DC Forum

Besides barbecues and vacations, law school admissions officers are also gearing up for the LSAC DC Forum on Saturday, July 13. We’ll dive deeper into this event in next week’s blog (What to do at a Forum! What to wear! How to kill time while standing in line and not driving yourself crazy!) but we wanted to give our readers a heads-up now in case you have the opportunity to attend.

While law fairs are—to some extant—a vestigial arm from a bygone era of admissions recruitment, they remain an effective way for students to learn more about a school. A common question we get from our consulting students is how to learn more about a law school beyond the school’s website. One answer is to talk with representatives! From their perspective, they attend events of this nature explicitly in the hopes of meeting candidates for the coming year, getting to know them ahead of time, and maybe getting some frequent flyer miles in the process (and AdComms value those miles like a dragon hoards treasure). While we’ll dive more into things next week, we at least wanted to mention the event this week in case anyone needs to make plans to hop on a train or couch surf at a friend’s apartment.

7Sage Events

For those of you transitioning from LSAT prep to working on apps, be sure to check out our LSAT team’s latest podcast. Wait a second, the LSAT podcast? you may be asking. YES! We had the pleasure of jumping on to their channel to talk a bit about the context and importance of essays and statements in an application. We even dropped in a reference or two to Hamlet while we were at it—a good time was had by all! You can check that out here.

And sticking on the note of podcasts, the latest admissions episode will drop on Monday and center around one student’s journey of retaking the LSAT last summer. With a lot of students stuck in the mental maelstrom of whether or not to take one last test, we hope this discussion will be helpful! You can check out both on our general blog site as well as on your streaming platform of choice.