With Halloween here and only one more week of travel season on their docket, law school admissions officers are starting to prepare themselves to stretch out some different muscles. They’ve spent the past two months sprinting from one law fair to the next, setting up their tables in five minutes so that they can make one last coffee run before the attendees arrive (oh no, they’re here!), talking with prospective students one after another for two hours, and then packing up to head to the next event. But starting next week, they’re more into the long marathon of file evaluation—reading application after application after application (see the note below about application numbers thus far) and only taking a few breaks for review committee meetings, admitted student days, and—maybe if they’re lucky—some sleep.

Meanwhile, law school applicants have been staying busy (see the note below about application numbers thus far … in case we didn’t already say that!) with some more busy-ness on the horizon in the form of the November LSAT. So let’s be respectful of everyone’s time and do our usual quick loop through the news and headlines in the world of law school admissions!

LSAT Numbers

With October LSAT scores arriving last week and the November LSAT ahead next week, we have a little bit more to chew on in this week’s check on LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report:

Regarding the October LSAT, we can now officially say that our monthly streak of increased LSAT test-taking numbers has hit the one-year mark—hurray! (Or, hurray?)

But we’ll also note that, for now, we just scraped by only 434 test takers—an increase of 1.9%. That’s not much to write home about, and we’d just chalk that up to a normal standard deviation if not for the reality that:

  • Last year’s October LSAT (and the subsequent November test) got huge registration bumps after tech issues plagued the August and September exams. So this is a 1.9% increase not off a “normal” test but off the largest test—at the time, since surpassed—since August 2021.
  • There’s that November LSAT on the horizon.

Speaking of which, we’ve been waiting for the November LSAT registrations to come down a bit more than 0.3% on a weekly basis and it finally happened … to the tune of a 5.6% melt, which is still low for the “two-week pre-test” window. Short of something drastic happening in the coming week, we appear to be headed for the first LSAT with 35,000 registrants since December 2017—back when dinosaurs roamed the world, the LSAT was only offered four times per year, and it was exclusively in person.

National Application Totals

And with the return of the October LSAT, we saw a corresponding bump in national applicants when we checked in on LSAC’s Current Volume Summaries report this week:

Last week, applicants were up 25.6% and applicants were up 36.9% versus the same date in 2023. Expect to see these numbers start coming down again … until November 23rd when the results of the November LSAT arrive in test takers’ email inboxes.

To reiterate a point we’ve raised a few times in earlier blog posts, we’re very likely going to end up with more applications submitted this year than last because that’s where LSAT test-taking numbers were trending … but it’s not going to be a +45% increase. This number is sure to come down, especially since last cycle started so slowly.

Another way to put this is via another chart from the Current Volume Summaries report, this one showing how many schools have experienced certain application increases or decreases:

For example, this chart indicates that there are 15 law schools right now whose present application numbers are 100% more than on this date last year.

While we at the 7Sage Law School Admissions blog do not encourage/condone/advocate gambling, we would feel comfortable saying that we would put a significant amount of money on the following not being true at the end of the admissions cycle:

  • 36% of schools having increased applications of 50% or more.
  • Only 3.5% of law schools showing any decline in applications.

So don’t worry that application numbers are so much higher than last year. Just use this as a reminder that it would be prudent for you to also submit your applications a little sooner rather than later (and—if at all possible—before the November LSAT results come back).

Recruitment Events

Just one last full week of law fairs on the docket! Admissions officers are ending their time on the road with a few more law fairs out West and—randomly—Boston and Charlotte!

7Sage Events

If you’re reading this blog when it arrives hot off the presses at noon on Wednesday, our October Deans’ Roundtable will happen on October 30th at 8 PM Eastern. Registration is free but required. The topic du jour will be addenda and character & fitness explanations.

We’re continuing our series of weekly live classes on different components of the application process. We turn to Personal Statements this week with Résumés next week. Registration is free but required. You can check out our past sessions via our Class Library—just enter “Admissions” into the search bar.

You can also check out our admissions podcast on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts. Our latest dropped on Monday and goes into the minutiae of the app season to this point as well as a chat about when Early Decision can make sense for an applicant.

Note for Next Week

And a brief note regarding next week's edition of this blog. We may be slightly late in publication because of serving as a clerk for our local vote center on Election Day. We appreciate your patience (!) and remind our American audience to go out and vote (!!!).