With January loosening its grip on America and February beginning its reign of wintry terror, law school admissions officers take time away from digging out of the latest slurry of snow and ice to attempt to clear their driveways

and to try to find the humor in such moments.

Oh, and when they finally get to their office, they also continue to find themselves in their busiest time of year—files to read, decisions to make, scholarships to award, admitted student visit programming to prepare, and finding spare hours to catch a wink or two of sleep.

So since we—humble blog writers that we are—also have to go clear our driveway in the break between the latest round of what we view less as “lake effect snow” and more as “the Great Lakes water re-distribution program,” let’s take a quick lap around this week’s news and headlines from the world of law school admissions.

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Current Volumes Summary

With the results of the January LSAT coming back this past week, our check on LSAC’s Current Volume Summaries report shows that the national applicant pool may be about to pick up a little more steam:

National applicant and applications figures have slowly decelerated over the past month+. For example, just before the holidays, applicants were +20.7% and applications were +22% over the previous admissions cycle. Each week, those numbers would come down just a tick. But with the January LSAT back, this is the first time we’re seeing the numbers accelerate—from +17.4% applicants last week to +18.7% this week, and with applications submitted increasing from +19.6% last week to +20.8% last week.

Part of this increase is simple logic—some applicants were hoping for a score increase before applying to a few more schools, and others (although a small percentage) were using this as their first LSAT of the cycle.

Part of this increase is also technical—the January LSAT results came back this year on January 28th; last year, the January LSAT results didn’t come back until February 5th.

So we’ll have to wait one more week to see if this increase is more a sustained jump start like this

or a mere temporary boost like this

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National LSAT Numbers

And speaking of the January LSAT, let’s take a look at the final numbers per LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report:

We leave it open to debate whether it’s better to have had 26,999 January LSAT test takers or if it would have been so awesome to have just one more person take it so that we would have ended at a nice round 27,000. Truly, “YMMV.”

Regardless, this means that January just eeks past August and October in order to be the second-biggest LSAT of the cycle thus far. It also represents an increase of 6.9% in test takers over the January 2025 exam. Not too shabby for an LSAT administration that certain people thought could actually go down versus last year’s test.

One important note for the January test is that it continues a broader trend in declining percentages of “first-time test takers” for each exam. What does this mean? That we’re seeing a consistent trend of more-and-more applicants taking the LSAT more-and-more times. So while our increased LSAT numbers are indicative of broader trends regarding more law school applicants, some of the increased numbers are applicants taking the test one more time in the hopes of getting their target score. February is—historically—the LSAT administration when we start to see an increased percentage of first-time test takers. As such, it’s our first inkling of what we may be looking forward to in the coming admissions cycle.

And speaking of February, we’re now just a few days away from the test. Registrations went down just 4.3% in the past week—far short of the usual 8‒10% decline in registrations that we see in the week or two before an LSAT. Even though February typically sees the lowest numbers for any LSAT in a test cycle, the following is worth pondering over:

• Even if February numbers drop to 14,500, that would still be a higher number than the September 2022 exam (14,225 test takers) and the April 2023 exam (13,491 test takers).

That is how much the law school admissions game has changed in the past two years—even what’s likely to be the weakest LSAT administration of this year is beating up on some of the more commonly taken exams that typically have 60‒70% more test takers.

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7Sage Events

We’ll be hosting another Admissions AMA class on Wednesday, February 4th, at 1 PM Eastern. Come on by and ask whatever questions are on your mind!

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Thanks for reading! You can learn more about 7Sage Admissions Consulting’s services here, and if you’d like help deciding which service is right for you, you can book a free consultation here.