Was it a mere four weeks ago that law school admissions officers (and bloggers) were saying that it was the busiest travel week of the year? Law fairs jammed so tightly back-to-back and day-to-day that AdComms would likely only be able to tell where they were by 1) the buffet-style lunch they are being served, and 2) the colors around the student union in which the fair was happening.

OK, I’m seeing a lot of orange around here. Maybe I’m at U. Tennessee? But, no, I’m pretty sure I let my assistant director handle that fair.

Hold up! This is a taco bar and they’re including brisket as one of the proteins! OK, got it—UT-Austin.

Not anymore! We’re facing a week with zero law fairs until the weekend. That can only mean one thing—it’s time for reading season.

This is the longest stretch of any cycle for admissions officers, and it definitely feels like it. We sincerely hope that AdComms savored travel season and things like “human interaction” and “the mental stimulation of a delightful conversation” while it lasted. They will now retreat to their computers and fortresses of solitude to evaluate applications.

And that also means that we should start seeing some waves, ohwillyoulookatthat!

Hot off the presses via lawschooldata.org’s Recent Decisions page! The most notable movement is Michigan’s. You can absolutely set your clock to Michigan Law’s calendar—they admit on Wednesdays and they begin making admit offers either just before or just after Halloween. So like the swallows returning to Capistrano, our friends in Ann Arbor have issued their first big wave of the season.

So as our AdComm friends brew another pot of coffee and return to their computer screens, let’s take a quick lap through the headlines from the world of law school admissions.

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National LSAT Numbers

Hey! Ohwillyoulookatthat, Part 2! We finally have some movement on LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report for the November LSAT!

Just a week after commenting, “gosh, these registration numbers really have not been moving much …” we saw a 9.3% decline in registrations right before test day. We’re writing this week’s post right as the November LSAT is starting, so it’s likely that these numbers will go down another smidge.

On the one hand, this means that the November LSAT will NOT be the first test in 14 years to eclipse 40,000 registrants.

On the other hand, it’ll still likely be the biggest LSAT in eight years and it still represents a 24.9% increase over the November 2024 LSAT (which was the biggest LSAT in last year’s cycle).

So … yay?

Meanwhile, we’re also getting preliminary signs that the January 2026 LSAT will likely match or exceed the number for the 2025 addition. That decline of 9.3% in November LSAT registrations over the past week? It appears that many of those folks simply shifted their registrations to January—registrations increased by about 3,000 since our last post. With the registration deadline still three weeks away (and on Black Friday, no less, when law applicants have far more pressing things on which to spend their money), our conservative guess is that eventual test-taking numbers will be in the upper 20,000 range. That will certainly be enough to …

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Current Volume Summaries Report

continue driving the increase in national applications.

In this week’s check on LSAC’s Current Volume Summaries, we see numbers slowing down again versus last week and two weeks ago:

But when the “slow down” still leaves us up 21.5% in national applications versus a year ago, that’s less of a “slow down” and more of a “raising your foot slightly on the gas pedal because you had to shift around to change the radio station.” Let’s see what happens next week after about 39,000 of our closest friends are done taking the November LSAT.

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National Recruitment Events

Just two events to note in this week’s edition as we conclude this seasonal section of the blog!

• Saturday, November 15: LSAC San Francisco Forum
• Monday, November 17: Sacramento State Law School Forum

The next round of law fairs won’t happen until January, when there is a random—but very welcome, for those admissions officers based in the north—series of law fairs in the Deep South.

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7Sage Events

Our next Admissions AMA will be on November 12. Stop on by and ask whatever law school admissions questions are on your mind!

The latest episode of our admissions podcast dropped on Monday and is a recording of our October Deans’ Roundtable. Our panelists dive into the trends that they’re seeing develop but then spend the majority of their time discussing the ins and outs of the written statements on an application. Do you have to write about “why law?” in your personal statement? What happens if the school’s instructions are “two pages max” and you go on to a third page? Be sure to check it out on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!

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