Now that the calendar has flipped to 2026 and law school admissions officers begin knocking off the rust from their holiday break

and as law school admissions bloggers open up Microsoft Word for the first time this new year and question whether Clippit the Paperclip actually died or—rather—was just reincarnated as a pop-up ad for Copilot

we find ourselves in the teeth of File Reading and Decision seasons, respectively.

Law school AdComms started reading files en masse as Travel Season faded into the background on November 1. Looking ahead, admissions officers will want to get as many decisions out the door before March 1 as they possibly can.

Why?

Because—beginning in mid-March—we start seeing on-campus events for admitted students dot the calendars for every law school in the country. One can’t have an admitted student event without said “admitted students.” And you can’t have “admitted students” without “reading applications.” Ergo, we sincerely hope our AdComm friends enjoyed seeing their family and friends over the past week because it may be a little while before they feel the warm embrace of a loved one.

And we—the law school admissions blogging community—have some new stats and numbers to chew on as we all head into this key moment of the cycle! So let’s take our first lap around the news and headlines from the world of law school admissions in 2026!

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National LSAT Numbers

When we last checked in two weeks ago, we were maintaining our prediction that the January LSAT would end up being a smidge smaller than the 2025 edition. Our thought process was this:

• The January LSAT had 36,930 registrations right after the registration deadline passed in late November.
• We usually see those registration figures decline by 1‒5% each week up until the two weeks preceding a test.
• In the two weeks preceding a test, registration figures can drop by as much as 10% per week.

So you take that logic, get out your calculator and do some basic math, write a blog post about it, jump ahead by a month and look at LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report, and decide that you might as well toss logic out the window.

Dear reader, we are one week out from the January LSAT and registration figures have only dropped by 6.2% total in the past two weeks. Not 6.2% in each of the past two weeks.

Registrations have only dropped 9.4% since the registration deadline passed.

What that means is that it would take an abnormally large surge of registrants to change their plans for the January 2026 LSAT to not be bigger than the January 2025 edition.

And then, looking ahead, we passed the registration deadline for the February LSAT back on December 23. Even if a normal decline in registrations leading up to the February test (which if the trend for January is any indication—heck!—who knows), the February 2026 test would be larger than the February 2025 edition. As such, there’s no reason to think that the national applicant pool will slow down any time soon.

Speaking of which …

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Current Volumes Summary

Let’s check in for the first time in 2026 on LSAC’s Current Volume Summaries report!

When we checked in before the holidays, applicants were +20.7% and applications were +20.8%. While those have gone down a smidge, the important takeaway is that they didn’t go down significantly. New Year’s is typically when we hit the 50% mark for total applications submitted in the year. If we’re still +20.8% at this juncture, we can feel confident that the surge of apps isn’t going away. It really is a matter of just coming to terms with it, whether it be in the chart above, or …

This chart from further down in the Current Volume Summaries report shows the percentage change in applicants by LSAT score band

which shows that the greatest increases in applicants are in the sub-145 range (which doesn’t really affect the national pool that much) and the 170+ range (which affects the national pool a great deal), or …

This chart from LSAC’s Five-Year Volume Graphs report

which shows just how radically law school admissions have changed in the past two years. Quite simply, it’s a brand-new world.

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7Sage Events

But on the plus side, at least we can all commiserate together!

It’s a new year and a new round of weekly Admissions AMA classes. Our first is coming up on Wednesday, January 7th, at 2 PM Eastern. Come on by and ask whatever questions are on your mind!

Our most recent podcast dropped before the break and features a conversation with one of our very own LSAT tutors and class instructors—Clayton Allen. Along with being an LSAT whiz, Clayton co-hosts the aforementioned weekly admissions AMA and is also a law school applicant in this present cycle. He’s listened to the admissions consultants answer so many questions during the AMAs, including those questions that the admissions consultants think are completely self-evident but that a regular applicant finds completely mind-blowing. So tune in as Clayton offers those points that have made him pause, ask “say what?”, and consider if he approached his applications correctly (spoiler alert—he did!). Be sure to check it out on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!

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