With graduation ceremonies having passed and Memorial Day on the horizon, law school admissions officers largely find themselves in a holding pattern.

The initial buzz of waitlist activity that occurred after the deposit deadlines has largely quieted. There was a little activity on May 14th per the r/LSA community

but that was about it for the week. Most likely, admissions officers are looking ahead to the second deposit deadlines coming up in early June as an opportunity to reevaluate their numbers before proceeding further.

Additionally, there are some human and professional matters coming up for everyone. Mid-to-late May is one of the quietest times of the admissions year—waitlist activity is minimal, deposit deadlines are on the horizon, and the current law students are done with their classes for the year so even the literal workspace around an admissions office is quiet. Combine that with the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, and this is a common time for admissions officers to take a quick vacation. As an added professional layer, the period right after Memorial Day is also the time when LSAC hosts their annual professional conference for the law school admissions community. This year’s destination? In a nod to the northern members of the LSAC community, it's in lovely Montreal. Bienvenue!

And in that vein, it’s also largely a quieter week in our blog … which also makes it the perfect opportunity to introduce a new recurring feature to get excited about! Get rowdy!

But let’s first do a quick run through our regular—non-Francophone-mascot-related—headlines before we turn our attention to the new material.

National LSAT Figures

We have some big changes to report from LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report!

In the very high registration numbers for the June LSAT? Oh, of course not! But check out the graphics change from this

to this

The increased shading in those rows is magnificent! What a time to be alive!

But for those who don’t appreciate a nice change of graphical pace, the key takeaway is that the June LSAT is now two weeks away and the registration numbers are continuing to hold steady. Our updated guess is that 29,000 people will take the June LSAT. While that won’t have the flashiness of “30,000,” it would still represent the biggest June LSAT since 2010.

Just file this away as another reason why it may be advisable to begin your application materials over the summer! Even if you are someone planning to take the LSAT in the autumn, you still want to be in a position to submit your applications as soon as possible thereafter. The old rules and timeline aren’t relevant anymore.

But that’s enough scary talk! Let’s turn to our new segment….

This Week in The Shifting Landscape of Higher Education

Jokes aside, we’ve received a lot of requests from readers to comment on various proposals and policy changes from the current presidential administration and their possible effect on law school admissions. We had full plans to do one dedicated segment to this topic in a past blog, but new news just kept coming in, week after week. So rather than wait for a pause in the action that’s unlikely to come, let’s handle the news as it arrives on a weekly basis.

The broader arc of matters is that the entire higher education industry/market has—historically—been incredibly stable. Faculty and administrators come and go, the technology may change (some of us remember things like “landline phones in dorm rooms” and needing to purchase ethernet cables for our computers), but the core functions of higher ed stayed the same (classroom teaching) and the funding models remained remarkably consistent (tuition, endowment earnings, and research money from the federal government). The industry will occasionally encounter an issue that will cause a short-term pivot, but these moments tend to be brief. For instance, COVID shutdowns led to a great deal of creativity regarding how to teach courses remotely and in asynchronous fashion. But once the shutdowns were lifted, the overwhelming majority of instruction reverted back to the traditional model of “an instructor stands in front of their students while everyone is located in the same room” that has been the baseline for centuries.

What higher ed is facing in the present moment is one of the greater periods of uncertainty that any of us can remember. Perhaps we need to go all the way back to World War II when many smaller schools faced dire enrollment issues due to a generation of college-aged men joining the military.

With that context provided, here are some of the big issues specifically facing law schools:

  • Post-grad jobs. Historically, positions either with the federal government or with public interest organizations have been critical areas for law schools. The federal hiring freezes and the larger budget cuts to various departments (which include significant funding for public interest organizations) have already led to some shifts in the market. One only need compare the 2023 and 2024 employment data for Washington, D.C.-based schools like Georgetown and George Washington to see this shift in action. In the case of Georgetown, they had 131 grads in the class of 2023 begin their professional career in either government or public interest positions. That number shrank to 107 grads in the class of 2024. We should also briefly note that post-grad employment data is measured nine months after graduation. As such, the class of 2024 data “locked in” around mid-February 2025.
  • Institutional funding. There are a few prongs on this effort; some directly affect law schools while others don’t directly but will likely have indirect effects. For example, changes to overhead charges that the federal government provides to universities for science research and development don’t directly affect law schools … which are famously not in the business of science research. However, it is certainly possible that a university may try to shift tuition dollars from one college or graduate division to another in order to help cover drastic reductions in funding. But  more direct challenges to law schools are proposed tax changes to university endowments and potential caps on Grad and PLUS loans. Regarding the former, endowment funds are largely spent on supporting financial aid programs—taxing those funds at higher rates will likely mean a reduction of scholarship availability. And regarding the latter, graduate students can currently use PLUS loans to meet the gap between a school’s total cost of attendance (which includes tuition and living expenses) and the funding that they can provide in the moment (in the form of savings and scholarship assistance). Capping PLUS loans at $100,000 could limit the possible educational options for many aspiring lawyers.
  • Curriculum and admissions. At the federal, state, and local levels, colleges and law schools are being asked to reconsider DEI measures that run counter to the current administration’s interpretation of civil rights laws.
  • Administrative hurdles. Beyond the aforementioned issues, there is the simple reality that the current administration has already cut the size of the federal work force and may continue to do so in the coming months. As such, procedural matters that have had consistent timelines in the past are in flux. For example, consider the international student who has to schedule an appointment at an American embassy or consulate for their visa. Or the veteran who has to file paperwork in order to use their educational benefits for law school. Or the law student trying to process their federal student loans. With staff reductions at the State Department and the VA, and the possible elimination of the Department of Education, each of those tasks is now on a very different timeline than they were at this time last year.

That’s a lot to go through and we recognize:

  1. It’s not comprehensive, and
  2. It’s subject to change based on the headlines du jour.

But we want to keep our readers as up to date on matters as we can in the coming weeks! Be sure to continue checking in as we try to parse the news and keep you informed.

7Sage Events

OK, let’s move back to the lighter material!

Our AMA-style classes are taking a break this week but will be back in action on May 21st. Also, a reminder that you can check out our past sessions via our Class Library—just enter “Admissions” into the search bar.

The most recent episode of the 7Sage Admissions Podcast dropped this past Monday and features a recording from our most recent Deans’ Roundtable. The conversation centered around how schools handled (and are handling) the increase in national applications and how that has affected possible waitlist activity. Be sure to tune in on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!