The end of July is usually when admissions officers look at their calendar, wait for the coffee to really fire up their brain, and slowly realize that the new academic year is just around the corner. Classes begin in a month … which means that orientation is in three weeks … and the rising 2Ls will be back for on-campus interviews the week before that … and the week before that is now. Another sign of this transition from summer to the upcoming academic year is that AdComms just returned from their first big recruitment event of the season—the Washington, D.C. LSAC Forum. We can’t be too far away from the year if we’re actively recruiting new students! So let’s take a few minutes today to talk about the Forums and their utility for you as prospective students.

As we’ve mentioned in the past (i.e., just last week!), LSAC will be among the most omnipresent entities in your life for the coming year. Wherever you go in the world of law admissions, they’ll be there. Not only are they the organization that operates and administers the LSAT, not only will you submit your applications through LSAC’s portal, but—for the purposes of today’s conversation—they also administer the Forums.

You can think of the Forums as law fairs+. They are the biggest and best-attended law fairs that happen in each recruitment cycle. They’re the sun and all other recruitment events are the orbiting planets. Law school AdComms know that each Forum will be attended by several hundred prospective applicants. As such, even the schools that generally don’t do a great deal of law fairs will do these law fairs. You can check out a list of the schools that attended the D.C. Forum and see that it’s kinda almost everyone. Meanwhile, pre-law advisors at various colleges and universities also know that the Forums are the biggest events of the year and will draw a lot of admissions officers. With this knowledge, they then schedule their own local law fairs and pre-law events accordingly. For example, the Atlanta Forum will be on Friday, October 6. In the days preceding that event, there will be law fairs at the University of Georgia, the University of South Carolina, and Morehouse College. That’s the strength of the Forums’ gravitational pull—they set the entire calendar.

But the Forums also have a bit more than just a law fair—thus the “+” in “law fairs+.” As you can see from the D.C. Forum’s schedule, each Forum also has dedicated staff to discuss fin aid, LSAT prep (although we obviously think you should use 7Sage!), DEI resources, and more. These can all be great opportunities for prospective students who are first-gen to college, first-gen to law school, or simply have a number of questions that would be best addressed by professionals rather than the chattering masses on Reddit.

Location-wise, LSAC hosts the Forums in the markets with the greatest saturation of law applicants and tries—where possible—to schedule them for weekends. The lone exceptions to these general rules are:

  • Toronto. No, it isn’t the biggest market for American law schools but LSAC is a membership organization that also includes Canadian law schools. As such, the GTA makes the cut.
  • Boston. The Boston Forum used to be held every year in November but attendance was never high despite the deep concentration of colleges and universities within a 90-minute drive. The Boston area colleges then started to host a law fair in early September that drew numbers almost as large as the Forum. One thing led to another, a pandemic happened, markets got reshaped, and Boston is no longer on the roster.
  • Atlanta. Why is the Atlanta Forum on a Friday? Because of SEC football on Saturdays. This is not a joke.

LSAC added Digital Forums during the pandemic and these have since become mainstays of the recruitment calendar. Since they’re a bit of a different beast from the in-person Forums, we’ll discuss them in a later post.

So with this background knowledge, let’s ask the question that we hear continually from students—is it worth it to go to one? While acknowledging that I tend to be a positive person, I think the answer is “YES!” as long as you set your expectations accordingly. Consider attending a Forum as akin to going to a networking event. The main goal is to meet key people, have them remember your name, make a good impression, and obtain any relevant information. Regarding that first point, the law school booths at Forums are usually staffed by AdComms. These are the people who will be the first ones to read your application and will be in the room when an Admissions Committee makes a final call on your file. To that end, even just taking the time to introduce yourself, shake a hand (or give a fist bump in the post-COVID world), and mention that you’re applying this year and just wanted to stop by to say hello will accomplish points two and three. That’s especially true if you incorporate your conversation at the Forum into your application materials. This is where having a few questions prepped ahead of time can be useful. If you’re stumped on what to ask, you can find a few conversation starters here on our admissions course.

And for those of you who may be nervous about networking, it’s alright to feel that way! If it helps, remember that you’ll be doing a lot of networking throughout your legal career. You can think of this as your first entrée into that field. You can also schedule something fun for yourself later in the day as a reward for putting yourself out there and doing something outside your comfort zone. And remember—AdComms want to talk with you and they’re usually very friendly, even the ones at the most prestigious law schools. Chances are that you’ll enjoy meeting them. So as AdComms look at their calendar and take a deep breath about the upcoming recruitment calendar, you can do the same and join them in the process!