Back in their offices with a little peace and quiet before students arrive for the coming academic term, law school admissions officers continue to read files, convene their committees, and issue decisions. It’s Go Time. It’s also “Flu Time” and your dear writer is a little under the weather today.

So let’s cut the chit-chat, pop some Tylenol, pour a cup of tea to cut down on the shivers, and take a quick lap around the world of law school admissions!

National App Figures

Like a running back driving his legs to get that one extra yard, our weekly check-in on national figures shows that we keep inching forward.

In last week’s blog, we were at +3.8% for applicants and -2.2% for applications per LSAC’s Current Volume Summaries report.

Similarly, we continue to hold steady if we look at the actual distribution of LSAT scores among applicants:

Last week, our friends in the 170-174 range (i.e., T14 Land) were down -5.3% with a “raw number” differential of 169. This week, it’s just -4.7% and a raw number of 152. Meanwhile, we’re seeing the usual shift in LSAT registration numbers on the eve of a test administration. Last week, there were 29,878 students registered for the January LSAT. That number has gone down a bit this week per the LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report:

Last week, our friends in the 170-174 range (i.e., T14 Land) were down -5.3% with a “raw number” differential of 169. This week, it’s just -4.7% and a raw number of 152. Meanwhile, we’re seeing the usual shift in LSAT registration numbers on the eve of a test administration. Last week, there were 29,878 students registered for the January LSAT. That number has gone down a bit this week per the LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report

The January LSAT numbers went down by about 2,000 while the April LSAT registrations increased by 2,000—this is a mystery that even we feel qualified to solve!

The January LSAT is historically one of LSAC’s biggest administrations and is also the test with the highest percentage of students taking the test for a second (or third, or fourth, or—we feel your pain!—fifth) time. We’ll check in again next week once the LSAT administration is past so we can get a final sense of what kind of wave we may be seeing come January 31st.

Decisions Rolling Out

Slowly but surely, the great wheels of decisions are turning. In just the past few days, we’ve seen decisions up and down the rankings from Drexel, Tennessee, Rutgers, and Villanova; stretching up to Boston University, Washington University, and UCLA; and crashing in on the fun like the Kool Aid Man

Harvard released their first wave of admits on January 8th, complete with a fun Instagram Reel.

Per everyone’s profiles on lawschooldata, the only school of note that we’ve seen thus far who is clearly attempting to obtain a different median than last year is Minnesota. If we check their chart and isolate for just the admitted students:

we can see a pretty clear line right at a 169 LSAT. We’ll keep checking in on other schools’ profiles in the coming weeks to see if there are any other trends of note as decisions roll out.

Upcoming Law Fairs

A quick reminder for our readers Down South and in the Seattle area that you have a few law fairs coming up next week! Whether you’ve already applied or are looking ahead to next year, this is a great opportunity to network with admissions officers and learn more about their schools.

January 20

January 22

January 23

January 24

January 25

January 26

7Sage Admissions Classes

And another quick reminder for our readers looking ahead to the next admissions cycle (or those in need of immediate triage!) that we are continuing our Zoom admissions courses next week. We will go through each part of a typical application to discuss how admissions officers use each aspect in their evaluation. Hopefully this will help to demystify the process and give you a bit of guidance going forward!