With the Ides of August upon us, law school admissions officers find themselves on the precipice of the culmination (culminating precipice, perhaps?) of their work. Admissions is a unique profession that boils down to one moment—when the incoming class arrives at orientation. AdComms can be wonderful at every other facet of their day-to-day job—they hosted the best open house, were the chattiest rep at all the law fairs, reviewed applications and provided decisions to applicants in a timely manner, etc.—but none of that matters if not for the “end product” that will all arrive for orientation check in just a few short days.

It's at this time that admissions officers feel a bit like a flight crew in the midst of landing procedures.

Whether things are perfectly calm

because all of the deposited students have completed their pre-orientation paperwork, activated their university email accounts, and have moved to campus, or are a bit bumpier

because some of the deposited students have called—just three days before orientation—to indicate that they have second thoughts about enrolling in law school this year, and admissions officers have to land that plane. And as the saying goes, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. You may just have to buff out a few dents afterwards.

So as our friends in admissions offices hold their breath, cross their fingers, pray to their preferred deities, and strive to find their moments of zen amidst the last-minute craziness, let’s take our usual lap around the headlines from the world of law school admissions.

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Law School Orientation … and Updated Class Profiles

And with the onset of orientations next week, we’ll be keeping our eyes on law schools’ websites to see if/when they update their class profiles.

The official stats for a law school’s class are published by the American Bar Association on its website. The ABA doesn’t provide these official stats until December (December!) because:

• Given the varying times that law schools begin classes (UChicago Law is on the quarter system, and their 2024–2025 academic year didn’t begin until September 30th!), the ABA considers enrollment data to be “locked in” on October 5th.
• Law schools then have a few weeks to crunch their numbers, double-check everything, and submit their stats to the ABA.
• And it takes the ABA a few weeks to do their own rounds of crunching and double-checking before publishing the official reports.

But we don’t have to wait until December to get an unofficial sense of everyone’s information. This is where class profiles come into play.

A class profile is a document (whether that be a page on a website or a brochure at a law fair) that gives information on this year’s enrolling class. A law school publishes this information to inform upcoming prospective students of the demographics and stats for the most recently enrolled class. Fordham Law’s profile for last year’s entering class is a pretty standard example of this kind of document.

It's not a ton of information, but it at least informs prospective students about medians, the number of applicants, and the number of matriculants (i.e., enrolled students).

But there are two important catches here:

• Not every law school will publish a profile. Some will simply wait until the ABA publishes their reports in December, and the school will then use that document as the way to publicize their first-year class’s stats and demographics.
• If a law school publishes a profile based on their class’s stats at orientation, those stats may change a smidge before October 5th based on last-minute changes to enrollment.

So where can you find these documents, and when are they likely to start popping up on websites?

The easiest way to find them is to do a basic internet search for “[school name] law, class profile.” It’s important to include “law” as a search term, otherwise you may end up on the class profile for the broader university and wonder if you need to retake the SAT or ACT for law school admission!

As to when they’ll start showing up on websites, the earliest would be after orientation begins and the class arrives in one piece.

And when is that? As early as next week at schools like Vanderbilt and Duke, two law schools that—historically—are two of the earliest to publish class profiles.

So stretch out your typing fingers, open a number of tabs in your internet browser of choice, and get ready to see if our long-held predictions about rising medians for this year’s enrolling classes have come true!

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National LSAT Numbers

And on the note of numbers, the August LSAT has come and gone, and our check on LSAC’s LSAT Registrants and Test Taker Volumes report shows that things are pretty stable out there.

In last week’s blog, we wondered if we would see a big last-second decline in registrations akin to the June LSAT. But at least for now, things appear to have been stable. In June, LSAT registrations dropped by about 17% in the week before the test. But according to LSAC’s website, the “week of” drop in registrations for the August LSAT was a little under 5%. That’s a number that’s far more in line with the norm than what happened in June.

What does this all mean? The August LSAT is usually the starting bell for the admissions year and has the highest percentage of first-time test takers. There are no more “LSAT veterans” who are taking this exam for one last shot at improving their chances of admission for this past year. Rather, the majority of August test takers are doing so in order to apply for this coming year. Applications increased by 22% nationally last year. We want to see if the August numbers remain on par with last year (if so—expect national apps to be steady for the coming year) or increase (if so—sigh, looks like we need to adjust our targets up).

The September and October LSAT numbers have similar predictive power. The September LSAT is just three weeks away, registrations are 67% higher than last year, and they only dropped by the smidgest of smidges this past week (0.8%). They’re holding steady at a very high number. We’re also a week away from the registration deadline for the October LSAT. This is usually the time in the registration cycle when the numbers shoot through the roof, so we’re keeping an eye on that stat.

No matter what, all signs continue to point towards another very competitive admissions cycle. Last year’s app increase doesn’t appear to be heading anywhere anytime soon. So get cracking on those personal statements and updating your résumés! Time waits for no one!

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7Sage Events

Our next Admissions AMA will take place on August 13th. As a reminder that you can check out our past sessions via our Class Library—just enter “Admissions” into the search bar.

And remember that Kamil Brown will host a class on August 21st on preparing for law fairs and LSAC Forums.

Our next Deans’ Roundtable will be on Tuesday, August 26th. Tajira McCoy and her panelists of various deans and directors of admission will debrief on this past year’s admissions cycle and will look ahead to the 2025–2026 cycle. Are they done reading all their applications yet from last year? Are they planning on getting any rest before this year’s cycle starts? Tune in to find out (and be ready to ask a few questions, too!).

Our most recent law school admissions podcast dropped on Monday and has a breakdown of the One Big Beautiful Bill’s ramifications for law school admissions. And if that content isn’t uplifting enough, we also try to read the tea leaves of the Columbia University consent to predict what may happen for the admissions processes at other universities who reach similar agreements with the federal government. Be sure to check it out on Amazon, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you stream your podcasts!

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