The Summer Is Long and Full of Melting

A brief note on anticipated WL movement, worries of lack thereof, and in general how the summer may play out.

Looking at the data, we still think there will be more losers than winners in schools ranked around 7 and on down, and I do not see a situation where a school could possibly know or feel confident at this stage that they will escape the “summer melting” unscathed. Rumors to the contrary strike me as just that… rumors. It appears that fewer people may have applied to more top schools this year, thus the data each individual school has may be skewed by this spike in the # of applications from strong applicants. None of these applicants who have already been admitted to the top ranked schools are matriculating to two (or more) law schools of course, so things will play out in favor of the WL’d applicant this summer once people make firm commitments to the school they will be attending.

At the top 6 there may be some upswing or leveling out of sheer applicants, and these schools may not have to go to the WL as much. This could slow down the domino effect, but again the competition for fewer people outside this group is going to be as fierce as it ever has, and I expect substantial WL movement late cycle.