International students face unique challenges in the U.S. law school admissions process. This article presents an analysis of how top law schools treat international applicants, using data from the past three cycles, and explains what's new for 2024-25!
As of March 20, 2025, nearly 7,000 offers of admission remain at the top 100 law schools, including 2,500 from top 20 schools. While we don't have definitive data yet, these figures provide a snapshot of the cycle’s progress.
There are some seemingly simple questions on law school applications that still have a tendency to confuse applicants. As former admissions officers, we hope to help you understand and feel confident answering them.
Admissions officers are settling into a winter of reading, and the file review process is really just beginning to get into full swing for most of them. So when will decisions be coming out?
This week, the American Bar Association published this year's required 509 disclosures—standardized data on admissions, enrollment, scholarships, faculty, and more. We took a look at that data, and here are our early takeaways.
There is often a shroud of mystery among applicants once they submit their applications. As former admissions officers, we'll walk you through how the process tends to work.
A list of how the top 50-ish schools refer to themselves in their marketing materials.
As we have podcasted on before, misinformation in the law school admissions process comes from all directions, and law school admissions consulting firms claiming to be experts (with little or no real admissions experience) are a growing source.
When will law school applications open for the 2024-2025 admissions cycle? Here's the full list.
In this podcast, Mike Spivey talks about the LSAT-Flex, particularly is it relates to timelines and the pace of admissions this cycle. It is important to note that LSAT scores are higher at the top bandwidths right now than one would expect in any cycle. There are several hypotheses out there for why that is.
LSAC maintains that they will organically come down to natural levels. Spivey Consulting (and others we should note) believes that we won't maintain this pace of increase, just like every cycle, but that we are already past the point where they could come down to "natural" levels barring some extremely inorganic occurrence, and that until now law schools have been trying to figure this equation out. To LSAC's credit, they have provided law schools with data that we think should now speed up the pace of admitting for the cycle — although exactly when and at what pace that happens is still impossible to predict.
You can listen to this podcast below or via SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
Please note that our reservation list for next cycle (2021-2022) is now open.
In this video, Spivey Consulting Group founder Mike Spivey answers questions from r/lawschooladmissions on strategies for splitters, international students, non-traditional applicants, reapplicants, and more.
You can also listen to the interview as a podcast on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
COVID-19 isn't going anywhere in the near future, yet only 3 law schools and only 8% of universities and colleges have announced they will be entirely remote for fall 2020.
What is the most recent update, and is there a middle ground that can be reached to decrease on-campus density so that the likelihood of cluster outbreaks is significantly reduced?
Watch below, or listen on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
Spivey Consulting Partner Mike Spivey talks about the two primary things at the highest order that make applications stand out and elevate in the admissions process.
Danielle Early and Mike Spivey speak for 30 minutes on application submission timing. And a bit more below from Michigan Law Dean of Admissions Sarah Zearfoss.
Here is Dean Z.:
"Totally agree that before Thanksgiving is “early” in any school’s universe. All law school admissions officers are hitting the bricks from mid-September to mid-November; some offices are structured in a way that allows them to make some decisions despite the travel schedule, but the number of offers are a mere pittance compared to the overall number that will be made. People who don’t have their applications in when they start hearing about early September acceptances might feel dismayed, and worry that by the time they apply, nothing will be left—but that’s not even close to true. In general, I would advise people to try to get their applications in before the 1st of the year, simply because most people apply after that, creating a bottleneck. That means your outcome might be slowed down, which will be anxiety producing, but it doesn’t mean you’ll not get admitted because your application is somehow fatally “late.”
Remember, too, that some schools take a lot of care with their applications. If you want to be judged on factors apart from/in addition to your LSAT and UGPA, then try to have some patience with the fact that those holistic processes are necessarily time intensive.
It’s all good practice for being a lawyer. Judges take a lot of time about issuing their opinions, and seem not to take into account that the lawyer submitted a kick-ass brief and did a stellar oral argument."
And the podcast:
Something we encounter all too often is applicants who put so much pressure on themselves when they are taking the LSAT that it ends up being counterproductive, barring them from performing near the highest level of which they are capable. If we can help calm even one test-taker's nerves with this podcast, it will be worth it.
Something we encounter all too often is applicants who put so much pressure on themselves when they are taking the LSAT that it ends up being counterproductive, barring them from performing near the highest level of which they are capable. If we can help calm even one test-taker's nerves with this podcast, it will be worth it.
Note: You can also listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or SoundCloud. The blog post Mike mentions in the podcast is here.
Also check out a related blog post on "The Over-Estimated Impact of Median LSAT Change on USNWR Rankings." And our rankings/data tool for comparing law schools, My Rank.
