Data

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Blog Posts

April 24, 2025
Data Dive: International Applicants to Top Law Schools

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!

March 20, 2025
2024-2025 Law School Admissions Cycle Progress

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.

January 14, 2025
Real Data on When Law School Admissions Decisions Come Out

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?

December 18, 2024
New Law School Admissions Data from the 2024 ABA-Required 509 Disclosures: Thoughts & Analysis

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.

October 15, 2024
Predicting the 2024-2025 Law School Application Cycle (Early Data)

The very first LSAC Volume Summary Report of the cycle just dropped, which means we have our first applicant (and application) data for 2024-2025.

February 23, 2024
2023-2024 Law School Admissions Cycle Update + Predictions for Waitlist Season

It’s late February, which means that the earliest application deadlines have passed, we’re in the thick of decision-rendering season, and waitlists are starting to come fast and heavy. As such, it’s a good time for a general data update and some predictions on what’s yet to come this cycle.

December 15, 2023
Predicted 2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings

With today’s release of the new ABA-required 509 disclosures, we now have all law schools’ fall 2023 medians and class sizes, plus we have the ability to more accurately predict next year’s upcoming U.S. News law school rankings.

November 24, 2023
2023-2024 Law School Application Cycle Data Update

As of November 26, 2023, we are about a third of the way through the 2023-2024 application cycle as measured by previous cycle applicant timing, so it's a good time for an update on where things stand.

December 19, 2022
New Law School Data as of December 2022 ABA 509 Disclosures

The ABA just released law schools' required 509 disclosure documents for 2022, which means that we now have the complete, final, official admissions data from the 2021-2022 admissions cycle.

Podcasts

April 2, 2020
How Will Law School Transfer Admissions Be Impacted by COVID-19?

In this podcast, Mike Spivey discusses how COVID-19 and new grading systems will affect law school transfer admissions. Listen below through YouTube, or on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.

Also, a quick note — for a look into Mike's daily schedule (which we've been asked about many times) and some advice on staying sane while quarantined, see this recent blog.

March 18, 2020
Update on COVID-19 / Coronavirus & Law School Admissions

Just a quick update from Mike Spivey on how the continuously developing situation with COVID-19 / coronavirus is impacting — and will continue to impact — law school admissions. Watch here or listen on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.

September 11, 2020
On the Prevalence of Bad Law School Admissions Advice

In this podcast, Spivey Consulting Group's Anna Hicks and Mike Spivey discuss bad advice in law school admissions — who gives it, how to identify it, and how to determine which advice is worthwhile. Plus, some bonus [good] advice on LinkedIn at the end!

You can also listen to this podcast on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.

Here's the podcast on when admissions officers do take note of a specific applicant's behavior online and the consequences it can have.

And here's the Family Guy parody video mentioned in the podcast regarding subjectivity in admissions.

Please note that we are currently at capacity and are not taking new clients for this cycle at this time (we are still working through our current waitlist in date order). However, we will soon be opening our reservation list for next cycle! You can monitor our blog and Twitter for updates on our future availability for this cycle and for the reservation list announcement.

You may not know that I, and several of my Spivey Consulting business partners, were meant to be at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. You can read the story and my thoughts nine years later in a blog post I just published to my motivational blog here. –Mike

June 5, 2020
Harvard Law Goes Fully Remote for Fall 2020. Will Other Law Schools Follow Suit and What It Means for Applicants

In this podcast, Spivey Consulting Group founder Mike Spivey discusses Harvard Law School's recent announcement that all classes will be held fully remotely for Fall 2020 — what does it mean for other law schools, for international students, the ABA, and current applicants? Will this cause more waitlist movement? What about deferrals? Plus, a bit of a look into what the 2020-2021 cycle might bring.

Listen below, or via SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.

August 9, 2020
How to Tell If You're Overdoing It in Law School Admissions

In this podcast, Spivey Consulting Group founder Mike Spivey discusses one of the most common mistakes in law school admissions that we see from applicants who have underperformed their numbers — overdoing it in the admissions process — then details the most common types of applicants this happens to: the "over-explainer," the "over-spammer," the "over-[publicly] talker," the "permutator," and the "boundary pusher."

You can find the blog post Mike mentions in the podcast, "Spooky Halloween Blog: Real Stories of Things That Creep Out Admissions Offices" (examples of the most extreme "boundary pushers"), here.

You can also listen to this podcast on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.

And for our free tool for comparing law schools/medians/data, check out My Rank.

June 11, 2020
Recession Job Search Tips You Won’t Hear from Career Services

Mike Spivey served as a law school dean of career services during the Great Recession, and in this podcast he shares actionable advice for legal networking that you won't hear from your CSO.

Listen below via YouTube, or on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.