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Our comments on LSAC’s recent announcement regarding cheating on the LSAT and the temporary suspension of the LSAT in mainland China.
On April 23rd, the White House issued an Executive Order titled “Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education,” targeting the accrediting bodies of colleges, law schools, and medical schools. This, among other things, would seem to aim to embolden the federal government’s decision-making process through which colleges, universities, law schools (where we will focus), and medical schools can access billions of dollars in federal student loans and Pell grants. Put in other terms, it coul
I've been asked too many times to count to comment on the U.S. News 2025 law school rankings release a few days ago.
On February 14th, Craig Trainor, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights for the Department of Education, sent the following Dear Colleague memo. Note that this has precedent. The OCR has sent numerous Dear Colleague letters in the past, none of which are legally binding. At face value, they are simply memos with no authority, although they do serve as leading indicators of potential legal action that the Department of Education may consider trying to adopt. But, as the Ninth Circuit Court o
Today has a special meaning to me, and I write to outline our firm’s upcoming growth and diversification of services in 2024.
Thirty-three law schools have obtained variances from the ABA to accept the JD-Next exam results in lieu of the LSAT or GRE. Here's a list of those 33 schools!
After a long, winding, grueling path to get here, we finally have the 2023-2024 U.S. News & World Report law school rankings. Here are the new rankings with +/-.
Just as the most tumultuous rankings season we have ever seen seemed to be settling, and U.S. News had both publicly released their top 14 law schools and the full embargoed rankings to all law schools, the following email was sent to deans.
A few months ago, many law schools announced they would boycott sending U.S. News direct (and non-third party audited) data, essentially forcing U.S. News to change their methodology. The rates of the admissions metrics were significantly reduced. What does this mean?
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Spivey Consulting COO Anna Hicks-Jaco checks in with "Lucy," u/Accomplished-Body785 on Reddit, an applicant currently in the middle of her law school application process. We are interviewing Lucy at several points throughout her cycle to check in about how things have been going, what she's been up to in terms of her application process, and how she's feeling about it all. You can find Part 1 here.
This episode is primarily focused on interviews! Lucy has had a number of law school admissions interviews at this point, including one group interview and a Kira interview, and she shares how those interviews went, what sorts of questions they asked, and how she prepared. She also shares some of her first decisions.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this short episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike talks about applicants' (deeply understandable) tendency to catastrophize in law school admissions.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Justin Kane, Spivey Consulting's Director of Business Intelligence and resident rankings expert, about recent developments in the U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings.
If you haven't already heard, a number of law schools have recently announced that they will no longer be participating in the rankings. But what does that actually mean? Why are they doing it, and why now? What impacts might it have on applicants, law students, and legal education as a whole—both this current cycle and down the line?
You can find an up-to-date list of law schools that have announced they will no longer be participating in the rankings here.
Important Disclaimer: At this point, all of our forward-looking thoughts are purely speculation. We can't emphasize enough that we don't know yet what U.S. News is going to do—no one does, not even U.S. News itself. This is an actively-evolving situation in the short term, and the longer-term effects are even more difficult to predict. This episode is meant to provide an insider look into what law school administrations and other major legal education stakeholders are thinking about right now, but we can't predict the future.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews Jordana Confino, Assistant Dean of Professionalism at Fordham Law School, about ways that law school applicants and students (and in fact, any applicant or student) can healthily cope with and reduce stress and increase overall happiness and well-being. Jordana is a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School, and in her current role at Fordham, she develops and delivers programs designed to promote student wellness, mentorship, and professional identity formation. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Fordham, teaching courses on “Positive Lawyering” and “Peer Mentoring & Leadership.” She was voted Fordham Law Adjunct Professor of the Year in 2021.
In this interview, Jordana discusses her academic and professional history, how law school and legal practice impacted her well-being, and specific tactics applicants and students can employ to improve their own mental and emotional wellness in stressful, high-pressure environments.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
Mike and Jordana discuss a number of psychology researchers and experts throughout their conversation, including the groundbreaking work of Dr. Kristin Neff in the field of self-compassion—you can listen to our interview with Dr. Neff here. Mike also mentions a graph near the end of the episode that we have included for your reference below:
In this short episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike offers some optimistic news for law school applicants who may not have yet received any admits.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode, Mike gives his thoughts on whether law schools will be able to maintain their historically high LSAT/GPA medians after the 2022-2023 admissions cycle.
Spivey Consulting Availability Notes:
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
Note: You may notice that the numbers we cite sometimes vary slightly from the volume data that LSAC publishes. This is because LSAC reports only an applicant's ultimate high LSAT score, even if they didn't achieve that score until months or even years after the date in question. For example, if someone applied in 2021-2022 with a 160, then retook the LSAT the following fall and scored a 170 to reapply for 2022-2023, LSAC's data would include them as an applicant with a 170 even in the 2021-2022 data. To avoid this effect, we record applicant volume daily in real-time so that we can later compare to the data as it actually was on that date, rather than factoring in any new LSAT scores that were achieved after that date.
