Predictions

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Blog Posts

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.

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.

August 3, 2023
Predicting the 2023-2024 Law School Admissions Cycle

The 2022-2023 application cycle is coming to a close, and overall, it will finish with about 2% fewer applicants than the prior cycle—the lowest total number of applicants since the 2017-2018 cycle. In this blog, we look at 2023-2024.

June 20, 2022
Early Thoughts on the 2022-2023 Application Cycle + 2021-2022 Recap

It's certainly too early to make predictions with any sort of certainty, but given that we now have final June LSAT numbers, and registration for the August LSAT is now closed, we now have some early indicators of what we might expect to see in the 2022-2023 law school admissions cycle.

January 24, 2021
What Might the Second Half of the Law School Admissions Cycle Look Like?

We are essentially at the midway point of the admissions cycle. Predicting part 2.

July 7, 2020
Predicting the 2020/2021 Law School Admissions Cycle

The 2020-2021 admissions cycle is going to be the most challenging yet to predict, and most will understand a large part of that uncertainty.

May 7, 2020
Predicting the COVID-19 Summer Of Law School Waitlist Movement

Early in my admissions career, a former boss of mine would often use the following Niels Bohr quote when speaking of law school admissions: “prediction is difficult, especially when it involves the future.”

March 28, 2020
When will larger numbers of law school admissions decisions come?

This will be a short but I hope important blog to consider. It's been a notoriously slow admission cycle, and it possibly would have stayed at an equally slow pace until COVID-19 changed things in many dramatic ways.

January 21, 2020
How will the upcoming “Demographic Cliff” Impact Admissions? (Spoiler: it is going to be substantial)

In the past month or so, I’ve had the good fortune to speak with the Chancellors to the respective boards of two vastly different universities.

Podcasts

June 27, 2020
University, College, and Law School COVID-19 Update & An Alternative Model

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.

June 4, 2019
What makes for successful law school admission?

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.

September 8, 2016
“When is it early/When is it late?” in the admissions cycle

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:

October 14, 2019
Calming Your LSAT Anxiety

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.

April 28, 2020
Universities, Colleges, and Law Schools Plan to Be Open On Campus This Fall

In this podcast, Spivey Consulting Group founder and higher education expert Mike Spivey discusses the plans universities are making to resume on-campus operations this fall, as well as challenges to those plans from the medical community.

You can listen to the podcast via the YouTube video below, or via SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.

November 25, 2019
The Waiting is Long and Full of Terrors

In this podcast, Spivey Consulting Group Founder and Partner Mike Spivey discusses the hardest part of the law school admissions process—the waiting—and how it can cause some applicants to hurt their own chances of admission.

Here's the blog post mentioned in the podcast: Spooky Halloween Blog: Real Stories of Things That Creep Out Admissions Offices.

Mike's other blog which is mentioned in this podcast: Spivey Blog.

Find our podcasts on YouTube, SoundCloud, and Apple Podcasts. And check out our law school data/rankings tool My Rank.