Law School Admission Process

It’s important to understand the admissions process before you apply to law school. While law schools may set an application deadline for April or May, admissions actually take place on a rolling basis. As a result, law schools may fill their entering classes well before the stated deadline, meaning that some people who apply before the school’s deadline will not receive consideration.

While most law schools begin accepting applications for the next year's entering class around September 1, intensive review of these applications usually does not begin until October. The first round of the application process runs from October through December; this is usually the best time to apply. Scholarship offers are likely to be highest during this time. Your chances of admission will be greater if you take the LSAT no later than October so that you can retake the test in November if necessary. If wait until January, you will not get your scores until February and some law schools will be mostly filled by then

The second round of application review runs roughly from January through March. In this round, admission becomes more competitive and scholarship money less available. By the end of this round, top-tier schools will have selected most, if not all, of the students they will admit. Applicants who would have been accepted in the first round might be placed on waiting lists or even rejected. Students placed on waiting lists can improve their chances for admission by submitting supplementary information or by retaking the LSAT and achieving a higher score.

The third round of law school admissions runs from April to June. This is when schools give final consideration to the overall composition of their entering classes to adjust for lower-than-expected yields among applicant groups. While many law schools allow you to apply during this round, it is possible that they will already have filled their entering classes, so the odds of being admitted to a highly-ranked law school are minimal if you wait until spring to apply.

At lower-tier law schools, the third round of admissions runs through the spring and into the summer. This means that it is possible to apply to some law schools in early July and be admitted for August classes. However, this won't work at many schools, and you risk the possibility that their scholarship money will have run out. If you haven’t applied by April, your best option may be to wait until the fall to apply for the next year’s entering class.