Podcast: The Coming Law School Admissions Cycle — Brief Thoughts

In this podcast, Mike provides a brief recap of the historic last cycle (2020–2021) as well as the short version of our best predictions for what's to come this cycle (2021–2022). If you'd like a longer and more in-depth discussion of these topics, please listen to our full podcast on these topics, "Recapping the 2020-2021 Law School Admissions Cycle & Predicting the Upcoming Cycle" (featuring Spivey Consulting's data wonk Justin Kane and PowerScore CEO Dave Killoran).

You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.

Hi. It is Wednesday, August 18th, and this is Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, admissions. We’re particularly going to focus on admissions in this podcast. I’m going to try and keep it brief, six to ten minutes, and do a general overview of the cycle to come. But, of course, we can’t talk about this coming cycle without talking about last year’s historic cycle.

[00:37] So, what happened last year is, of course, we had COVID, and LSAC, the organization that administers LSAT had to, in an incredibly short amount of time, and kudos to them, it was amazing to watch. Taken historically in-person tests and moving online so that you could take it in your bedroom, living room, wherever. So, that happened and it was miraculous to watch. But, whenever you see amazing things happen in short amount of times, there’s historic precedent for this, there are second generational problems. So, the second generational problems with taking a five section, in-person test and turning it into a three section, online test, was that there were a lot of vectors that went into different test-taking ability that LSAC didn’t account for when they gave a curve. Each test has a curve. It’s negative nine, which means you can get nine wrong to get a 170. Or negative twelve, or negative thirteen. So, the curve, by our estimation in the data experts that I surround myself with was too loose. And it’s not just by anyone’s estimation. You can see that the curve changed. Particularly, at 165 and above. But particularly, particularly from 170 to 180. From 175 to 180, LSAT scores were up 103%. They’re up 57% from 170 to 174. So, you have this massive spike at the top that no one was able, pre-cycle, to account for. I mean, not us, not LSAC, not law schools.

[02:24] So what happened? Law schools generally base admit patterns on historic data. So, they were chugging away, admitting away (most law schools, not all) and all the sudden their classes filled up very early with high scores. We’ll get back to that because that caused over enrollment even at some of the highest ranked schools that hardly ever have faced over enrollment before. And that’s going to impact this cycle. Applications last cycle were up, I believe, 12.6% so that also created to a more difficult cycle. But basically, last year what you saw was a seller’s market. Schools did incredibly well, and you’re starting to see that. And it’s going to get worse. We work with a number of schools and we talk to a number of schools. And, you know, I’m bound by confidentiality. But when more and more of these medians come out, you’re going to see plus two, plus three. You’ll see, I believe, some plus threes in the top twenty which is just unheard of. So last cycle was a once in a lifetime difficult cycle. I hope once in a lifetime.

[03:32] Let’s talk about this cycle. So, you have those overenrolled schools and what a lot of them did, and bears noting, is they offered scholarship incentives to decrease the class size and defer people to this cycle. So, generally every cycle you have some deferrals. But this cycle, you’re going to have, let’s say a school normally starts off the cycle with ten deferrals. They’re ten yards ahead on the track. They may have thirty or forty deferrals this cycle. So now they’re going to be forty yards ahead on the track and the race hasn’t even started yet. That’s not good news, obviously. But I’ll get to the good news. The other piece of bad news is, I posted on our Twitter account. I did a week of free phone calls. The number of people I talked to with 165s and above or 170 and above who were 0 for 8, or 0 for 12, or 1 for 14, that was essentially my entire week. Well, what are those people going to do? They’re going to reapply this cycle. So, early on this cycle, you have the schools with the larger number of deferrals and you have a lot of strong reapplicants. Or people who took the LSAT FLEX last cycle and scored better because people who took the LSAT FLEX scored better in general. Not every single person, but in general, they scored better. So, early on, schools are going to try and maintain these strong medians that are coming in. And you’re going to see a slow pattern of that. Slow pattern because schools are hurt last year that admitted too early, so they’re going to pump the breaks. So slowly and mindfully they’re going to admit people with strong numbers.

[05:11] Here comes the good news. And this happens every year. Every year schools gun for high LSAT scores early and then sort of start losing some of that battle. Last year it didn’t happen because even if they lost high LSAT scores, they had other high LSAT scores to replace them with. So, this year, come around February, March, April, May, June, July, August, if you’re an applicant and you have a 172 and you apply to twelve schools, in that month bandwidth I told you about, you’re going to have to tell eleven schools “no.” And now multiply that by 5,000 other people in the 170 to 180 range or whatever. 3,000 other people telling eleven schools “no”. So those schools have to start going to other people to admit. Well, again, last cycle they had other people in this stable of high scores to admit but I don’t see that happening this cycle because I think that LSAC, a learning organization, is going to start accounting for the vectors of taking a test at home versus in person. The test questions were no less rigorous and that’s LSAC’s amazing ability to put together very consistent test questions was almost their crux last cycle because they just factored in that it’s the same caliber of tests. And I think this cycle, they’re going to be factoring in more study time, less anxiety, state dependent learning. All of those psychometric, psychological factors that led to the LSAT FLEX test takers in general scoring better. I’ve seen the scaling data. I can’t talk about it, but they scored better. I think LSAC is going to control for that and tighten up the curve. So, later this cycle, we’ll call it past January, schools will start losing people. And then they’ll really start losing people come seat deposit deadlines. That’s when you see them shifting targets from where their current medians are, which is again daunting, I get that. I think they’re going to have to shift down one, two and in some cases three LSAT points to new, lower LSAT points because they’re going to run out of numbers. To be determined because they can also decrease class sizes. Obviously if your class size is 200, and your dean says, “Okay, well we can make it 100,” it’s a lot easier to bring in high numbers. But I don’t think many schools will have the ability to do that financially. They need the revenue. So, I think if they maintain class sizes around normal levels, the LSAT medians and maybe to a slightly lesser extent, GPA medians, but mostly LSAT medians, are going to come down a point or two from what you’re seeing posted online. On our blog, we are posting these scores online. So, it’s going to be a slow cycle, don’t get me wrong. But this cycle is going to favor those who proactively, professionally wait. And what I mean by that is, if you’re waitlisted at a school, or if you applied in September and it’s February and you haven’t heard from a school, you are so far from dead in the water. In fact, you might be in a great way once these numbers start coming down.

[08:29] I hope this was helpful. We’ll do many more of these, so feel free to subscribe. I think there’s a button on our YouTube channel. This was Mike Spivey of the Spivey Consulting Group.

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UVA Law Admissions Dean Natalie Blazer on the 2025-26 Cycle, Rising LSATs/GPAs, the "Why UVA" & More

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco interviews Natalie Blazer, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Chief Admissions Officer at the University of Virginia School of Law, on the upcoming 2025-2026 admissions cycle, how applicants should be thinking about and taking into account relevant current events, and advice for prospective law students preparing to submit their applications. They discuss predictions for the 2025-26 cycle (1:56), rising LSAT and GPA medians (20:22, 27:45), changes they've made to their application this year (12:30), the new student loan cap (30:26), how admissions offices are considering applicants writing about politics and protest in the current political climate (4:18), how they evaluate applicants who have been unable to get a job after graduating from college (7:36), whether writing about AI is overdone (36:34), advice for the "Why UVA" essay (13:05), and much more. As a brief disclaimer, Dean Blazer speaks for herself and often for UVA Law in this episode; her opinions do not reflect those of all admissions officers.

In addition to her work at UVA Law, Natalie has served as Director of J.D. Admissions at Georgetown University Law Center and was Associate Director of Admissions at Columbia Law School. She hosts the UVA Law podcast Admissible, which "offers insights into the world of law school admissions and a behind-the-scenes look at life as a law student through interviews with students, faculty, alumni and staff."

We've interviewed Natalie twice for Status Check before, and though we weren't able to get to all of the questions that Redditors requested we ask, we answered many of them in these past episodes:

Please note: At the time that we recorded this episode, we noted that August 2025 LSAT registrants were up 27% relative to August 2024 registrants but that that number would come down over the days of the test administration. Ultimately, August LSAT registrants landed at a 23.7% increase vs. last year.

You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.

August 4, 2025

Bill Treanor on 30+ Years as a Law School Dean & Standing Up to Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews William ("Bill") Treanor on his long and recently-concluded tenure as Dean of Georgetown University Law Center as well as his experiences and perspectives from a 40-year career. Bill talks about the the biggest changes he's seen during his time in legal education (16:06), the coming changes he foresees in the short-term future both good (19:22) and bad (20:56), his proudest accomplishments as a law school dean (41:57), the biggest challenges law students face today (24:27), and how he reacted and famously responded to the letter from Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin threatening not to hire Georgetown Law graduates if the school was found to be teaching a curriculum involving diversity, equity, and inclusion (1:33).

Dean Treanor's response to then-Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin is below. You can also read it in full here.

Header: Georgetown Law, William M. Treanor, Dean and Executive Vice President, Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair, March 6, 2025, Addressed to: Edward R. Martin, Jr., Interim United States Attorney, District of Columbia Judiciary Center, 555 4th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001. Contents of Letter: Dear Interim United States Attorney Martin: I write in response to your letter dated February 17, 2025, which you sent to me via email on March 3, 2025. As a Catholic and Jesuit institution, Georgetown University was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding. For us at Georgetown, this principle is a moral and educational imperative. It is a principle that defines our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution. Georgetown University also prohibits discrimination and harassment in its programs and activities and takes seriously its obligations to comply with all federal and local laws. Your letter challenges Georgetown’s ability to define our mission as an educational institution. It inquires about Georgetown Law’s curriculum and classroom teaching, asks whether diversity, equity, and inclusion is part of the curriculum, and asserts that your office will not hire individuals from schools where you find the curriculum “unacceptable.” The First Amendment, however, guarantees that the government cannot direct what Georgetown and its faculty teach and how to teach it. The Supreme Court has continually affirmed that among the freedoms central to a university’s First Amendment rights are its abilities to determine, on academic grounds, who may teach, what to teach, and how to teach it. Georgetown University Law Center 600 New Jersey Avenue, NW | Washington, DC 20001-2075 This is a bedrock principle of constitutional law – recognized not only by the courts, but by the administration in which you serve. The Department of Education confirmed last week that it cannot restrict First Amendment rights and that it is statutorily prohibited from “exercising control over the content of school curricula.” Your letter informs me that your office will deny our students and graduates government employment opportunities until you, as Interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, approve of our curriculum. Given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution. Georgetown Law has one of the preeminent faculties in the country, fostering groundbreaking scholarship, educating students in a wide variety of perspectives, and thriving on the robust exchange of ideas. Georgetown Law faculty have educated world leaders, members of Congress, and Justice Department officials, from diverse backgrounds and perspectives. We pride ourselves on providing an excellent graduate and professional education, built upon the Catholic and Jesuit tradition. Georgetown-educated attorneys have, for decades, served this country capably and selflessly in offices such as yours, and we have confidence that tradition will continue. We look forward to your confirming that any Georgetown-affiliated candidates for employment with your office will receive full and fair consideration. Sincerely, [Signature] William M. Treanor Dean and Executive Vice President Paul Regis Dean Leadership Chair 2

Other topics they discuss include the value (and lack of value) of the Socratic method (16:30), experiential learning in law school (16:06) and the potential effects of a current proposal before the ABA (20:56), the growing field of law and technology (19:22), the prospect of government taking accrediting authority from independent organizations (21:57), the current and coming impacts of AI on legal education and practice (23:43, 46:58), how law firms have learned from past recessions and overreactions (29:33), Bill's take on the current surge in law school applicants (30:36), his advice for prospective law students today (33:48), and his thoughts on the law school rankings (35:18).

Bill Treanor served as Dean of Georgetown University Law Center for 15 years, prior to which he served as Dean of Fordham University School of Law for almost 20 years. His accomplishments at Georgetown were innumerable—you can read more about him and his impressive career here.

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What considerations should military applicants keep in mind that differ from non-military applicants? What is the adjustment like moving from the military to law school? What sorts of admissions resources are available for military members and veterans? What are common pieces of misinformation that military applicants may encounter, and what's the true story? They cover these topics and more, including admissions for enlisted soldiers vs. officers (29:36), getting letters of recommendation from supervisors/commanders (36:44), application timing (5:28 and 21:51), resumes (43:36), personal statements (46:08), determining your chances and making a school list (31:51), job search advice (1:03:42), and more.

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Podcast: The Coming Law School Admissions Cycle — Brief Thoughts

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