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Dear Prelaw Advisor,
Whether they’re waiting to hear back from law schools to which they’ve applied, looking ahead to starting law school in the fall, or just preparing to start the application process, for many of your students, spring is a season of anticipation.
At LSAC, we wish these students all the best and want you to know we have resources for them as well as for you. We invite you to join us on Friday, April 23, for a prelaw advisors webinar that will act as a “refresher course” on the application process to help you better support your students. Sign up, or read more below.
For students waiting to hear back from schools, we know they may have questions: What if I’m waitlisted? Can I negotiate my scholarship offer? As part of a new monthly webinar series for candidates, a group of law school admission deans recently discussed these and other topics. Please let your students know they can view a recording of this webinar, titled “Prelaw Student Professionalism,” at LSAC.org.
Interest in attending law school remains strong. We continue to see higher numbers of applicants and applications and are pleased that these increases exist across all geographical, racial, ethnic, and gender categories. Applicants are up 20.5% from a year ago and 16.4% from two years ago. As of April 14, applications are up even higher, 32% above last year and 28.3% above two years ago.
Keep up with national data, including the newest volume information about applicants and applications, broken down by region and updated daily, at LSAC.org. From the Prelaw Advisor Dashboard, select the Data & Research tile.
As you know, LSAC Law School Forums are one of the best avenues for students to explore their interest in law school, meet admission staff, and get answers to any questions they may have — all in one place. In light of the pandemic, we want you to know we are committed to creating a schedule and program that is safe to attend and accessible to the largest possible number of candidates. For 2021, we believe a mix of in-person and digital forums is likely the best way to achieve these goals. In the coming months, we will share more information with you about the fall forum season.
Please continue to stay safe and well.
Sincerely,
Vivian G. Bowden
Senior Vice President for Schools and Institutions
Law School Admission Council
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Students in the LEAD program at a Saturday practice test session. Pictured at right (standing) is De'Jonique Carter, prelaw advisor at Dillard University.
New Orleans’ Dillard University, home to a rigorous LSAT prep program that serves the city’s three historically Black universities, has adopted LSAC’s LawHub as a critical tool to support student success. The Dillard program, called LEAD (Legal Education Advancing Diversity), is open to its own students as well as students from Southern University at New Orleans and Xavier University of Louisiana.
LEAD students attend ten weeks of “Book Camp,” with LSAT instruction classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and some Sundays, and practice tests each Saturday, all leading up to a June LSAT test date. LawHub is a cornerstone of the LEAD program, with official LSAT PrepTests℠ as well as coaching tools and a dashboard so that coaches can track student progress and step in with help where needed.
“The LawHub dashboard allows me to track the students individually and collectively. I can see if someone spent more time than they should have on a given section, which questions they got wrong, and where they might need additional help,” said De'Jonique Carter, prelaw advisor of Dillard’s award-winning prelaw program.
LEAD scholar Taylor Hancock, a student at Southern University at New Orleans, hopes to attend law school to study juvenile justice.
LSAC LawHub includes LSAT Prep, which is free of charge and consists of four exams, one of which is an LSAT-Flex. For additional practice, LSAT Prep Plus, priced at $99, includes more than 70 exams (including one LSAT-Flex). The $99 LSAT Prep Plus subscription is owned by the student for one year. Schools wishing to create a formalized test prep and coaching program like Dillard’s can purchase coaching materials for either LSAT Prep or LSAT Prep Plus for $15 per student. This fee is paid by the school and includes a dashboard to track students’ progress.
One significant benefit of the LawHub program is that the practice tests are delivered with the authentic test interface, so on the day of the test, the process is smoother, easier, and less stressful. With many students counting on scholarships to be able to go to law school, “it’s really important to help alleviate anxiety,” Carter said, “so students can be confident and turn in their best performance on test day.”
Interested in learning more about LSAC LawHub?
Contact the LSAC Ambassadors for a personalized presentation.
ambassadors@LSAC.org
Dillard began using LawHub this year, making the current cohort of 20 LEAD scholars the first to benefit from LawHub’s prep and coaching program. Thanks to a combination of classes, coaching, and LawHub’s targeted, specific insights, all 20 students have seen their practice scores rise in comparison with the baseline test they took at the beginning of the program.
The 2020 LEAD cohort, consisting of 26 LEAD scholars, previously used paper LSAT practice tests, which were cumbersome to print and score, then briefly worked with a third-party vendor for digital practice tests before choosing the LSAC LawHub program.
Carter says she is a LawHub fan and would recommend it to any school looking to help students prepare for a successful test day. “I love it,” she said. “It’s easy to set up and use, it’s great for students because of the authentic test day experience, and it lets us really home in and address areas that students need to improve on.”
The LEAD program is based at Dillard University but is also open to students from Southern University at New Orleans and Xavier University of Louisiana.
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Get prepared for the start of the 2022 law school application cycle. Join us for a webinar that will act as a “refresher course” for prelaw advisors on the application process. The LSAC Ambassadors will review step-by-step how the process works, starting with setting up an LSAC account. Additional topics will include:
Friday, April 23, Noon-1 p.m. ET
This webinar will be hosted by Gisele Joachim, director of LSAC ambassadors and education program development. Please note that it is intended for prelaw advisors and not meant to be shared with students.
You can find links to past episodes of LSAC’s Friday webinar series, including the newly added “Career Outlook for Law School Grads,” in the Prelaw Member area of LSAC.org. Simply sign in and select the Webinars tile on the Prelaw Advisor Dashboard. Recordings are added as soon as possible, provided we have permission to post them.
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Building on the success of our webinar series for admission professionals and prelaw advisors, LSAC has launched a monthly webinar presentation just for law school candidates. Starting in February, with “The Use of the LSAT in Law School Admission,” and following in March with “Prelaw Student Professionalism,” the webinars give students a chance to hear from admission professionals about important topics relevant to their law school journeys.
We’ll be sure to let you know about each upcoming candidate webinar so you can pass the information along to your students. LSAC makes recorded presentations of these webinars available at LSAC.org for students to view.
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We recently announced important news about the LSAT. In case you missed it, here’s a recap:
First, given the expressed preference of a substantial majority of test takers, LSAC will continue to provide the LSAT in an online, live, remote-proctored format through June 2022. In tandem, LSAC announced the June 2021 test date, as well as test dates for the entire next cycle, which will begin in August and run through June 2022, so that candidates may plan ahead. View upcoming test dates.
Second, beginning in August, LSAC will return to the pre-COVID practice of including an unscored variable section on each exam so that we can validate new test questions for future use. The LSAT will have three scored sections and one unscored variable section for the next several years. Get the key facts.
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The LSAT-Flex Score Report for candidates from your institution who test in April and authorize release of their data will be available at LSAC.org on April 30. You will need to log in to your LSAC.org account to access the report.
Please remind your students that, in response to feedback from LSAC member law schools, test takers must have a completed LSAT Writing sample on file before they will receive their test scores.
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As we continue planning the 2021 LSAC Law School Forum season, we want to let you know that, with no clear picture about when the U.S/Canadian border might reopen, we will not be able to host an in-person LSAC Forum in Toronto this year. The Toronto forum typically takes place in mid-September with 80% of its exhibitors coming from the U.S. LSAC will share more updates about fall forums in the coming months.
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These reports list the law schools at which applicants from your institution enrolled for the year selected. The applicants on these reports will not appear on the Prelaw Advisor Action Reports (Law School or Applicant) as they did not have a degree date listed on their LSAC.org account at the time the Action Reports were generated. Only applicants who have agreed to release their information to prelaw advisors will be displayed.
To access these reports from the Prelaw Advisor Dashboard, select the Prelaw Advisor Info Center tile, then the REPORTS tab, second from the left. From there, select the 2019-2020 PLA Action Report link. In the future, these reports will be generated each year with the Action Reports in December or January.
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The LSAC Ambassadors are law school admission experts who are happy to share their insights and knowledge with you and your prelaw students via Zoom. Here are some of the schools the Ambassadors have visited recently, and what they shared with students:
Would you like an LSAC Ambassador to visit your school? Submit a request or learn more about the many ways the LSAC Ambassadors can help you and your students succeed.
The LSAC Ambassadors: from left, Gisele Joachim, Jennifer O'Connor, and Katya Valasek
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