LSAC president Sudha Setty reflects on dynamic landscape of law school admissions
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More than 15 months into her job as president and CEO of the Law School Admission Council, Sudha Setty spoke with the ABA Journal about the dynamic landscape facing law school admissions, ranging from the increase in applicants to financial aid changes to rural law practice to law school accreditation.
For the past several years, law school applications have been reaching record high numbers. How is that impacting prospective students?
These are big application cycles, and the prospective students end up concerned about what this looks like for the application journey. They are studying more for the LSAT. Students get concerned about median GPAs or median LSAT scores. We tell them a median is a halfway point, so don’t let that crush a dream.
Those jumps come despite big changes in limits for financial aid stemming from the One Big Beautiful Bill that had some people worried fewer people would apply to law school. But that’s not the case.
It’ll take us a couple more years to see what kind of fallout in their ability to finance their education.
It’s anecdotal at this point, but you can see it coming. There’s a slice of students who don’t realize until they’re through the application, admission, and matriculation process what that full picture looks like for them. Many know the cost, but they haven’t really delved into what that looks like. Maybe they’ve walked an unconventional path to get to law school, and their credit is not where they are able to access private loans. That brings a challenge, so they could end up deferring or wondering whether legal education is right for them.
And the growth comes despite the demographic cliff—the number of college-age students dropping that’s now impacting undergraduate programs.
Obviously, the application and applicant numbers right now do not reflect that kind of cliff. But we are keeping a close eye on it.
Why is it not hitting law school applications?
A lot of students are really motivated by helping their communities or doing public service or social justice-oriented work. And they’re thinking about financial security. Many are facing a challenging job market, thinking about their next steps and how those might be transformed through technology. A law degree focuses a lot on critical inquiry and critical thinking and is something very appealing in this particular moment.
Technology also could impact how students get into law school. There’s a wide range of rules regarding artificial intelligence use in admissions. Some schools strictly say “do not use AI in your personal statement”; but a handful say, “you can AI but but disclose your prompts.” How does the LSAT fit in with that?
Concerns that people have of using AI to shortcut their work, whether it’s lawyers or in college, makes some of what LSAC does reassuring. We have a highly securitized exam with the LSAT with a proctored, non-AI generated writing sample.
We hear from our admissions colleagues that this test is really useful, so they can get a snapshot of how people are writing before admission.
A study by the Association of American Law Schools shows the average tenure for law school deans has shrunk to under three years from more than 10. Has that changed LSAC’s interactions with deans?
New deans, especially the ones who don’t come from an academic pathway, have little idea of the support that we can offer a school—not just admissions folks.
Being a new dean, there’s information overload. So we keep making sure they know how we can help and asking them for for their feedback too.
We also do work through our RISE Alliance, which also supports student-facing staff in admissions, financial aid, student services and wellness. It’s an educational touchpoint: How can we help your school? Let’s have a conversation about that. How can we help your admissions folks?
As the dean turnover gets more frequent, that work is something that has to happen more and more often. We want to make sure interim deans understand we can be supportive in different ways, and then when the new dean comes on too.
As students leave law school, the all-important test they have to prepare for is changing from the legacy Uniform Bar Exam, which emphasizes memorization, to the NextGen Uniform Bar Exam, which emphasizes skills. How does that impact what LSAC does?
As the NextGen bar started rolling out, we’ve been paying close attention. We are looking at how those competencies they’re testing for might map onto legal education and the skill set that is testing for. We’re making sure the LSAT still has that high correlation of success with 1L grades and 1L academic performance. We work with the National Conference of Bar Examiners—not in test design, but in thinking about research projects that might be helpful for both organizations.
We’ve been talking to them about potential collaboration and looking with some longitudinal basis on how students are doing across a longer period of time.
Building a pipeline for more rural lawyers to improve access to justice is a focus of LSAC this year. What’s needed to get more future lawyers to practice in these areas?
There are lots of layered challenges. It’s one thing if the students are from those communities, but if you’re trying to encourage other students to really consider this as a pathway, if you don’t have infrastructural support in place, it’s hard for them to envision themselves there.
Let’s say that they understand that the salary scale might look different than at large law firms in large cities. How are they going to build a life there? They need mentoring. If I wanted to raise a family, what would that look like in this community? It’s hard to convince them to stay if they don’t have that social or professional support.
With the fate of the council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar under review by the U.S. Education Department and some states loosening ties to the council, law school accreditation is up in the air. But do potential law students really understand the impact?
I think very few. Students have not yet kind of fully grasped what an accreditation change might mean for them.
Part of our job is to provide accurate information to prospective students, and portability is so crucial. A student should not have to know as they’re applying to law school that I can only go to state X because that’s the one that’s recognized in these other five states where I might want to practice 20 years from now. That should not be an issue.
What about the consumer protection aspect of a national accreditor?
Whether they know it or not, prospective law students are relying on those council standards to provide some baseline of quality in legal education.
But having the baseline protection for those students is really, really important. You want to make sure they are getting value for the money and time and energy, and that on the other end, the public and the folks who are going to be their clients have reassurance. How is the public being served by these folks coming out of law schools?
We all might have different ideas for how the council could improve their standards or change their reporting requirements, and that’s fair. But we all care about the same thing here.
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