The Importance of Reports Sent by the Law School Data Assembly Service to Law Schools

As Law Services describes it, their Law School Data Assembly Service "provides a means of centralizing and standardizing undergraduate academic records to simplify the law school admission process." You have to register for the LSDAS and follow its rules. You don't have a choice. With only two exceptions, all ABA-accredited Law Schools require you to submit your undergraduate transcripts to them only through the LSDAS.

An "Assembly Service"


The LSDAS performs a variety of statistical and record-keeping chores for the law schools. Among other things, its the administrative way the law schools you apply to learn about your LSAT score. But from your perspective, the LSDAS has one main task: it takes information from the transcripts that you send it and puts the information into a standard form so it can be easily compared with the academic records of other law school applicants

After "assembling" your academic information, the LSDAS sends a report to each of the law schools you've applied to. The report contains
 

• standard name and address information;
• the converted grades, expressed in a standard year-by-year and college-by-college table;
• photocopies of each of the college transcripts you've sent to the LSDAS;
• your most recent LSAT score;
• up to 12 earlier LSAT scores, if you've taken the test more than once;
• photocopies of your most recent LSAT writing sample;
• photocopies of the writing samples from earlier LSATs if you've taken the test more than once, with a maximum of two;
• a list of "all law schools reporting your prior matriculation or intent to matriculate and the year in which such reports were made (only if such information has been reported)";
• photocopies of certain special documents, "such as a letter from a certified professional regarding a handicap or a letter from Law Services regarding conditions during a particular test administration" (i.e. an explanation that something went wrong, such that your LSAT score may not be reliable); and
• whatever index numbers the law school you're applying to has asked the LSDAS to calculate for you, for use in its rolling admission setup.
• In theory, the LSDAS report gives the law school all the "hard" or "count-able" information it needs to compare you with other applicants, in a format that's easy for the law school to use.

Though it eases the burdens of the law schools, the LSDAS increases your workload. Law Services is not the Central Intelligence Agency. It "assembles" and manipulates only the information that you make available. You must supply the requested information, and you must check up on the LSDAS to make sure that it is doing its work properly.

Registering for the LSDAS

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Law Services prefers that you register for the LSDAS when you register to take the LSAT. If you don't register for the LSDAS when you sign up for the LSAT, you can register at any time. Whenever you sign up for the LSDAS, you'll be asked to identify all the undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools you have attended. For each of these schools, you enter the assigned four-digit "college code. There are enough machine-readable boxes on the "Law Services Order Form" for you to list your present undergraduate school, a professional or graduate school, and up to three other schools you have previously attended. If you've attended more schools, Law Services requires you to list them on an additional non-machine-readable form.

You must make sure that Law Services knows about all the schools you have attended since you graduated from high school. If you omit a school and Law Services later discovers the omission, they will suspect you of what they call "misconduct." Specifically, you may be accused of trying to make your record look better than it is by concealing some previous poor performance, poor behavior, scandal, or even criminality. Law Services has a procedure, described in the Information Book, for investigating suspicions of candidate misconduct, and can impose a range of punishments. Read this section carefully. The punishment can be severe enough to destroy your ambitions. There's no way to get into law school except through Law Services. You don't want to be on their bad side.

After you register for the LSDAS, you'll have to submit a transcript from each of the colleges, universities, and professional schools that you've attended.

The LSDAS does not summarize the records of foreign universities with grading systems unlike those of American schools. If you did part of your undergraduate work at a foreign school, check to see if it is among the "participating schools" listed in the Information Book. If it is, treat it like an American school. If it's not, the best course of action is to arrange for the foreign school to send transcripts both to the LSDAS and also directly to each of the law schools you are applying to.

If you did all of your work at a foreign college-to be precise, a school that is not in the United States, Puerto Rico or Canada, or among the few foreign "participating schools" listed the Information Book-you are not eligible to subscribe to the LSDAS. You must contact each of the law schools you intend to apply to, explain the problem, and determine how they want you to proceed. This is one of the special circumstances that justifies seeking an informational interview with a law school official. You'll probably be asked to arrange to have official copies of your foreign transcripts sent directly to the law school.

After Law Services has received transcripts from all the colleges, universities, and professional schools you listed on the registration form, it will perform its various manipulations and send you a printout identified as your Master Law School Report. The Master Report is your copy of what the law schools will receive; it includes The Law Services summary of the academic and biographic information you've provided (on the registration form, and from the various transcripts), your LSAT scores, and reports of any prior law school matriculations.

How Law Schools Will Learn About You

You don't have to worry that reports will be sent to law schools before transcripts arrive or corrections are made. In fact, Law Services won't send any reports to law schools at this point, even though you've paid for them, because Law Services doesn't know where to send them. You haven't told Law Services which law schools you're applying to.

Nor will you. You don't directly request Law Services to send out a report. Instead, when the law school receives your application, it will request a report directly from Law Services. Law Services will check to make sure that your file is complete and your fees are paid, and then it will send its report, similar to the Master Report, directly to the law school.

Once you've actually begun applying to law schools, and the law schools have begun to request these reports, Law Services will send you a monthly LSDAS update report. The report will list all the schools to which Law Services has sent an LSDAS report about you, and it will also indicate any other changes that Law Services has made in your file-for example, the receipt of an updated transcript. (No report will be sent to you for any month in which there is no activity in your file.) Keep all these reports. They are evidence that law schools received LSDAS information about you.