When You Apply to Law School

You don't have to worry that reports will be sent to law schools before the 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, you ask each of the law schools to which you apply to request a report from Law Services. You do this by filling out- you guessed it-a separate so-called matching form for each law school you apply to and enclosing it with your law school application. Matching forms are even smaller than postcards, and they are bound into your Information Book (of course).


You attach a matching form to your law school application form with a paperclip. When the law school receives your application, it will then forward this form to 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 Law School Report, directly to the law school.

Once you've actually begun applying to law schools and the law schools have begun to forward the matching forms, Law Services will send you a monthly LSDAS update report. The report will list all the schools to which Law Services has send 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.

If you are unable to pay the required LSDAS fee, there is a procedure described in the Information Book for seeking a waiver. Your request is most likely to be granted if it is supported by a strong letter from a financial aid officer at your undergraduate college or another similarly placed official who is familiar with your financial situation.

Admission Formulas and Index Numbers

Among the materials that Law Services will send you with the Master Law School Report is a list of "mathematical formulas used by law schools for which Law Services calculates admission indexes."

Although these mathematical formulas are a subject of much fascination among prelaw students, there's nothing mysterious about them. An admission formula is simply a convenient way for a law school to convert each applicant's GPA and LSAT score into a single weighted index number which can then be compared to the index numbers of other applicants, past and present. Candidates can be ranked according to their index numbers. A law school can establish an arbitrary minimum index number as a cutoff point in its rolling admission system, automatically accepting candidates with higher index numbers.

A typical admission index multiplies your LSAT score by some constant (which Law Services calls constant A), multiplies your GPA by a second constant (constant B), adds the two resulting numbers together, and then adds a third constant, constant C:

Index Number = (LSAT x A) + (GPA x B) + C

Each law school develops its own formula with its own characteristic set of constants. It communicates this formula to Law Services, which puts it into the computer that generates LSD AS reports. Say that you apply to Hypothetical Law School, which uses a formula. When Law Services assembles the report that it will send to Hypothetical about you, it applies Hypothetical's formula to your GPA and LSAT score and computes your index number for that school. Law Services prints that "index number for Hypothetical" only on the report form that it sends to Hypothetical.

That number won't appear on your Master Law School Report, because at the time that Law Services prints the report, it doesn't know which law schools you are going to apply to. (Remember, it doesn't know until each law school sends back your Matching Form.) But Law Services does send you a printed form listing all the formulas then in use. Since you know your GPA and LSAT scores, you can compute your own index numbers for the schools you apply to.

The index numbers won't tell you much, though. You don't know how high your index number has to be to qualify you for admission. Sometimes you can get an idea of where you stand by comparing your index number to those of candidates of previous years who were admitted. But formulas change from time to time as schools refine their admissions procedures, and all were changed in 1991-92 because Law Services adopted a new scoring system for the LSAT. (Sometimes a law school representative will tell you up front how high your index number has to be to make you competitive.)

Since the formulas combine grades and LSAT scores in a weighted fashion-that is, always emphasizing one more than the other-you can use them to determine which of the schools on your preferred list are "grade-heavy" and which are "test-heavy." The larger constant B is, the heavier the weight given to grades at that school. The easiest way to determine this is to set up an admission formula on a spreadsheet program and see what happens to the index number when you vary the GPA and the LSAT scores. If the index number climbs much faster when you increase the GPA, that school is grade-heavy. If it increases faster when you increase the LSAT score while holding the GPA constant, then the school is test-heavy.

Some cautions: each school's formula is unique and characteristic. The index number you compute according to one school's formula has no meaning at another school. If you can't find an admission formula on the Master Law School Report for a school you are considering applying to, it may mean that this law school is less numbers-bound than most, or at least doesn't use a rolling admission system. The school may really mean what it says when it promises in its catalog to "go behind the numbers" and "judge each applicant as an individual." But it may also mean that the law school has a mathematical formula and computes its own index numbers, rather than delegating this task to Law Services.