We wanted to give some data-centric historical context for this application cycle and its relative competitiveness. Here's the data for how many total law school applicants there were in each of the past 20 admissions cycles—going back to the year 2000.
We just did a pretty in-depth blog about what the final volume numbers will look like this cycle if each score band behaves in basically the same way it has in prior years (and there is plenty of evidence that this cycle may be more front-loaded than those prior years, meaning this could be an overestimate, and potentially a significant one), and the total end-of-cycle volume we modeled was about 77,000. Now of course, total applicant volume doesn't tell the whole story, and law schools did admit a greater number of applicants back then, but even this quite possibly overestimated number is nowhere close to the number of applicants who were applying to law school in the mid to late 2000s. That number would put us here:
So, is this the most competitive law school admissions cycle ever? According to the data—almost assuredly not.