In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike Spivey has a conversation with Associate Dean Don Rebstock—who, among multiple other departments, heads both Admissions and Career Services at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law—about the first 2024-2025 law school applicant data that was released last week, what it means for applicants, and why it's not as scary as it looks.
Some of the questions they discuss include, will the numbers go down? How much will they go down? Why are LSAT scores so high? How will this impact competitiveness? How will it impact the pace of the cycle? Will law schools enroll more students next fall? Plus thoughts on grade inflation, rankings, employability, and their best advice for applicants in light of the new data.
You can find our recent blog on predicting this cycle here. Mike's interview with Justin Ishbia, also mentioned in this episode, is here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode below.
Full Transcript:
Mike: Welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. This is Mike Spivey; I'm the founder of Spivey Consulting. We're in the law school admissions category today, and I am joined by someone who's been doing this longer than I have, has a better grasp of the market than I have. I'm with Don Rebstock, the Associate Dean at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
Don oversees admissions, career services, and three or four other departments. He's been doing this for many years. What I got from our conversation today, even more than I'm certain things are going to come down, Don, who's seen the pendulum swing for 28, 30+ years, is even more certain. These early numbers are inflated. He gives a lot of good advice about how to look at the data. He ends with really strong advice about being an applicant, not rushing your applications, not listening to bad advice online, but being your own confident self, remembering why it is you're applying to law school, and investing in yourself in the process. So we get into it all—the data, the global-level picture, and then some individual advice for applicants. I hope you enjoy it. Without further delay, this is me and Don.
I'm here with Don Rebstock. Don won't remember this, but when I was about 23 years old, I met Don, who's been doing this longer than I have, is wiser than I am, more of an expert than I am, and I remember thinking when I met him, "This guy knows everything about admissions." 25 years later, it's great to see you again, Don.
Dean Rebstock: It's great to see you, Mike. Thanks so much for having me.
Mike: What do you think about this crazy data that came out yesterday?
Dean Rebstock: Yeah, I'm not all that surprised. But I think what we've learned over the years is, we can't get too caught up in the early returns. If you look at the last couple of cycles, we were down quite a bit. So we're up on a dip. Last year, I think we were down about 8% at this time, and the year before we were down 12% at this time. So I actually think the more realistic comparison is if you look at what was going on in the 2021-2022 cycle, and if you compare us to that cycle, we're just up 2%—we're only up about 200 applications. I think we need to temper our expectations. I think we'll be up, but I think it's going to be much less than what we're seeing right now.
Mike: Yeah, we mentioned that in our blog, and we did mention that we're up on a dip, which makes it easier to be up. Of course, it sounds like you're in agreement that early data has very little power. I think that's called beta in statistical terms. It's just more volatile. If you look at the LSAT score—if I'm looking at this right—at the 175+ range, in just a day, Don, it already came down from like 31 to 27 percent. That illustrates how volatile early data is.
Dean Rebstock: Yeah, it definitely is. Well, if you extrapolate 26% to the end of the year, we're going to be at 81,804 applications. That's more than 10,000 above where we were in the 2021 pandemic cycle, which was a super peak. So I don't think we're going to get there.
Mike: We rarely say things as absolute—my entire life has been trained by lawyers—but I said as an absolute, this cycle will not end up over 20%. There's just no way. You don't see it either, do you?
Dean Rebstock: No, I doubt it. I saw on your blog, you were predicting somewhere between 10 and 15%. I think your best guess was around that. I'm actually thinking we're going to be somewhere between 5 and 10%. Honestly, Mike, we've been riding a perfect storm for the last five years in many ways in our industry. Pretty much every factor that drives up applications has been converging.
Mike: Right.
Dean Rebstock: Five years straight. And this year, the big difference is that we have the election year. And so I'm looking at the election year to drive us up 5 or 10%.
Mike: Yeah, so I think every admission cycle since Eisenhower's presidency has been up versus the previous cycle in election years. Someone told me that, so this is secondhand information, but the person who told me that was also very well skilled in admissions. We always do see presidential election year bumps. That would contribute.
So why is it not 5 to 10%, why is it right now up 26%? I mean, we kind of knew this was coming. The blog we published yesterday, I wrote 50% of that a couple of weeks ago. Right? We knew the numbers were going to be high, and we think it's because of games. Both LSAT administrations were front-loaded. People who were good at games said, "I'm going to get in on this June LSAT before they take away games," and then all the people who didn't want to take games were rushing to get in on the August LSAT. The LSAT removing games doesn't create a demand to be a lawyer. People who already know what the games section is already know they want to apply to law school, but it does change the pace of the cycle as far as when people apply. That's our best guess.
Dean Rebstock: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. It's funny because, in the 28 years I've been doing this, this fall is actually the first time I've ever heard applicants say that they don't want to retake the LSAT because the logic games were a section where they were really excelling, and they're afraid that without it, their score is not going to improve or is going to go down. Whereas in the past, people who were struggling with the LSAT, I could almost guarantee that the reason they would provide for struggling on it was the logic games tripping them up. So it's really interesting how that shifted.
So I think you're probably right. There's been gaming going on. The people that wanted to have that section were front-loading in the June LSAT, and then the others who were waiting for that to go away decided to jump at the August administration. So I think you're right. I think there's a bit of a double whammy going there.
Mike: So if I'm a law school, what do I do when I get this data? Okay, wow, things are up 26% as far as applicants. And look at these top three LSAT score bands—they're all up higher than the applicant pool. I know what I would do. I'm curious what you think the market of law schools does.
Dean Rebstock: That's a great question, Mike. I'm not sure that we necessarily do anything substantially different based on these new returns. Like I was saying, I don't think we want to get too excited about it. I think that it makes sense to prepare for an expectation that volumes are going to be up. And anytime that's the case, you want to make sure that you're prepared, that you have enough people to read files, that you are appropriately scaling evaluations and the way that you're looking at them. So you may be a little bit tougher at the beginning approach of the cycle. So, those kinds of things that I think you're always doing as you're monitoring throughout the year. I don't see anything super major in terms of change. I'm curious to hear what you would say on this.
Mike: My mind goes to two places. One is, okay, we have this 3L class that was, by and large at most schools, larger. I think the overall market was 12% higher. And they're about to graduate. And that's tuition revenue that just about every law school is dependent on. One thing my mind says, if I'm the dean of a law school, we might not have a 12% class increase, but let's increase our class size by 5%, because we're about to lose these extra students whose revenue we were dependent on—the faculty salaries, staff salaries, merit aid, keeping the lights on. So I'm curious about that, but my mind also goes to, if I'm a dean of admissions and I see these early numbers, and I've been doing admissions as long as I have, I've never seen a study that correlates when you admit someone to getting a more positive yield on that person. So I probably start pumping brakes on my decision-making and look at the data a little longer before I start doing waves of admits. So I'm curious about your thoughts on both of those.
Dean Rebstock: Yeah, I think that's right. I guess that kind of goes along with what I was saying in terms of being a little bit more cautious with the first people that you're admitting. I think what you're alluding to is the possibility of even increasing your class sizes. I'm sure those discussions are happening. But you've got to be really careful about that, because we can't predict what the hiring market is going to be three years down the road. And there are signs in the hiring market that things could be softening a bit. So I would be really cautious about going to my dean and saying, "Hey, I think there's an opportunity to increase the class size," where we might get kicked at the back end and really be hurting in terms of the employment side.
Mike: Yeah, you literally just stole my next question, which is, with this 12% graduating class—it looks like the market last year was really strong for first-year associates and employment out of law school, and it looks like that market might not be as strong this year. So I predicted in the blog yesterday a 5% class enrollment increase. Curious if you think there will be an enrollment increase of 5%, or at all, or if you think the cautions of the market coupled with what now U.S. News has really just doubled down on, which is outcomes—ultimate bar passage, and employment. I don't know if people talk about this externally, but I think that factors in for many law schools. "Yeah, we could admit 5% more people, but if we're not going to be able to employ them..." it hits them ethically, and it also hits them in the rankings.
Dean Rebstock: You know, Mike, I think you're probably right. I think overall there's going to be a net increase across all law schools in aggregate. And I think it depends a little bit about where you are in the market and who are the employers who hire your students. I'm focused on what's happening in the biglaw market, which is influenced by the businesses who are their clients, so I think we have to be a little bit cautious there and assume that there's going to be a little bit of softening.
Speaking of riding waves, we've been riding a wave of outstanding employment for a few years now in the biglaw arena. So I think that we have to be cautious about that. I would be surprised if you see increases in class sizes among the top law schools this year, but you may see it in others less reliant on that same market.
Mike: Everyone is going to click on what you just said, everyone who listens, all five to ten people of our listeners. I think we do a little better. They're going to say, this expert at a top law school said that he doesn't think—and let me disclaim for you, Don is guessing; no one knows what other law schools are doing; we're not speaking for other law schools—but your best guess is the top-tier law schools who are sending people to biglaw are going to be cautious of biglaw shrinking of first-year associate classes, and they're going to decide that it would be a bad decision to increase their class size.
Does that mean this cycle is going to be more competitive at a top 14, top 20, top 25 law school than last cycle?
Dean Rebstock: Yeah, I agree with you. I think that's probably going to be the case for the top law schools in terms of caution against increasing their class sizes. And yes, as a result, if we're both right that there is going to be some increase in the overall applicant pool this year, then by nature it's a more competitive cycle.
The other thing we haven't really talked about yet is what's happening with the bands of the LSAT results so far this year, right?
Mike: Yeah, I don't know about you, but that caught me by surprise.
Dean Rebstock: So I think part of this has to do with the changes in the LSAT. So the information that we received from LSAC on the results of the August test, which is the first one where they had eliminated the logic games, was that the mean score overall was slightly higher. Not much, but it was slightly higher. What’s interesting is that, I think what we're seeing is, maybe the mean score is going to be the same, but I think we may see some changes in the tails.
The reason I say that is largely for what we were talking about before. I think the people who struggled previously in the logic games sections, I think their scores are going to be a little bit higher. So on the lower end of the distribution, I think you're going to see some increase there, and that’s playing out right now—I mean, overall we're up 26%, but we're only up 13% at the lowest end of the distribution. Then you go to the high end, and honestly, I think that the people who are going to score really high on the LSAT, they're going to continue to score really highly on the LSAT. If there is any easing of the test at all, which is yet to be seen, then that's only going to play out with more people getting at the high end of the tail. So we’ll see. It remains to be seen, but I guess I'm not entirely surprised at what we're seeing right now.
Mike: I mean, it looks like ever since the LSAT Flex—which LSAC did a great job of hurrying and getting it online during COVID.
Dean Rebstock: Yeah.
Mike: They took a five-section test and turned it into a three-section test, and the numbers went pretty dramatically up. Now, there's a lot of disagreement and discussion on why a five-section test turned into a three-section test—all of a sudden the scores went magically up—but what's interesting to me is, those scores have basically now stayed up for one, two, three, four, and if we're going to count this year, five years in a row. What does that mean, Don?
Dean Rebstock: That's the $100,000 question. Is the LSAT somehow less rigorous than it was in the past? Or do we have more really strong applicants applying? I think it's possible there's a little bit of a combination of both happening. I think we have more people applying to law school in general since the pandemic, which, if that skews or distributes evenly across the different LSAT bands, then of course you're going to have more people at the high end as well as in the others, so.
The other thing is, if I'm right, I think there has actually been some shrinkage in recent years in some of the other professional schools, and I'm thinking mainly of the MBA programs. So it could be that more people are applying to law school at the expense of business schools right now as well.
Mike: Yeah, and then you would wonder, clicking back on these higher LSAT scores, is there something about a business school applicant? For example, physics majors do really well in the LSAT. You've probably seen that data too.
Dean Rebstock: Sure.
Mike: Right. So is there something about a business school applicant that tends to make them a higher scorer? So are we stealing high scorers from the business school? I don't know the answer to that.
Dean Rebstock: I don't know the answer.
Mike: It's pure speculation. So I think we're both in agreement. These numbers are going to come down. You think they're going to come down even more. It sounds like we're both in agreement that, by and large, law schools, at the macro level, there's going to be a little bit of an increase in enrollment. The math is funky, but if you're saying, when all things are said and done, we're going to stable out at 5% up—
Dean Rebstock: Yeah.
Mike: —and enrollment is up 3%, this really isn't that much more of a competitive cycle than the last cycle. Feel free to play devil's advocate. Am I wrong?
Dean Rebstock: No, I don't think you are wrong. As I was saying before, I think it's going to be a bit more competitive, but I don't think it's going to be hugely more competitive than it's been in the past. I think you're absolutely right.
Going back to the question you raised about the LSAT scores, one thing that I don't think we've talked about that may be driving law school applications, too, is this whole issue of grade inflation. I think it's pretty clear that there's been a significant rise in grades over the past five years or so. And law school, I think, has this reputation of, you've got to have really strong grades to get into law school. And if you look at the medians of the schools, they're way up. You've got to have strong grades, but it's less of an emphasis, maybe, in the MBA schools. You know, I wonder if partly people are also saying that, "I'm really competitive for law school because I have these great grades," and a good chunk of them are also scoring really well on the LSAT as well. Who knows? But just a little bit more speculation on that.
Mike: Picking your brain, since you're busy and I'm busy and we don't really have much time to connect—I'm going to speak candidly, and feel free to chime in or not. There's always been this tension in admissions offices between, "Okay, I met this person with an LSAT five points below our median, but spent 45 minutes meeting with them in my office, walking around the law school with them. I know they're going to get a job. This person has great interpersonal skills, high EQ—the kind of person that employers are going to jump at. Shows a little bit of grit." I once admitted the very last person off our waitlist, Justin Ishbia, who has been on our podcast, who lives in Chicago. He was like 15 below our median LSAT, last person admitted off the waitlist, now is a billionaire in Chicago. And what I sensed was grit. He was a bouncer at a bar but had a 4.2 GPA. Those admits are pretty rare. I mean, Justin was the last person off our waitlist. The tension is, "Okay, I'm going to hold on to this person who I really think is employable and would fit well in our school's culture. I'm also going to hold on to this person with a score of five above our median LSAT, who said the wrong school name in the personal statement." You've seen this thousands of times. Or showed up and was just completely unprofessional, was almost belligerent, "Why haven’t I been admitted yet?" and I'm going to hold on to this person. What happens at most schools, maybe not Northwestern, but in the three schools I worked at, is often what happens is, in the summer, you start having this melting. What looked like a strong median LSAT is more and more jeopardized. And so many times, Don, what I've seen in my 25 years is sadly, in the past, that tension has tipped towards, "We're going to take that person with the high LSAT score because we're about to lose this median that's so important."
What U.S. News has given is a gift—a word that I full stop didn’t use for years, "holistic," because I didn’t always believe it was true. U.S. News has gifted the ability to now make that decision, perhaps at least 50% of the time, in favor of that person you meet who's highly employable. Because not only did they shrink the weight of the input, the selectivity—LSAT, GPA—they supersized the weight of the employability. How do you see that shaking out?
Dean Rebstock: I think what we've seen so far is that it hasn’t really changed anything. If you look at the results that are coming in the last couple of years, you're continuing to see creeping upward in LSATs and GPAs, so. U.S. News, it's always the big elephant in the room, and it’s something that we all have to be mindful of. At the same time, if U.S. News didn’t exist, I think there still would be quite a bit of emphasis on what is your school’s average or median LSAT and undergraduate GPA. Your faculty are interested in it. I think the public just in general—people rank schools in different ways, and whether or not there's an external ranking, I think there’s still going to rank you based on what your student body results are. So, yes, there’s less pressure from a U.S. News standpoint, but I think there’s still something to be said for wanting to really kind of achieve the highest results that you can.
Mike: Yeah, I mean, we're—society is so hinged on these kinds of things. I remember back when I was on your side of things, working at law schools, and I would go to the annual LSAC admissions forum every year. The first question that people would ask is always, "What's your new median LSAT going to be?" It wasn’t like, "How’s your health? How’s your mom?" It's "What's your new median LSAT?" You take away U.S. News, I’m entirely with you. For societal reasons, people are still asking that same question.
Dean Rebstock: Yeah, I think that’s right.
Mike: What would be—putting on our little crystal ball—if we had a recession, that could change your 5%, my 12% prediction, and it could change it pretty dramatically. Recessions, obviously, if they hit hard, particularly the first year. So that would be one event, right? Now, it seems like the economic indicators are actually pointing a little bit away from a recession, at least when you look at the employment numbers. But a recession, if we just got hit hard with a recession, then this cycle would stay—it wouldn’t stay up where it is now, but it would stay up, right?
Dean Rebstock: You would think that. What’s interesting is, the last recession, applications actually went way down post the financial crisis. You might remember this, Mike; we entered a period after that where applications nationally to law schools were at the lowest point they had ever been since LSAC began tracking the data back to the 1960s. And the reason was because there was such a significant hit on the employment side that—talk about perfect storms, on the other end, employment was really, really hard. And then, at the same time, you were getting all kinds of just negative rhetoric in the blogosphere and the internet on the value of a legal education and how it’s broken and how it has to change, and so, it depends on what’s happening. Now, perhaps if we have a recession this time around, there won’t be the negative rhetoric about law school. There could certainly be the negative impact on employment, and you just don’t know how much that’s going to scare people away. I mean, the logic of it—what people have said—is they’re going to go to a professional school and ride out the recession, and hopefully, by the time they get to the other end, things are better off. But again, I mean, those are bets. You don’t know. And if things get too bad, then that doesn’t necessarily play out.
Mike: Yeah, that seesaw that you're talking about is, sometimes the seesaw tips towards, "There aren’t entry-level jobs, so I’m going to go to law school," and then applicants to law school go up. But the other seesaw that you’re referring to is, the last time that happened, a more informed consumer market said, "The data says that law school is not a good bet, so I’m not going to apply to law school." And we don't—I think it's fair to say you and I don’t know what would happen real-time with that seesaw this year if there were a recession.
Dean Rebstock: Yeah, I think that’s right. And again, the other thing that’s going on is we still have all of these other factors that drive applications up that just aren’t going away.
Mike: Yeah. Is there anything else globally? We're looking at—and I’m going to quote the CEO of I think it's Goldman Sachs, but—it’s almost like the "remilitarization" of half the globe. There are hotspots, and I’m getting outside my sphere, but you’re more experienced. Would something like a full-scale conflict, like what we have in Russia and Ukraine, but maybe another region, would that impact at all? I’m just trying to think of anything that could keep these numbers sky-high.
Dean Rebstock: That’s a really good question, Mike. In the JD world, I don’t think it probably is going to have a huge impact. Certainly, it’s going to have an impact in the LLM world. Part of it also depends on where it’s happening.
Mike: Right.
Dean Rebstock: Because in the LLM world, there are definitely regions that overall supply the majority of the people who are coming into our LLM programs. So if something hits in one of those regions, then yeah, there are issues. I’m thinking back, I think it was around 10 years ago or so now, there was some really significant economic instability in South America. South America has always been a key market for LLM programs, or at least for top school LLM programs. And so, yeah, it did have an effect there, because the value of their currency was going down by so much relative to the US dollar, they just couldn’t afford it. So it depends on the region of the world, but again, I think it would have more of an effect on LLM programs than JD programs. The international representation is a meaningful number and percentage of your pool, but it’s just different than your LLMs, which are pretty much entirely international.
Mike: Yeah. Parting advice to an applicant? They put you in the Chicago Bears stadium.
Dean Rebstock: Mike, you got to understand. I’m a Packers fan.
Mike: Okay. Much better place to give a speech.
Dean Rebstock: How many people just turned off this podcast?
Mike: The tundra's frozen; Vince Lombardi’s old heating machine has failed; you’re speaking on frozen tundra. We’ll say there are 72,000 people, every person applying to law school this cycle. You’re in front of them. And they’re saying, "We have this guy with all of this experience behind him." What is your advice to those 72,000 people about what to do this cycle? What’s your beneficial parting advice?
Dean Rebstock: My first advice would be to say, believe in yourself. Keep hold of the reasons you want to go to law school. Keep a hold of that dream. That’s first and foremost. That’s the important thing.
The other thing I’ve been telling people this year, as I meet with them, is submit your application when it’s ready, but make sure your application is ready by the first of the year. This is the other thing that we haven’t really gotten into is, I think there’s a lot of advice going on out there, because last year was such a slow cycle in terms of the review, that there’s probably a perception out there that, "Boy, I really better get my file in early this year, or else I’m not going to hear until sometime in the summer." And so, hopefully, schools are adjusting to that. There’s no advantage to getting your application in in—September has passed—but September or October, really. As long as you have it in by what I tell people, the first of the year, there are going to be spaces left when you apply. But I’ve always said this: no matter what the year is, take any deadline that you see and move it back by a month at least. And that goes for admissions as well as for scholarship consideration. As long as you do that, then you should be okay. I'm just adding a little bit of extra caution in there and saying, our deadline is February 15th, so I'm taking it back a month and a half just to be safe on there.
Mike: Yeah, so the market's going to say, I paid you $1,000 under the table. I've been fighting this battle for two years now. What happens is, people with no admissions experience but with a lot of confidence say online—literally, this was said by a consulting firm—if you don’t apply by September, don’t apply at all. And then applicants pick up on that, and they start saying it with confidence, or they look at data and they say, "Look, the people admitted in September did better." What they’re not parsing out is, yeah, if you're applying in September, you’re not retaking the LSAT because you have a 178, you’re good to go. There are huge confounding variables. Sarah Zearfoss at Michigan, Natalie Blazer at UVA, we all keep saying the same thing, and I feel like X% isn’t hearing it. There’s no advantage—I’m not talking about early decision programs—as far as application timing, there’s no advantage September, October, November. Get it in by Thanksgiving, but don’t rush to get it in in September. Get your best application in by November or December. That’s admissions 101. I can tell if someone’s ever done admissions by how they answer that question.
Dean Rebstock: Yeah, you’re absolutely right, Mike. And you get the question all the time. You know, people come to your table at the forum and say, "Do I need to get my application in in September?" Relax. It's just not the case. But that advice is out there, and things can go crazy in places like Reddit and all of that.
Take a deep breath. Submit your best application, and be pretty confident that, at the end of the day, when this year is all said and done, it’s not going to be that hugely different than what we've seen in recent years.
Mike: I started with saying I learned a lot from you the first time I met you. I learned a lot from you from this conversation. So I really appreciate it. I know your schedule is busy. Thank you so much for being on.
Dean Rebstock: Thank you so much for having me, Mike. It’s really been a pleasure. Good luck to you and all you do, and thanks for all you do and for the good advice that you and your team are providing to applicants.
Mike: Thanks for adding to that advice. And we'll see you maybe in a year on our podcast again! Thanks, Don.
Dean Rebstock: Sounds great! Thank you.