LSAC Research: Financing Concerns Weigh Heavy on Law School Aspirants
By Noah Austin
This post is part of a series related to LSAC’s new report, LSAC’s Knowledge Report: 2024-2025 Test Takers.
The uncertain future of federal student loans is affecting the outlook of people who are interested in pursuing law degrees, with more LSAT® takers now saying they’re concerned about how to finance their legal education if they are admitted to their school of choice.
That’s one of the key findings of a new LSAC® report examining LSAT takers’ experiences during the 2024-25 testing cycle. The publication, LSAC’s Knowledge Report: 2024-2025 Test Takers, indicates that for many test takers, barriers to law school have grown over the past year — and that financial worries are among the most prevalent of those barriers.
For the report, LSAC researchers Alisha Kirchoff and Elizabeth Bodamer examined data collected from more than 15,000 LSAT takers between August 2024 and April 2025, then compared it to data from the previous testing cycle. Of note, the 2024-25 cycle coincided with a period of intense legislative and political change that included discussions of capping federal student loans, particularly for graduate-level studies such as law school. Ultimately, those caps were enacted in the summer of 2025 and are set to take effect in July 2026.
The authors note that the report is “the first empirical measurement of how the new federal loan caps may affect aspiring lawyers.” And it found that from 2023-24 to 2024-25, the anticipated barrier of cost increased among test takers by more than 40 percent. In fact, financial-related barriers were the top three obstacles mentioned by respondents, with 55 percent citing the overall cost of attendance, 47 percent mentioning insufficient financial aid, and 33 percent citing having to take out more loans than they were comfortable with.
Additionally, 2024-25 LSAT takers appeared less certain that they would be able to overcome obstacles and enroll in their preferred law school. Among 2023-2024 LSAT takers, 30 percent said nothing would prevent them from attending if they got into their preferred law school, but one year later that figure had fallen dramatically and just 18 percent said nothing would hold them back. The decrease was most pronounced among Pell Grant recipients, a group of test takers typically facing more financial barriers than their non-recipient peers.
“In the context of the federal loan changes, these insights about anticipated barriers to law school provide concrete evidence that the cost of law school will probably affect the future enrollment of aspiring law students, especially those who are Pell Grant recipients,” Kirchoff and Bodamer write.
Open-ended responses from survey respondents brought these financial concerns to life. “I’m the first in my family to go to law school, and my family cannot support me financially,” one test taker wrote. “Everything about the law school process, I have learned on my own. I am working full time and living on my own while trying to save for school, as I don’t know if I’ll be able to work then.”
Another respondent specifically cited debt concerns. “The main reason I would not go to law school would be because I am not paying off debt enough that I will not be able to pay during law school.” And a third respondent was even more pointed: “Even if I get admitted, I am worried that a lack of personal finances will keep me from attending.”
Kirchoff and Bodamer conclude that as law schools and candidates try to make sense of federal changes to loans, access to legal education has become more uncertain. They recommend that pathway programs, prelaw advisors, law schools, and other stakeholders help prospective applicants make informed decisions, such as by helping them find schools that meet their personal, professional, and academic needs, and educating them on the full cost of attendance and ways to finance their legal education.
“In an ever-changing law school landscape, it is important to continue learning from test takers and aspiring law students about how they are experiencing the pathway to law school, and what their concerns are, in real time,” the authors say, adding that stakeholders can work with candidates to help them “break through the noise to present their best application materials to schools.”
Dig Deeper Into This Research
LSAC’s Knowledge Report: 2024-2025 Test Takers provides deeper insights into how the most recent test takers were thinking and feeling during a high volume and highly competitive admission cycle.