From Application to Graduation: What LSAC and LSSSE Data Reveal About Students With Disabilities

By Jak Petzold (LSSSE) and Deb Langer (LSAC) 

People with disabilities must make thoughtful decisions and navigate institutional barriers from the earliest stages of their journey to and through law school. Choices about disclosure during the application process, barriers due to stigma, and financial pressures shape not only where these students enroll, but also how they experience law school once they arrive. When LSAC and the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) began asking about disability several years ago, we approached the topic from different points in the pathway based on our organizational expertise: LSAC focused on the enrollment experience, LSSSE on the law school experience. As the people behind the data collection and dissemination, we’re excited to bring these perspectives together for the first time.

Taken together, data from LSAC and LSSSE now offer a fuller understanding of the structural obstacles that students with disabilities meet on their path to and through law school. Combined, the LSAC and LSSSE findings show that the factors affecting disclosure during the application process — such as concerns about stigma, uncertainty about support, and financial strain — remain present after students enroll. This pathway is not simply a sequence of stages. It is a system in which barriers accumulate unless institutions intervene.

Starting at the application and enrollment point of the journey, LSAC’s recent report “First-Year Law School Class: A Focus on Students With Disabilities, 2024 Update” describes the highly personal calculus people undertake when deciding whether to disclose a disability. Among the 2024 first-year law student survey respondents, many reported they chose not to disclose, especially when applying to the most selective schools, because they feared being misunderstood or disadvantaged due to their disability. LSAC findings from a survey of 1L students during the fall of 2024 showed that fewer than half of all student respondents with disabilities disclosed their disabilities on all their law school applications. Additionally, almost half of those who didn’t mention disabilities on their applications reported not wanting to be defined by their disabilities and/or feeling like it would disadvantage their applications. 

As those in the legal profession know, applying to law school is often a major undertaking, with candidates making significant investments of time and money. They have come through, or are still in the process of coming through, an educational system that, in general, is ableist-oriented. So, it’s no surprise that for the third year in a row, LSAC data reveal this fear of disclosure. Furthermore, these decisions often intersect with significant financial pressures, as people with disabilities may have higher undergraduate debt and higher anticipated law school debt. These early constraints matter because they influence access to legal education, but also because, as LSSSE data reveal, they carry forward into students’ academic and social experiences.

Disaggregating the data yields even more troubling results. More 1L respondents participating in part-time programs reported they disclosed their disabilities (52%, compared to 46% in full-time programs), and fewer respondents who eventually enrolled in a top 25% (highly selective) law school disclosed their disability in all their school applications compared to their peers at other law schools (44%, compared to 56%). These findings suggest that students with disabilities anticipate that their disability will be viewed as an academic liability in highly competitive programs as early as the application stage — a view that schools have not yet been successful in combatting, considering the data over the past three years.

In addition, respondents’ existing undergraduate and expected law school debt affect the decision about where to enroll. Based on the LSAC data in combination with the new federal loan caps — $60,000 for undergraduate education and $200,000 for law school education — scheduled to go into effect on July 1, 2026, more law school applicants and students with disabilities will face financial barriers to a legal education than will their peers without disabilities. More students with disabilities reported undergraduate debt over $60,000 (10%, compared to 6% of non-disabled students) and anticipated law school debt over $200,000 (11%, compared to 8%). While school-based grants and other funding can mitigate both existing and anticipated debt, and the full impact of the new policy remains unclear, existing research on increased financial burdens on students with disabilities suggests this is an ideal time for schools to be proactive.

The LSSSE 2025 Annual Report, “Disability in Law School (PDF) ,” continues the story once students with disabilities matriculate. The report reveals high levels of engagement from disabled students in various law school pursuits, along with persistent gaps in belonging, support, and satisfaction that shape their daily life in law school. 

Roughly one in five law students (20%) report a disability or condition that affects their major life activities. The vast majority of these conditions are not visible, and mental health and developmental disabilities are among the most commonly reported. Over half of all law students with disabilities report anxiety (57%) or ADD/ADHD (55%), while 41% report having depression. Another 12% report a physical disability. 

Across these varied conditions, students with disabilities are deeply engaged academically. They are more likely than their non-disabled peers to ask frequent questions or contribute to class discussions, and they spend almost an hour and a half more each week preparing for class. Their involvement extends beyond the classroom: Higher proportions of disabled students participate in clinics and field placements, pro bono work, faculty research, and leadership roles in student organizations. These patterns reinforce a central finding of the report: Students with disabilities are deeply engaged in their legal education, and they are heavily involved in the activities that define it.

Despite this robust engagement, structural barriers remain. Disabled students report a lack of academic and career support from their law schools. They also feel they are missing necessary resources to help manage responsibilities outside of school. Satisfaction with key services, including academic advising, job search support, and personal counseling, falls below that of their non-disabled peers. Overall satisfaction with the law school experience is also lower for disabled students (75%) than for their non-disabled peers (84%). These gaps reflect systems that often require students to navigate law school supports that were not designed with their needs in mind.

The largest disparities appear in students’ sense of belonging. Students with disabilities are markedly less likely to feel comfortable being themselves on campus, to feel valued, or to feel like part of the school community. These differences, often in the range of 10 to 15 percentage points, represent more than dissatisfaction. They suggest that concerns surrounding disclosure during the application process persist after students enroll, shaping how they experience academic life and influencing their overall experience.

Financial pressures also intensify over time. Congruent with LSAC’s findings, LSSSE data show that students with disabilities expect to graduate with substantially more debt — an average of $99,250, compared to $86,844 for their non-disabled classmates. This added strain compounds the other challenges they face, particularly for students who are already devoting more time and energy to their studies and co-curricular commitments.

While change can be daunting, it should be thought of as an iterative process where small initiatives are implemented and wins build on others that came before. The following recommendations are a starting point to help schools identify specific opportunities for change, since those will necessarily differ across schools. There is a fuller list of recommendations and resources in the LSAC report “First-Year Law School Class: A Focus on Students With Disabilities, 2024 Update.”

While change can be daunting, it should be thought of as an iterative process where small initiatives are implemented and wins build on others that came before.

Recommendations:

• Provide clear information about how your school defines disability, and ensure there is a method to share it with applicants, admitted students, and matriculants. Many students who have disabilities may not realize their specific condition constitutes a protected disability. Providing examples of what is considered a disability and what services are available, both for those who choose to use accommodations and for those who do not, may encourage all students to think about disability differently and help chip away at the stigma often associated with requesting and receiving accommodations.
• Evaluate the process a student with disabilities must go through to receive accommodations and identify areas for improvement. Make sure to consider aspects of the process that will place additional burdens on students, such as the cost of a private evaluation to prove disability status. This should include ongoing contact with students with disabilities and their affinity groups to learn how the process for receiving accommodations can be improved, as well as soliciting feedback from those who need to use the process.
• Encourage law professors with disabilities to participate in committees and hold leadership positions. Inclusion of faculty with disabilities in decision-making positions, especially when it comes to policies and practices that can disproportionately affect students with disabilities, will ensure that the voices and needs of individuals with disabilities are be considered.
• Assess services that students with disabilities use, or may use, to determine how well the services your school offers meet those needs. Services can include any and all aspects of being a law school student, such as living accommodations, academic support services, and specialty health care services. The experience of these services will be different for students based on the type of disabilities they have, so it will be important to include a breadth of disability voices in the conversation assessing current services and planning for the future.
• Use data to inform efforts centered on the actual student experience. Students with disabilities can directly share their needs and experiences through data collection (through LSSSE or other means), which can be leveraged to develop targeted and intentionally designed outreach, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, to better meet their needs.

Overall, the LSAC and LSSSE reports highlight a central narrative: Students with disabilities navigate systematic barriers due to stigma and are often uncertain if their institutions will be able to support them if they know who they are. LSSSE data show that students with disabilities are not bringing their full, authentic selves to campus; that is no surprise, given that many do not disclose their disability in their applications for fear it will be used to hinder their progress.

The resilience demonstrated by these students should be celebrated, but it should not be necessary. If law schools want students with disabilities not just to participate, but to flourish, the work begins with recognizing that disability is not a problem to be managed, but a dimension of diversity that enriches the legal academy. Many of the barriers documented in these reports — such as bureaucratic hurdles, inconsistent support, and environments calibrated to an imagined “typical” student — are structural, not individual. Improving them requires intentional design, including clear communication about available support, universally accessible practices, and a commitment to fostering belonging for students who have historically had to navigate their education without it.