First-Year Law School Class: A Focus on Students with Disabilities, 2024 Update
Disproportionate burdens are placed on students with disabilities,[1] in life and in law school, as compared to students without disabilities — whether it’s the often costly and time-consuming process of having to prove one’s disability, difficulties obtaining accommodations, confronting stigmas around the receipt of accommodations, or other aspects of living and learning in a largely non-accessible world.[2] These processes can be isolating and affect students’ sense of belonging. It can be particularly difficult when students have “non-apparent” disabilities — such as mental health disorders, chronic pain, autoimmune disorders, and other types of disabilities — which can result in feeling extra pressure to “perform” one’s disability in order to be believed. The multiple identities of law students with disabilities (i.e., the intersectionality of identities) can exacerbate existing inequities; for example, the socioeconomic barriers for students with disabilities are compounded for racially and ethnically marginalized[3] students with disabilities.[4]
In 2022, LSAC first asked first-year (1L) law students questions about disability in an effort to better understand how students with disabilities experience the law school application process.[5] This report is the third in the LSAC 1L Knowledge Series focusing on law students with disabilities.[6] The purpose of this report is to provide additional insight into how students with disabilities navigate the law school application process, specifically highlighting the experiences of students with disabilities who became part of the 2024-2025 1L class, and provide further information that can be used by law schools to better understand and effectively address the barriers that law school candidates with disabilities face.[7] These factors include personal considerations, such as whether to disclose a disability to law schools and why disabilities were or were not disclosed on applications. The report reiterates the extensive recommendations from the 2022 and 2023 reports that are still highly applicable and that schools can use to 1) assess their own practices and policies that impact students with disabilities and 2) think about ways to remove barriers for students with disabilities from the application stage all the way to graduation.
Key insights from this report include:
- In 2024, 15% of students in their first year of law school identified as a person with a disability. This is three percentage points higher than those who identified as students with disabilities in 2022 and 2023 (both 12%).
- The most commonly reported disabilities included mental health disabilities (56%) followed by developmental or intellectual disabilities (30%), physical disabilities (27%), and cognitive or processing disabilities (22%). The proportion of 1Ls reporting physical disabilities and cognitive or processing disabilities is slightly higher and slightly lower, respectively, than in 2023.
- More than half of the sample of students reporting a disability were white, cisgender women, Pell Grant recipients, LSAC fee waiver recipients, and continuing-generation college graduates. This is similar to the samples in 2022 and 2023.
- For the first year, 1Ls with disabilities entered law school with an overall comparable level of undergraduate education debt. However, undergraduate debt was significantly higher for 1Ls with disabilities who were Pell Grant recipients and first-generation college graduates.
- 1Ls with disabilities also anticipated accruing a similar amount of debt for their legal education, but, similar to undergraduate debt, significantly more Pell Grant recipient (18%) 1Ls expected to owe $200,000 or more upon graduation, an amount that will be above the new federal loan caps for law school.
- Almost half of all 1Ls with disabilities (46%) disclosed their disability on all their law school applications, just slightly less than those who disclosed to all in 2023 (49%) but exactly the same as in 2022.
- Students who enrolled in a top 25% highly selective law school (Q1) were less likely to disclose to all schools they applied to (40%), 20% less than students enrolled in law schools in Q2, Q3, and Q4 combined.[8]
To learn more about how students with disabilities experience the journey to law school, please download the full report.
If you have any questions related to this project or future work informed by the results, please contact the LSAC Access and Opportunity team and the Applied Research team at AccessandOpportunity@LSAC.org and StrategicResearch@LSAC.org.
[1] LSAC has chosen to use person-first language in alignment with the National Organization on Disability, the American Association of People with Disabilities, and the American Bar Association. Person-first language is largely recognized as emphasizing the individual over their disability, condition, or diagnosis. We respect and honor an individual’s personal preferences when referring to their own disability including the use of identity-first language.
[2] Emens, E. F. (2020). Disability admin: The invisible costs of being disabled. Minn. L. Rev., 105, 2329.
[3] “Marginalized” refers to populations that historically have been excluded, disempowered, disenfranchised, or otherwise treated as being insignificant, unimportant, or peripheral. Marginalized can be used to describe various populations and is not synonymous with or limited to racially/ethnically underrepresented populations.
[4] Payne-Tsoupros, C. (2020). A starting point for disability justice in legal education. Journal Committed to Social Change on Race and Ethnicity (JCSCORE), 6(1), 165-189.
[5] These questions were developed with the input of a focus group of current and former law students with disabilities organized by the Coelho Center for Disability Law, Policy, and Innovation as well as the ABA Council on Disability Rights. The questions were first asked on the LSAC 2022 Matriculant Survey. The disability categories used in the surveys and specific disabilities that fall within each category can be found in Appendix 1 of the full report.
[6] Langer, D. (2023). 2022 First-Year Law School Class: A Focus on Students with Disabilities. Law School Admission Council. https://www.lsac.org/data-research/research/2022-first-year-law-school-… and Langer, D & Russian, A. (2024). First-Year Law School Class: A Focus on Students with Disabilities, 2023 Update. Law School Admission Council. https://www.lsac.org/data-research/research/first-year-law-school-class…
[7] While applying is a key part of the journey to and through law school, it is just one aspect of the legal education experience. The new annual report by the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE), Disability in Law School (PDF, 1.3MB) , is the first to provide a comprehensive view of the experiences of law students with disabilities. You should consult the report to gain a broader understanding of the experiences and systemic barriers law students with disabilities continue to face as they progress through law school.
[8] Using LSAC data, law schools are each assigned a selectivity index based on each school’s 2024 admission rate, median LSAT of admitted students, and median UGPA of admitted students. The top 25% highly selective law schools are in the first quartile (Q1), and they are the first 49 law schools with the highest index score.
