Keeping Up to Data: August 2025

Welcome to the Keeping Up to Data^SM, a space in which we discuss, analyze, and contextualize trends and perspectives in the current law school admission cycle.

SUSAN KRINSKY: Welcome back to Keeping Up to Data. I’m Susan Krinsky, executive vice president for operations at LSAC^®, with a close-to-final report on the 2025 application cycle — and, in a little while, a talk with Gisele Joachim, LSAC’s vice president for law school engagement, who will talk with us about the upcoming changes in the financial aid landscape.

But first, some numbers. As of August 12, the number of individuals applying to law school is 18.3% higher than it was last year, and those applicants have submitted 22.3% more applications. That’s 76,513 applicants and 523,132 applications. So, it’s been a big year for law school applications. Of the 197 accredited law schools, 191 experienced application increases and 112 experienced increases of 20% or more.

Overall, we’re seeing higher volumes than we’ve seen in the past five years, including the very strong 2021 cycle. These are the highest numbers we’ve seen in over 10 years. Women continue to comprise the largest gender category in the applicant pool, at almost 57% of the pool. And applicants of color account for just about 50% of the applicant pool.

If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you might recall that 18 months ago, starting in February of 2024, we started to see significant increases in test takers. Last April and June, for example, the increases were in the 30% to 35% range. During the just-completed testing cycle, August of 2024 through June of 2025, test takers have been up for every administration — overall, 11.6% year over year.

We’re just finishing up the first test administration of the 2025-2026 testing cycle, and it appears that test takers were up 23% over the August 2024 test. We’re about three weeks out from the September test administration, and registrations are again up 23% over last year’s September test. We are a few weeks from the opening of most law schools’ applications, so it will be some time before we know whether the increase in test takers translates to another increase in applicants, but I can assure you that you will hear from me again either way.

Before we move to our segment on the upcoming changes to the financial aid landscape, I want to bring to your attention the Research Library on the LSAC website. There are some very informative reports there, including a recent one on how the 2024 1L students paid for law school, in-depth profiles of the 2023 and 2024 first-year classes, and much, much more.

Now, as promised, I am delighted to welcome back to Keeping Up to Data Gisele Joachim, LSAC’s vice president for law school engagement. On July 4, the Budget Reconciliation Act was signed into law, putting into motion what can be considered as, at the very least, a major change for prospective students and higher education institutions when it comes to federal financial aid programs. Gisele is not only vice president for law school engagement here at LSAC, but also has a wealth of experience in this area, having served as dean of enrollment management at Seton Hall University, and as director of financial aid services for the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority.

Gisele has joined us in the past to talk about LSAC Law School Forums, but today we are going to take advantage of her longstanding and deep expertise in the area of financial aid. Hi, Gisele. Thank you for joining us to talk about a subject that is of great concern to students and law schools alike. Before we get into the details of what’s coming down the line, could you start by giving us a broad-stroke view of what the legislation says and how it might affect law schools in particular?

GISELE JOACHIM: I’m happy to. This is, on the one hand, a major change to available financing for higher education and law school. On the other hand, it is not far removed, in some ways, of the years prior to the availability of Grad PLUS loans, 2006. Having said that, I don’t want to minimize the potential impact that these changes could have. The suspension of Grad PLUS, coupled with borrowing limits on unsubsidized loans will dramatically change the way that students can fund their education, and is likely to disenfranchise those who need financial assistance the most. The ability of students to find funding, of course, ultimately will impact law schools’ ability to attract, enroll, and retain students — again, likely impacting a segment of the law school class that already faces greater challenges.

SUSAN: From what I understand, there’s some confusion about when the changes will go into effect and who will be affected. Perhaps we can tee that up with another broad-stroke question: Will the Budget Reconciliation Act have an immediate impact on the law school admission cycle, or would there be an adjustment period?

GISELE: Well, as they say, it’s complicated. The law allows for students who are already borrowing under the current program rules to be grandfathered for up to three years or the duration of their program, whichever is less, in the current program. This legacy rule impacts anyone who has borrowed prior to July 1, 2026, which is when the new rules begin. So, both current students and the incoming class of 2025 that begins in just a few short weeks for most of our law schools, for the most part, these students will borrow under the existing rules.

However, there is one big caveat to this, and that is students who will take longer than three years to complete the program. So, think joint-degree-program students, part-time students, and others who for any reason take longer than three years for completion. They will theoretically run out of federal eligibility prior to completion, so that is messy. We will have to see if there is any clarifying language or amendments to the rules that address that group of students. Those who begin a new program or are new borrowers beginning on or after July 1, 2026, will all squarely fall into the new program rules.

SUSAN: You earlier referenced new caps on borrowing that have been implemented or that will be implemented. How does this affect students and schools? What about part-time students?

GISELE: The new program rules stipulate annual unsubsidized loan limits for full-time students of $50,000, and no availability of Grad PLUS or any other federal loan. Additionally, there is a $200,000 aggregate cap for professional students, like law students and medical students — that does not include amounts borrowed as an undergraduate student — and a $257,500 lifetime borrowing limit on all federal student loans, so that’s including undergraduate borrowing. So, when you think about the cost of law school, knowing that tuition alone at many, if not most, law schools on its own exceeds $50,000 a year — before we even start talking about the full cost of attendance, living expenses, books — it is easy to see where the challenge will be.

Students who do not have other resources, whether that is scholarships, grants, or access to funding from other sources — who have in the past 20 years been able to anticipate the availability of federally funded student loans with little reliance on credit history, co-signers or other traditional lending barriers — will now be thrown into the private lending market, where those that are unable to obtain a co-signer, and/or those that have less attractive credit histories may find themselves unable to borrow the money they need to obtain the education they desire. Additionally, the law stipulates that part-time student lending limits will be prorated — so, something less than the $50,000 per year cap. The details of how that will ultimately be implemented have not yet been shared.

SUSAN: As you know, LSAC has been hosting webinars for both students and admission professionals over the past few weeks. What types of questions have you been fielding from those audiences?

GISELE: Well, as I just was saying, it’s all a bit confusing, so a lot of the questions have just been about clarifying things. But there are also questions that we simply don’t know the answer to at this point, as more work will need to be coming out of Congress, or the Department of Education, or whatever administrative body will oversee these programs moving forward. Probably the biggest question is what private lenders will do in this new environment. There are quite a few lenders that are already in the student loan market: Sallie Mae, SoFi, and others, for example. So, one can easily imagine that they will be in a position to ramp up business a bit, but how favorable the terms are to students, and how difficult it will be for those who have been served over the years through the federal loan programs to obtain these private loans, is yet to be seen.

I will also share that our webinars were really well attended, with more than 1,600 attending the LawHub, student-facing version, and 499 attending the professionals event. We had a follow-up for law school professionals, designed to be a Q&A session with a panel of experts on August 7.

SUSAN: A recent research report released by LSAC found that very close to 50% of all 2024 1Ls used federal loans to fund their tuition. That reliance was even higher among minoritized and financially under-resourced students. I know it is still very early in the process, but do you have a sense of how these changes will affect students as a whole? How might these changes affect their school choices, for example?

GISELE: It’s really hard to say, at this point, the full impact of these changes. It does seem quite evident, though, that those with the highest need will be the most detrimentally impacted. Under-resourced students are the ones most likely to have poor or no credit histories and are most likely to be unable to obtain a credit-worthy co-signer — two ingredients that private lenders will likely be looking for in their lending portfolios. Law and other schools will need to think hard about their own policies with regards to scholarship awarding and tuition setting, to determine how to ensure that these students can continue to enroll and persist through the programs.

SUSAN: We also see in this legislation something called institutional accountability, which, as I understand, it creates a new accountability measure that will cause a program to lose loan eligibility if it fails the, and I put this in quote, “low earnings outcomes measure.” What does this mean? Do guidelines exist? How would this impact schools if their graduates go on to, for example, civil service positions?

GISELE: So, yeah, this is kind of a less-talked-about provision of the rule, in part because it will take longer to implement, requiring some years of record-keeping and then implementation. My understanding at this point is that it essentially is designed to create a measure of low earnings outcomes — an index under which, if a school’s median earnings fall, students at that school would become ineligible for borrowing. We have to see how this one works out. There is quite a lot of work that will need to be done in terms of clarifying language and implementation. Without going into detail, I think it is important to mention that there are also significant changes to available repayment plans for federal loans and changes to the federal need-analysis calculation — which, although it probably doesn’t directly impact most law students or law schools, will potentially impact how much aid financially needy students receive as undergraduates, so therefore creating more potential challenges for the most under-resourced students.

SUSAN: Gisele, thank you so much. I feel quite confident that we will be coming back to you as we learn further developments and as we see the regulations.

GISELE: Thank you, Susan.

SUSAN: I want to thank Gisele Joachim again for a very informative conversation. Thank you for joining us at Keeping Up to Data. We look forward to your joining our next episode. Until next time, stay well.

Thank you for joining us. Keeping Up to Data^SM is a production of LSAC. If you want to learn more about the current law school admission cycle and the latest trends and news, visit us at LSAC.org.

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