July 2026 / Episode 11 / Under 20 minutes
Welcome to Keeping Up to DataSM, 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 at LSAC®, with an almost-final update on the 2026 application cycle and a discussion with LSAC’s senior director of LSAT® operations, Jackie Kumaran. I’ve asked Jackie to talk with us about the upcoming delivery-related changes to how we administer the LSAT starting this August. But first, the numbers.
I feel like I’ve been promising that the admission cycle is winding down for the past several months, but now, it really is. At this time last year, we had 97% of the final applicant count and 99% of the applications that were eventually submitted. We are looking at over 80,000 applicants right now, and it is possible that we will see as many as 2,000 more if prior years’ patterns hold. We have so far seen over 573,000 applications to U.S. law schools. And if that figure represents 99% of the applications that will be submitted in this cycle, like it did last year, we could see another 5,000 applications before the absolute end of the cycle. As of today, the number of individuals applying to law school — that is, the 80,000-plus applicants I mentioned a moment ago — is 8.7% higher than last year at this time and 29% higher than two years ago. As for applications submitted, the 573,000 I mentioned represent almost 11.2% more applications than last year at this time and 36.4% more than two years ago.
As of this week, 50% of individuals who have submitted at least one application for 2026 admission identify as persons of color. That’s up slightly from last time — meaning [in] April, during our last podcast — and also very slightly up from last year at this time. There are 11.1% more applicants who identify as persons of color this year as compared to last year, and this compares to the overall increase in the applicant pool, as noted earlier, of 8.7%. 57.4% of this year’s applicants identify as female and 39.8% as male; no change in either of those percentages from when I last reported in April. Also unchanged from last time are the percentage of applicants who did not indicate a gender, 1.9%, and the percentage of applicants who identify as gender diverse, at just under 1%. Applicants who describe themselves as being first-generation college attendees or graduates continue to represent over a quarter of the 80,000-plus applicants.
As was the case in April, applicants from all regions of the U.S. are up, and applications to schools in all regions of the U.S. are up, too. We’ve now completed the 2025-2026 LSAT testing cycle, with the final test of the cycle, the June test, up about 6% over the previous June, and that’s the approximate increase for the entire year, too. Registration for the upcoming August test, the first one of the next cycle, just closed, and registrants are up about 5% over August 2025.
That’s our report on the current data. Remember that you can stay on top of our volume data by going to our website, LSAC.org, where you’ll find a link on the homepage to the latest volume data, which is updated every night.
Now that June scores have been released and the June 2026 LSAT is in the books, we can officially say we’re into the 2026-27 LSAT testing cycle. Registration for all of the 2026-27 tests opened in May, and in fact, registration for the August 2026 test is now closed. Starting this past February, we have announced some test delivery changes for the new cycle. I want to emphasize in every possible way that the test format and content are not changing; they are remaining the same. So, beginning with the August 2026 LSAT, we will be requiring test takers to take the LSAT in person at a test center, with only limited exceptions for test takers who live far away from a testing center or need certain medical or disability-related testing accommodations.
Another change being introduced is a new user interface within the test delivery platform. We launched an initial demo of this new user interface, which I will refer to as “UI” going forward, in March and gathered very valuable feedback from users. We relaunched a final version on June 17. The new UI is now available in all Official LSAT PrepTests® in the LawHub® library so test takers can practice prior to the August test.
To provide more information about these changes, I’m joined by Jackie Kumaran, LSAC’s senior director for LSAT operations — who, given her title, oversees the delivery of the test and is of course on top of all of these changes. Jackie, welcome to the Keeping Up to Data podcast.
JACKIE KUMARAN: Happy to be here.
SUSAN: Thank you for taking time out of what I know is a very busy time to join us. We have a lot of ground to cover, but I want to start with the move to in-center testing. Can you talk more about why LSAC is moving to predominantly in-center testing?
JACKIE: Yes. As we announced in February, we will be requiring the vast majority of test takers to test in person, with only limited exceptions. We are taking this step to continue to protect the security and integrity of the test, and also to provide a better experience for test takers. As most people know, we currently use a wide range of security measures before, during, and after testing to deter and detect potential cheating and misconduct. Moving toward in-center testing will provide another important deterrent to anyone who tries to undermine the integrity of the test.
In addition to test security, in-person testing will also provide important benefits to test takers in terms of successfully completing their test with a minimum of technological or proctoring issues. While only a small percentage of test takers experience problems that prevent them from completing their tests, the majority of those are testing remotely. We know how important the LSAT is to test takers and the enormous amount of time and effort they put into preparing for their test. So, we want every test taker to have the best possible test experience. In-center testing will also reduce the number of score holds, which are an important tool for test integrity that can also cause frustrating delays for test takers. While remote test takers account for only 40% of all test takers, remote test takers account for the majority of score holds.
SUSAN: As you just said, until now, at least during recent administrations, about 60% of our test takers have taken the test in a test center. Now, we’re moving to something closer to 100%. How is LSAC making sure that there is enough capacity in test centers for our test-taking population?
JACKIE: We’ve done a lot of work to make sure we have the test center capacity to meet the demand. We started by adding together the in-person and remote test takers for each LSAT administration, and then set a goal to have significantly more in-person slots than that total number. Not just a few more — significantly more. We’ve worked with Prometric to make that happen, and I’m confident that we will have more than enough in-person slots. Obviously, we’ll monitor the situation constantly and take action as needed.
SUSAN: Now, we’ve mentioned remote testing exceptions for certain medical or disability-related testing accommodations, and also for test takers who are too far from a test center. I’d like to hear more about what this means for test takers.
JACKIE: Yes. Starting with medical and disability-related testing accommodations, candidates should continue to request testing accommodations, as they have done in the past. The process for requesting accommodations is not changing. What is changing is that, along with providing an approval or denial decision for each accommodation requested, LSAC will also assess the approved accommodations to determine if a candidate should test in person or remotely. There are certain accommodations which are best administered in a remote environment. These are accommodations that would create a distraction for others in a test center, such as a human reader, which requires multiple people speaking aloud during the exam.
Accommodation decisions and testing modality will be communicated via an accommodation decision letter posted to JD Services, typically within two weeks following a request. If approved accommodations require a remote administration and the candidate is simply unable to obtain the required equipment or environment, candidates may submit a request to test in a center.
Regarding exceptions for test takers who are far from a test center, test takers who are testing in a domestic administration and are more than 180 miles or three hours’ driving distance from a test center with available capacity are eligible to request a remote administration. We’ve done research on the potential impacts of this policy to ensure that is not overly burdensome on test takers. We looked at all test takers from last year’s November 2025 test, one of our biggest tests during the entire online/hybrid period, and we found that 99.7% of those domestic test takers lived within three hours of a test center. So, only three-tenths of 1% were outside of the three-hour travel radius. Perhaps even more importantly, we found that 93% of those test takers lived within one hour of a test center, so the overwhelming majority of domestic test takers should have a relatively short travel to a test center.
SUSAN: What about test takers who use assistive technology like, for example, screen readers?
JACKIE: Beginning with the August 2026 LSAT, all assistive technology requests must be submitted through LSAC’s accommodations request process. So, assistive technology requests will be treated the same as the medical and disability-related exceptions we just discussed. Prometric test centers offer JAWS screen reader, DRAGON voice recognition software, and ZoomText magnification. Candidates may request alternate assistive technology as well, which LSAC will assess for compatibility with LawHub and any test security concerns. If permissible, a candidate will be able to use the alternate assistive technology in a remote administration. Candidates should request their assistive technology by the accommodation request deadline. And if the request is approved, the assistive technology will automatically apply to any future LSAT administration.
SUSAN: Thank you for that. Now, I have a question about the scheduling process — that is, scheduling one’s time to actually take the LSAT. As we all know, we’ve seen increased volumes in test takers over the last two years, so we had been using a staggered scheduling process that may have been a little confusing. Now we’re going to a “first to register, first in line to schedule” model. Can you explain how that process is going to work?
JACKIE: Yes. The old method for scheduling a test session time was created out of necessity following long wait times experienced by test takers. It was unfortunately complicated and cumbersome for test takers, and required opening scheduling at various times over the course of an entire week. Now that we are moving to in-person testing for the vast majority of test takers, we have streamlined scheduling to make it much simpler and easy to understand. We will be able to open testing for all test takers on a phased basis over a single date.
Test takers will be assigned a scheduling window based on the order in which they register. This assignment will be done on a “first registered, first in line” basis for each LSAT administration. Each scheduling window will have several thousand registrants. Because it’s “first to register, first to schedule,” we will be able to tell people exactly when their scheduling window will open. About one week prior to scheduling opening, test takers will receive an email reminder that their scheduling window is coming up. On the day scheduling opens, test takers will receive an email and an SMS message informing them when their specific scheduling window will open. Candidates can also view this information ahead of time in JD Services very shortly after they register for an exam.
Once the scheduling window opens, it will remain open until scheduling closes approximately one week before the start of the LSAT administration. Test takers will be able to select their preferred day and time based upon availability at nearby test centers. And it’s important to reiterate we have worked hard to provide significantly more testing slots than the actual number of people who will be testing, so we hope that everyone will be able to find a day and time that works for them.
SUSAN: That does sound like an improvement. The user interface is also changing. Can you give us a high-level view of what’s changing?
JACKIE: It’s important to take a step back and talk about why we’re making these changes. We’re moving to a new test delivery platform that will provide us with many important test security and test operation capabilities that we simply don’t have today. It will improve the security and integrity of the test, which is important to everyone. At the same time, it will result in a few changes to the user interface. We’ve tried to keep those changes to a minimum, but there will be some. We shared an interactive preview of the new UI back in March; we got a lot of valuable feedback from candidates, and we’ve incorporated many of the suggestions.
First, we’re providing fully functional highlighting and underlining across the stimulus, question stem, and answer choices. We also redesigned the question bar to display all questions in a section, rather than only 10 at a time. Next, we added separators within the question bar to show the question numbers associated with each of the Reading Comprehension passages. We also made flagged items visible in the question bar for easy reference and navigation. Lastly, we added a “Reset Response” button in each question set, enabling users to clear answer selections and/or answer eliminations with on click.
There are some things in the new UI that we can’t change. Due to the underlying structure of the new test driver platform, we are not able to provide so-called “radio button” functionality for selecting and eliminating answers with a single click. We recognize how strongly test takers feel about maximizing their time and focus during their test session, so even a minor change like that can be a big deal to some test takers. That’s why we worked to finalize the new UI and publish updated practice tests in LawHub now, so that test takers can practice in the new UI and become comfortable with the features and how they work.
We will continue working with our test preparation partners and others to ensure a smooth transition to the new testing platform.
SUSAN: Thank you, Jackie, for joining me today to provide all of this information. And to our listeners, remember that to find out more about the changes for the 2026-27 testing cycle, visit LSAC.org or LawHub.org. Thank you.
JACKIE: Thank you, Susan.
SUSAN: Thank you for joining us at Keeping Up to Data. We look forward to your joining our next episode. Until next time, stay well.
Keeping Up to DataSM 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.