When do you apply to law school? Let’s start with the simplified answer:
Whenever you’re ready.
But what about my chances? When will I have the best odds of acceptance?
That’s another question altogether—a far more complex one.
Let’s break it down into a few considerations:
The key factor in the law school application timeline is deadlines.
Most ABA-approved law schools will accept applications starting from September 1 each year. Final deadlines are usually in February or March, and binding early decision (ED) or scholarship deadlines are usually around mid-November.
However, this is a rolling admissions process.
This means the admissions committee reviews applications throughout the entire application period. So although you could theoretically apply anytime between September 1 and March 1, the schools fill their classes bit by bit throughout the entire cycle—so the later you apply, the fewer spots there are left, and the more difficult it is to be accepted.
Don’t wait until the end of February! There won’t be any seats left!
So when should you actually apply?
If you’re aiming for specific scholarships or considering applying via binding ED, mid-November should be your target. Mid-November is actually the sweet spot for almost all applicants, as long as you can realistically prepare a compelling application by then.
If you find yourself running later, don’t panic: The consensus is that if you can apply by the end of the year, before January 1, you still have solid chances. Any later than that, and your chances start to seriously drop off.
Can you still get in from January onwards? Sure! Schools are still accepting applications for a reason—they don’t just throw them all in the trash! But the odds are certainly less favorable.
Imagine it this way: By the new year, most law schools have filled, say, 60–80% of their classes—and they have a good number of promising applicants on a waitlist. As time goes on, each school will have fewer and fewer places and more than enough waitlisted candidates to put together a diverse class for the program (which is their objective).
By February, your application needs to be so great that the school is prepared to shove another great applicant off the waitlist to make space for you. This is especially true for top law schools (T14 or T20 schools with high bar passage rates and other attractive stats), which likely have a large pool of talented applicants, all with great GPAs and LSATs. A late application can succeed, but it’s up against stiff competition.
You can read more about the law school application timeline here, but let’s look at a quick overview now.
In order to apply to law school, you must first complete a number of steps:
That’s already quite a list, but there are also a number of soft steps—not explicitly required but massively beneficial to your application:
It’s not usually enough to just “check the boxes,” especially not if you’re applying to competitive programs. Digging in on all these tasks is what will make your application stand out.
What does that mean in terms of days, weeks, and months?
You probably need a minimum of six months to prepare your application if you’re working or studying simultaneously. Three months minimum to do your LSAT prep, and then at least another three months to prepare your Juris Doctor (JD) application. So:
Of course, the more time you have to prepare, the better: The earlier you start working on your profile, testing, and applications, the stronger your candidacy will be. Many of our clients start earlier, giving themselves a full year to prepare their applications. This is ideal since it provides ample time to put together a really convincing application.
Now that we’ve considered how long you can expect to spend on your application, let’s look at another question: At what point in your life should you apply?
Once you’ve decided to attend law school, you have a range of options, from applying to a JD program straight out of undergrad to applying years later after gaining some work experience. Which is right for you? And which looks best on your application?
This is a crucial consideration for candidates aiming for top law schools because the experience gained from your experience could be fundamental to boosting your law school profile.
The question of when in your career to make the jump over to law school is deeply personal, because it depends on so much that is unique to each applicant’s profile:
It’s a sort of balancing act: Each year of experience is a chance to improve your profile, but applying later can also detract from your profile in some ways.
Let’s look at the realistic options.
Some universities offer their undergrad students the option of applying directly to the JD program of that university while still an undergrad student. These are called “3+3 JD” or “accelerated JD” programs. (The term “submatriculation” is also used.)
Applying directly to an accelerated JD program offers the applicant three advantages:
You’ll usually apply for your undergrad’s 3+3 program during your second or, most commonly, third year as an undergrad. These programs have specific requirements, which are different for each school but usually include:
You can find the specific requirements of each program on the school’s website. Some notable examples of accelerated/3+3 JD programs are linked below:
These programs are an attractive option, but in practice, few candidates apply via a 3+3 program. Most candidates hope to earn their JD somewhere other than their undergrad. And many future lawyers hope to gain some work experience before they start. There’s also a strategic consideration: It’s hard to build a strong profile without the usual work experience.
Once upon a time, applying to law school straight out of college was very common. But nowadays, only around 20% of the class at top law schools consists of candidates applying directly from college (see table below).
Although in the past it was the norm to apply for law school straight out of college, most aspiring lawyers now either take a gap year or get a few years of work experience. Still, one-fifth is not an insignificant proportion of the class—applying out of college remains a viable option.
We will dig deeper into the strategic considerations below, but let’s first consider what should drive your decision to apply. The single most important consideration is personal rather than strategic: Are you sure you want to attend law school? Are you absolutely confident you want to become an attorney?
If attending law school is what you’ve always dreamed of, then this can be a great time to apply. If you have doubts, though—if you feel like you’re being railroaded down this path or are applying because you’re not sure what else to do—you’re better off waiting.
The law school applications are a lot of work. Really. A lot. Refining your applications to perfection to maximize your chances can take far more time and effort than you imagine, so apply only if you’re certain.
Bear in mind that delaying your application doesn’t disqualify you, since having some work experience is the norm these days. That experience can mature you, boost your profile, and give you more material to draw on for your application.
That said, if you’re set on attending law school, this can be a good moment to apply. Ideally, to be competitive at this stage, you’ll want:
You might ask yourself: Do I really need to be above the 75th percentile to apply from college? Don’t people get in from the 50th or 25th or even 5th percentile?
Of course they do.
But generally speaking, candidates applying directly from college are at a disadvantage against candidates with work experience, because they haven’t proven themselves in the real world. Typically, they also have less clearly defined goals and fewer interesting experiences.
Which means that going in, your candidacy will have to be proportionally more impressive to compete. Just put yourselves in the shoes of the admissions officers: you’re comparing a college-only candidate with someone who has two years’ experience at a world-class investment bank, or a famous NGO, or in AI research.
That’s why you have to be a pretty strong candidate to consider applying directly from college.
Today, most candidates will have at least some work experience, and in fact four-fifths of most top law school classes applied a year or more after finishing college.
| School | 1+ years’ postcollege experience* |
| Columbia | 74% (source) |
| Duke | 71% (source) |
| Harvard | 79% (source) |
| Northwestern | 85% (source) |
| NYU | 72% (source) |
| Stanford | 80% (source) |
| UMich | 79% (source) |
| UPenn | 73% (source) |
| UVA | 77% (source) |
| Yale | 89% (source) |
| Average | 78% |
Harvard Law even provides a more detailed breakdown:
As we can see, the majority have somewhere between one and four years’ experience, with only 21% applying less than a year out of college. Law schools like these profiles more and more because this baseline experience in your year(s) away from college will mature you, professionalize you, give you direction, and give your profile meaning.
For very wise and very mature candidates, applying directly out of college can make sense, but most college seniors aren’t experienced enough to have truly made a concrete career decision, and this is one major factor in the trend of more and more experienced professionals applying to law school.
The major advantages of applying with work experience are:
This is why applicants tend to apply with professional experience, and this choice makes a lot of sense for someone with, say, a 50th-percentile LSAT score or GPA, or coming from an overrepresented demographic. The chance to prove yourself outside the academic context can be a massive advantage.
You’ll face a myriad of considerations when trying to strategically time your application. They can only be assessed on an individual basis. We can’t go into every possibility here, but we can at least trace the major factors you might consider. Let’s do so.
Your decision about the right time to apply should naturally be informed by an assessment of your chances as an applicant. There are two key factors that can give you a major edge.
First, demographic advantage. Law schools, like all university programs, take demographics and diversity into consideration when building a class. The admissions officers want to compose a class that is structurally diverse—in terms of regional, national, ethnic, and religious background; gender; and social class.
The more uncommon and desirable your profile, the more flexible the schools will be, especially with regard to LSAT score and GPA.
If you are a first-generation college student from a low-income background, then law schools—even T14 or T20 law schools—will be much more forgiving about your GPA and LSAT score than those of typical upper-middle-class law school candidates, because they believe atypical candidates can offer a unique perspective.
The same applies today for race and even geography, despite the recent Supreme Court ruling Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), which held that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Despite the ruling, the schools have other ways of maintaining this diversity (for example by implicitly asking about your background in essay prompts), and this consideration continues to drive application decisions.
Second, there’s the so-called “X factor.” We’ve seen how candidates with incredible personal stories (incredibly successful or incredibly tragic) can significantly outperform their profile because their stories are so memorable and affecting.
We have seen great success, for instance, from
Understanding whether your story truly gives you this “X factor” can be tough, and we recommend seeking professional feedback as to whether this could be a game-changer for your profile, and how best to frame your story.
The first strategic moment for many law school candidates will arrive when considering whether to apply directly from college. As we mentioned above, this can be a good time to “take your shot” if you’re a strong candidate. Consider whether either of the factors discussed in the previous point apply to you.
Whatever the case, your senior year of undergrad is a unique moment in time in which you can take your chance, with little downside (other than the work you’ll have to put into your applications). If you get in, great! If not, then no big deal—two years of putting your nose to the grindstone and try again!
There is one caveat for reapplicants, though: To have a good shot on your second try, you really do have to be a better candidate than you were the first time around. You should have strong work experience, a better LSAT score, more volunteer work, and so on …
One other idea is to limit yourself to only applying to the top schools on your first attempt. For example, you could decide to apply only to T14 schools, and if it doesn’t work out, expand the school list later on with a significantly improved profile.
That said, if your candidacy is markedly weaker than the school average, it makes sense to hold off on your application for now—take some more time to develop your profile through work experience.
If statistics are any indication, then two years of experience should really be the target for most people.
It’s very hard to gain serious work experience in a single year unless you are in a specific one-year program. And whether you join Big Tech, Teach for America, a consulting firm, or a law office, two years is a good length of time in which to professionalize yourself, make some serious achievements, and maybe even get a promotion.
Having said that, there are many other considerations that depend on your specific profile and career path.
For example, the more prestigious your employer, the less work experience you need to have. Law school admissions offices will see the big-name employer as a sign of promise for future success. Whether this is realistic or not matters less than the effect it has. Coming from a lesser-known employer, you might want to take some more time to gain experience, or perhaps take the chance to improve your profile by getting a better job.
Also, as you advance in your professional life, you will gain teamwork and leadership experience that will be invaluable, and this can not only provide more interesting and stronger stories for your application, but also prepare you better for school and for your life and career as an attorney.
Here are some more personal considerations you can think about as you consider when to make the jump over to law school:
And some more directly strategic considerations:
We’ve covered the major considerations you can use to figure out when to apply to law school. Each needs to be considered individually as it relates to you, and you need to weigh up all the factors if you want to time your application for maximum advantage and get into the best school possible.
The important thing to keep in mind is that you will only go to school once, and it’s a time-consuming, expensive, and challenging endeavor that can be life-changing for you. So rather than applying as soon as possible, try to maximize your chances of getting into the best school you possibly can.
This means being strategic, aware, and very well prepared even before you start putting together your personal statement and other application materials.
If you’re wondering when is the right moment for you, you can always reach out to Menlo Coaching for a free consultation. One of our consultants will talk you through your own personal considerations to help you make the right decision.
Yaron Dahan
Expert Consultant & Director, BD
Education: BA, MA
Since 2006, Yaron has been using his narrative knowhow—honed through his work as a screenwriter and formal training at the Sorbonne—to pull out the most compelling details from an applicant’s background. He’s helped applicants win admission (often against the odds) to top law schools including Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and UC Berkeley.
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