If you just took the February LSAT and are applying for admission to law school in the fall, you probably aren’t used to having all this free time on your hands post-LSAT. Shouldn’t you be spending every minute with your nose glued in a prep book?
Well, no, not any more. But the good news is that there are some things you should be doing if you haven’t done them already.
If you don’t have the other elements of your law school application submitted, you’ll want to get that in as soon as possible. Your application isn’t reviewed by law schools until it’s considered “complete,” and it’s not considered complete until it’s… well… complete. So if you’ve been dragging your feet on finishing your applications, get that taken care of, and keep in mind that it will take LSAC some time to process anything you submit. (Given that it takes them weeks to grade a Scantron, you should never expect speed from LSAC.)
Your February LSAT score will automatically be sent to law schools you’ve applied to. If you previously took the LSAT but retook the test in February, and if you’ve already submitted some law school applications, you might want to shoot those schools a quick note letting them know that they shouldn’t consider your application complete until they receive your February LSAT score. (They should know this already – your report from LSAC will have shown that you were registered for another LSAT test administration – but it never hurts to be double-sure.)
If you’re still in school and have another semester’s worth of grades to report, you’re technically supposed to submit your updated transcript to any law schools to which you have applied. You’ll want to be extra-sure to do so if your grades went up after the last semester (yay!).
Beyond that, your work is almost done. Now comes the hard part – waiting for decisions from law schools. How long that will take varies from school to school. As mentioned above, they won’t even start reviewing your application until February LSAT scores are released, which will be around March 5 if you’re in the US. A good rule of thumb is that it will take 4-6 weeks to hear from law schools after your application is complete, so you’re unlikely to hear anything until late March at the earliest.
Buckle your seatbelts, kids, because it’s gonna be a long wait.
