Applying to law school was once a logistical headache. You had to get applications from each law school and mail them back individually, along with copies of every transcript and recommendation letter. Just imagine how many follow-up calls this required!
The Law School Admission Council, the organization that creates and administers the LSAT, eventually established a centralized online clearinghouse called the Credential Assembly Service, or CAS.
Now when you apply to law school, the CAS compiles your LSAT scores, transcripts, recommendation letters and applications so you can submit them to law schools securely with the click of a button. Each school is then able to access your CAS report in standardized form.
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While this process is easier than it used to be, CAS can still be confusing. Here are some tips for dealing with the following elements:
— Fees
— LSAT score report
— Transcripts
— Recommendation letters
— Application materials
Fees
The CAS service does not come cheap. The fee is currently $207, plus $45 for each law school to which you apply. This is on top of the fees that law schools charge to evaluate your application, not to mention fees for LSAT registration and transcript requests. The total can easily exceed $1,000.
However, whole or partial fee waivers are available for applicants who demonstrate need with supporting documentation. These waivers may cover the cost of CAS, LSAT registration and even LSAT preparation.
In addition, applicants may receive application fee waivers from individual law schools, either upon request or unsolicited based on their LSAT score and other factors.
LSAT Score Report
This part is easy. Since LSAC manages both the LSAT and CAS, your scores and writing section are automatically recorded and updated instantaneously. You do not have to notify law schools of new LSAT scores.
On the other hand, this automatic score report means that you cannot selectively withhold LSAT scores. If you take the LSAT multiple times or take both the GRE and LSAT, law schools will see all your LSAT scores from the past five years.
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This also means that law schools see when you have a pending LSAT exam. If admissions officers look at your file and see you have signed up for a future test date or are awaiting the results of a recent test, they will wait until receiving that score to consider your application, unless you ask them to proceed without waiting.
Since law school admission is a rolling process, a long delay may hurt your chances.
Before submitting your applications, review your LSAT score report. In the rare event that you see a mistake, contact LSAC.
Transcripts
Make sure to upload all official transcripts from any undergraduate or graduate programs. Yes, this includes college courses that did not count toward your degree, even if you took them in high school. It also includes study abroad programs, unless those grades already appear in your transcript.
For example, while I was studying for the LSAT the summer before my senior year, I took a literature course at a local college, just for fun. I never even checked my grade. I panicked when I realized law schools would see that transcript. It was not as bad as I feared, but it wasn’t great!
Note that your CAS report will include a transcript summarization that calculates several GPAs: a GPA for each institution, a GPA for each year and a cumulative GPA for all undergraduate work. The cumulative GPA is most important, but ultimately law schools will look at your transcript itself to assess your academic performance.
The LSAC provides more specific information online about GPA calculation.
Recommendation Letters
The LSAC will email your recommenders directly with a link for submitting their letters of recommendation, once you provide the contact information for your recommenders and press the button for LSAC to email them. You may also have LSAC send follow-up reminder emails.
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You may indicate whether you waive your right to read the letters. It is wise to do so, to encourage candor and show self-confidence.
One question that consistently confuses applicants is the letter description. This is just to distinguish between letters sent by the same recommender. For example, if you ask a recommender for a generic letter and a school-specific letter, you should label the letter descriptions accordingly so they aren’t mixed up.
Application Materials
After law schools open their applications in September, you can access and submit them through CAS. It is worth reviewing each application carefully, as they may change from year to year.
CAS can be slow and glitchy, so it’s best to copy and paste the prompts and instructions for each school into a separate document or spreadsheet while you’re working on them.
For each application, you may upload your personal statements, resume, optional essays and other written materials. You upload these documents separately for each application, so you can easily tailor your personal statement to a specific school or send a longer personal statement to a school with a higher page limit.
Be sure to label each page of each document with your name and LSAC number and to follow application instructions carefully.
Feel free to start applications at will. Until you submit the application, no documents are transmitted and no fee is required. At any point you can delete the application and start over.
Since LSAC streamlined the application process with CAS, the average number of applications submitted by each applicant to various law schools has increased over time. Clearly, applicants are taking advantage of the ease of electronic submission to broaden their options.
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How to Use the LSAC Credential Assembly Service originally appeared on usnews.com
