Harvard Law to Drop Application Fee, Streamline Process for Junior Deferral Program

"Harvard Law School is eliminating the application fee for college juniors applying to the Law School through its Junior Deferral Program, the school announced Wednesday.

The JDP allows college juniors to apply to Harvard Law School under the condition that, if accepted, they defer their admission for at least two years and pursue meaningful work or study in the interim. Students who are rejected from the program may speak with a Law School admissions officer about their application to receive feedback.

Law School Assistant Dean for Admissions Kristi L. Jobson ’06 said the Law School’s JDP program will streamline its application by dropping the $85 application fee and hosting its own application outside of the Law School Admission Council’s website." …

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/11/14/hls-jdp-admissions-fee-dropped/

The 3 reader comments after the article in The Crimson are interesting.

I do not understand the point of this program. Work experience makes sense for MBA students, but much less so for law students. Maybe work in a biglaw paralegal program for two years can be justified for both student & employer, but I doubt any non-law related employer would want to invest any resources in students who are almost certain to leave within 2 years & not return.

Does the deferral program prohibit fulltime attendance in a graduate school program ?

Harvard’s JDP suggests that work experience is irrelevant to one’s law school career as they are accepting students without any evaluation of the actual future work experience. (This aspect is equally disturbing with respect to those deferred admittees to elite MBA programs.)

I think it is really clear. If you go back in time to see the original rationale for the early admission program, it was to encourage apps from…

Hint-hint.

No.

btw: Personally, I believe that work experience is valuable for any professional school, including law school. Yeah, I get that many are KJD, but how much richer is the education (and discussion) of someone who has been paying rent for 2+ years (and taking a real estate course) or making a car payments which gets into an accidents (Torts?) vs. just living on mommy’s dime?

Despite the snarky comment, I still do not see the point of this program. Clearly, the goal is to increase applications, but the justification asserted seems weak at best.

With respect to class discussion while in law school, paying rent & making car payments would add little insight to any law school discussion in property or torts.

Did you really discuss car payments & paying rent in your law school classes ?

Regardless of the (speculative) reason for the work experience requirement, HLS and other top law schools have been moving that way for years (ignoring Northwestern which has had a work experience requirement for awhile). In last year’s class, 78% of HLS matriculants were at least one year out. 61% were two years out. As another example, Columbia Law reports that 71% of their entering class was 1 at least year post BS/BA.

As work experience is becoming more common, the Law faculties must see value in it, (or perhaps using work experience as a proxy for greater maturity?).

from the Dean:

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/9/13/law-school-work-experience/

I agree that post undergraduate work experience prior to entering law school is helpful with respect to maturity level of law students, but not necessary.

With the downturn in applications to law schools over the past 8 or 9 years, new methods of attracting applicants is a primary concern of law schools today.

Under the guise of affordability of making a law school application to Harvard Law School, the new program waives the application fee & waives the requirement that applicants apply through the LSAC’s Credential Assembly Service. Still considered a “pilot program”, HLS admissions officer Jobson said in a September 30, 2019 interview that Harvard Law School will not release the individual admissions data for the program at this time.

A very quick google search yielded these articles:

The Law School Brain Drain Continues To Wreak Havoc : Fewer Applicants On Top Of Horrible LSAT Scores (surge in apps to law schools by those with sub-150 LSAT scores)

The Best Law Schools Are Attracting Fewer Students

Law School Drops Application Fee To Increase Student Interest

The good news is that fewer top applicants/scores means more tax-free merit money from ‘lesser’ schools. Law schools used to be cash cows, only offering some merit aid to the tippy top students to keep them from paying sticker at a higher ranked school. But, LS apps plummeted with the '08/'09 recession, and to keep up their medians, even the top of the T14 started awarding merit money to a lot more students. (exudes HYS since those three offer only need-based aid.)

Definitely not necessary, but all professional schools are going that way. (Which is a good thing, IMO.)

Perhaps a small part of that direction is that the word has gotten out that GPA+LSAT matter above all else, so completing senior year (with all A’s to raise the GPA) and retaking the LSAT after graduation – with plenty of time to prep – is a smart move for many applicants. The LSAT is a very learnable test. Too bad they are dropping the Logic Games since that is the easiest section to learn with focused prep.

Why are the dropping the games section? That’s the section that made the LSAT different from other grad school exams and actually tests higher level logic.

^^dropping the LG as a result of a legal settlement with a visually-challenged test taker.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/10/us/lsat-blind-people-trnd/index.html