By Karen Sloan

Oct 8 (Reuters) - The current law school admission cycle kicked off with an 18% surge in people registering to take the LSAT entrance exam — a jump that likely favors schools competing for top talent and suggests increased interest from young people in careers focused on U.S. legal affairs.

Each LSAT administration in the latest cycle — which includes August, September, October and November—has posted increases in either test takers or those registered to take the test, compared with 2023, according to the Law School Admission Council, which develops the LSAT.

August examinees were up 35% while September was up 7%. Registrants for the just-concluded October exam increased 12% over 2023, while 29% more people have signed up to take the LSAT in November. Taken together, that amounts to nearly 22,000 more LSAT registrants than last year at this time.

More LSAT takers should translate into more applicants to law school, said Susan Krinsky, interim president of the council. Most law schools have just opened their applications and early data on how many people have applied won’t be available until later this month.

It’s not clear what is prompting more people to sit for the LSAT right now, Krinsky said, but the upcoming election, recent U.S. Supreme court decisions, and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris’ campaign focus on her career as a prosecutor could all be factors.

“Law school may seem to people to be a way to approach what they are seeing going on in the world — and it is a way to approach it and to understand it and to have an effect,” she said. “One way to change things is to get involved.”

The national law school applicant pool grew 8% in 2017 — an increase some legal experts at the time attributed to Donald Trump's 2016 election.

This year's increase in LSAT takers comes as the U.S. legal sector has begun to add jobs after a four-month slump.

Law schools just wrapped up a fairly strong application season, with applicants up 6% nationwide over the previous year. The spike in August LSAT takers was expected, as that was the first exam without the so-called logic games section.

That portion, which had appeared on the LSAT since 1982, was widely viewed as the most difficult to master. Krinsky said that exam scores held steady between July and August and did not increase after the logic games were eliminated.

Read more:

Law school applicants rose nearly 6% this year

The LSAT is about to get rid of logic games. Who will miss them? None of the above.

(Reporting by Karen Sloan)

((Karen.Sloan@thomsonreuters.com;))