Frequently Asked Questions
Why does LSData exist?#
Short answer: because applying to law school sucks. It's opaque and frustrating.
Long answer: Dinan went to a state school and saw gross disparities in access to information when he was applying to Harvard Law School. When working with Harvard undergrads, Jarron realized that even at a place like Harvard College, access to information isn’t a given. Together they realized that a single place to access information would improve everyone’s experience when applying to law school.
Where do you get all this data from?#
Most data on LSData is user reported. Some information is pulled from ABA 509 reports.
Do you vet or verify the data?#
Generally speaking, no. The system runs on good faith and the belief that there is little incentive to lie when your data is semi-anonymized and aggregated. Obvious errors such as reporting decision dates in the future, or an acceptance to YLS with a 120 LSAT are sometimes fixed.
Can schools see that LSData checked my status?#
Yes, but they don't care. Adcoms have better things to do than creep your refresh count.
Can you add ____ to LSData?#
We are constantly working to add new content, and you can request new capability here. You don’t even need a fully fledged idea, if something just annoys you about the law school process let us know and we will think about how to solve it for you and for future law schoolers.
Are there things you have no intention of adding regardless of how many people ask for it?#
Yes, but we will try to keep this updated with those things and our rationale.
Things we don't plan to add:#
DMs#
There are currently no plans to add DMs to LSData. Reasons include: abuse concerns, lack of desire to turn LSData into a social network, technically boring to implement, limited utility over existing chatrooms. Our goal is for LSData to be a place that increases transparency around law school. DMs don’t really encourage that mission.
How does LSData make money?#
A few ways. First, we charge (or will once we launch) for access to our briefs. Second, most of the links to external sites are sponsored meaning that we get paid when you click on them and then buy/borrow/whatever, but we take pride in the fact that this never affects our rankings.
You offer a lot of tools for free, do you sell my information#
No. You might be thinking about the quote 'If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.' This is true when companies ‘have investors’ and ‘work to make money.’ Fortunately, neither of these things describes us. We are driven first by passion to serve law school applicants and students and if we can make money in the process awesome.