Law School Deadlines for Fall 2027: What to Submit and When

Every law school deadline is a limit on how late you can be, not a recommendation about when to apply. Because most ABA schools review files as they complete rather than in a single batch at the deadline, the date on the website tells you very little about when your file will actually be read. A February 15 deadline and a September 15 submission are not equivalent applications, and treating them as equivalent is the most expensive mistake in this process.

The T14 table for fall 2027

These are the schools most applicants treat as the top tier, with their published binding Early Decision and Regular Decision dates. Dates move between cycles — confirm on the school's own page before relying on any of them.

Published terms for the fall 2027 cycle. Several schools publish estimates rather than confirmed dates, and Chicago in particular labels its calendar as subject to change.

Cornell is the outlier in the other direction. Its binding deadline is January 1, unusually late, and its final regular deadline is July 1 — the latest in this group. Cornell strongly encourages a March 1 submission, and treating July 1 as a real option is a mistake: files completed in June compete against a class that is largely full.

Last usable LSAT sitting per round

This is where deadlines and the test calendar intersect, and where most planning errors happen. Scores release about three weeks after the administration, so the last sitting you can use is set by the score release date rather than the test date.

Berkeley accepts the November 11–14 administration for its November 16 BED deadline. Cornell takes an LSAT as late as November for its January 1 binding round.

The full administration calendar, with registration deadlines for each, is in our LSAT registration guide. Note that there is no December or March administration, which is what makes the October and January sittings the two decisive ones.

The windows that actually matter

If you internalize nothing else from the deadline tables, make it these three bands.

1. September to November — where admission and aid are decided

   Complete files arriving in this window compete against the full applicant pool rather than its remnants. Where binding ED exists, this is the only window that matters, since the deadline is fixed. For schools without ED, applying in September or October costs nothing and positions you at the front of the review queue.

2. December to mid-January — viable but diminished

   Seats remain and offers still come, but the remaining pool is smaller and the waitlist rate rises. Scholarship money is noticeably tighter because the most generous awards were made earlier. Some applicants deliberately accept this trade if their target school's priority deadline falls here — Vanderbilt, for example, runs on an April 1 rolling basis rather than a February deadline.

3. Late January onward for a T14 — expect a waitlist

   Submitting in the last three weeks before a February 15 deadline is legally fine and practically poor. Berkeley states the strongest window for both admission and scholarship consideration is September through mid-November. If you are considering a late T14 submission, you are choosing the waitlist, and you should plan for that outcome rather than being surprised by it.

Priority versus final deadlines

Many programs publish two dates, and the difference is not cosmetic. A priority deadline usually governs when a file is considered for merit scholarship review. A final deadline is the point after which the school will accept nothing.

Cornell is explicit: March 1 priority, July 1 final, with a strong recommendation to submit by March 1. Georgetown strongly recommends March 2, which is shared with its regular decision. Where a school publishes both, treat the priority date as the real deadline unless its page says otherwise. Our nine years of ABA data show why: as application volume rises and offer volume stays flat, the marginal applicant arriving later faces a materially worse pool — the national offer rate moved from 42.3 percent in 2015 to 26.3 percent in 2025, and the compression was steepest at the most selective tier. See our analysis of acceptance rate trends.

Scholarship timing is a related trap. UCLA's binding ED carries explicit scholarship consideration; Northwestern publishes a guaranteed scholarship commitment for ED admits; Vanderbilt's ED carries a minimum annual award. Where early decision has no financial upside attached, you are giving up leverage for speed alone — which is a defensible choice when the school is genuinely your first choice, and a poor one otherwise.

If you are an international applicant

The deadline structure is not different for international applicants, but the consequences of submitting late are worse, because the post-admission steps take longer and some of them sit outside your control.

• Being admitted triggers an I-20, then a visa appointment, then a visa issuance. None of those are instant, and consulates in some countries have long appointment backlogs.
• Some schools set earlier document deadlines for international applicants even when the application deadline matches everyone else's.
• Financial certification for the I-20 is a post-admission step, so it does not delay your application — but discovering late that a document takes three weeks to obtain will.
• The practical version of all this: aim to have files complete by December even when the formal deadline is later, and start your visa paperwork the day you receive an admission.

Three mistakes worth avoiding

The recurring failures are all forms of treating the deadline as the target.

1. "Submitting on February 15 is the same as submitting in October." Under rolling review it is not — the earlier file competes against the whole pool, and the later one against what is left.
2. "Submitting the application completes it." A submitted application with an ungenerated CAS report cannot be reviewed. This is the single most common reason a file stalls.
3. "A January LSAT is fine for a February 15 deadline." It is acceptable by rule and poor by strategy, because the score arrives twelve days before the deadline into a review process that is already well advanced.

Check where your own targets actually fall before building a calendar. Some of your list may have no early decision at all, which removes the November deadline entirely and makes rolling admission the only timing factor that matters — earlier is still better, but for a different reason. You can see admission rates and volume across all 196 programs in our school database, and check your numbers with the free score calculator.

Questions we get asked

Deadlines, Early Decision terms, and last-accepted-test cutoffs are set by individual schools and change between cycles; several schools publish estimates rather than confirmed dates. Everything above reflects what schools had published for the fall 2027 cycle as of October 2026. Confirm on each school's own admissions page before building a calendar, and treat the school site as authoritative over any third-party list. LSAT® is a registered trademark of the Law School Admission Council, which does not review or endorse this site. This article is educational and is not legal or admissions advice.