Most people think of the Law School Admission Council as the nerds who write the LSAT. The folks that had to be dragged kicking and screaming from forcing another generation to answer questions like “if Peter is taller than Nancy but shorter than Steve, what color is Sally’s shirt?” But a newly filed antitrust class action, looks beyond the LSAT and accuses the organization of skimming fees like it’s running the only ATM in Vegas.
Back in the day, prospective law students took the LSAT and then bundled up their own law school applications. These days, LSAC isn’t just running the test, it’s helpfully operating as the clearinghouse for everyone’s applications. Send in your materials and pick your schools and LSAC tackles the rest.
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Except that process is expensive and, according the the complaint filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, a rent-seeking affair extracting cash from prospective law students by virtue of being the only game in town.
“In 2025, more than 60,000 aspiring law students submitted more than 500,000 applications to law schools,” the complaint begins. “Most paid application fees to schools that cost up to $105 per school.” But wait! This does not include the “Credential Assembly Service,” LSAC’s application clearinghouse. Before the student even gets to the $105 for the school, they have to shell out “a $215 mandatory subscription fee and a $45 per report fee” to LSAC.
Which seems like a lot for something branded as mere “Assembly.” For a typical applicant applying to 10 schools, that’s over $600 straight to LSAC, before a single admissions dean has the chance to passive-aggressively reject you. At least the school is theoretically charging so they can pay those admissions deans several multiples more than the actual faculty. By contrast, $600 feels extreme for a glorified “forward email” button. In fact, undergraduate admissions run on a similar clearinghouse system that charges schools a $2,500 flat fee per year, about 4 bucks per application and a $2.00 payment processing fee — the applicants only pay the school’s own fee.
That’s the sort of apples to apples comparison that raises at least a few competitiveness questions. On the other side of equation, business schools have no clearinghouse at all and while that increases the costs associated with each individual school, the most competitive schools are still only charging around $250 with most coming in far, far lower.
According to its public tax filings, LSAC collected $93 million in Credential Assembly Service fees over just the last three reported years. LSAC boasts around $250 million in net assets and a CEO making over $1 million a year. It seems bold to pay hedge-fund money to forward a resume.
LSAC is a separate legal entity from the Member Law Schools. LSAC has conspired along with the Member Law Schools to fix the price of these fees for its Law School Application Platform. LSAC benefits from the supracompetitive profits it earns from the price-fixed fees, using that to build up more than $250 million in net assets, pay its executives lavishly for a nonprofit, and kickback money to the Member Law Schools.
Applicants have little choice because LSAC runs everything. And since the schools get LSAC’s back-end “Unite” admissions platform for free, they have no incentive to shop around or pass on savings. Everyone wins!
Except, the complaint argues, the applicants.
(Complaint on the next page…)
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.