How Law Schools Read a Record With More Than One LSAT Score

When you apply through LSAC's Credential Assembly Service, LSAC combines your transcripts, recommendations, and other documents with your LSAT results and forwards one report to each school. The LSAT portion lists every reportable result, up to 12, and LSAC is explicit that results include cancellations and absences as well as scores.

Reportable means earned in the current testing year or any of the five before it. Testing years run from July 1 through June 30, and LSAT results from before July 2021 are no longer reported to schools at all. If you want those older numbers for your own records, LSAC sells an Official Candidate LSAT Score Report, but schools do not see them.

Each reported score comes with two companions. One is a percentile rank based on the previous three testing years, refreshed every year by the end of July. The other is a score band, discussed below.

The practical consequence for a retaker is that the report shows your history in full. There is no option to send only your best result, so the planning question is not how to hide an earlier score but how to make the next one strong enough that the overall record reads well.

This is the heart of the matter, and LSAC addresses it directly on its retake page. LSAC advises law schools that a candidate's average LSAT score is the best predictor of ability. In the same breath it acknowledges that some schools give more weight to a candidate's highest score, and that each school sets its own approach.

So there is no single rule to plan around. A school that leans on the average will see a retake gain diluted by the earlier result. A school that leans on the highest will mostly look past the earlier number. LSAC's advice is to contact the schools you are interested in, and that is worth doing in writing, because admissions pages do not always say.

LSAC reports each score with a band because, in its words, a score is an estimate of proficiency rather than a perfect measurement. The band is built from the standard error of measurement, and LSAC says your true proficiency is unlikely to sit more than a few points above or below the score you received.

That has a practical meaning for a retaker. A retake that lands a point or two above the first result may read to a reader as roughly the same performance. A result clearly above the top of your earlier band tells a more convincing story of real improvement. When you set a target for the next test, set it far enough above the first score that the change is unmistakable.

Law schools approved by the American Bar Association publish admissions data about their entering classes, and the conventions behind those published figures are set outside LSAC. Those reporting conventions can influence how much weight a particular school puts on your best score compared with your full record, which is one reason schools differ.

This guide relies on LSAC's published material and does not restate the ABA's rules. If the distinction matters to your strategy, read a school's own admissions pages or ask its admissions office how it treats multiple scores in its evaluation. Keep the question specific, for example whether a new score will be reviewed if it arrives after your file is complete.

A canceled test shows up as a cancellation, not as a number. LSAC's Score Preview FAQ says a cancellation made through Preview is recorded as a Candidate Cancel, the same way an ordinary cancellation is. Schools learn that you tested and chose not to keep the result; they do not learn what the result was.

Absences appear too, even though they do not count toward LSAC's test-taking limits. A single cancellation or absence on an otherwise steady record usually needs no comment. Several of them in a row can invite the question of what happened, so it helps to register only when you mean to test.

Most retakers do not need to explain anything. A higher second score explains itself. An addendum becomes worth considering when a gap between scores is large, when a lower score came later, or when a documented event such as illness or a disrupted test session plausibly affected one result.

LSAC's application requirements page gives a similar instinct about grades, advising applicants to comment on irregular grade trends. The same spirit applies to test history. If you do write something, check each school's instructions on whether it accepts addenda and follow them.

Since you cannot control which reading a school uses, the only fully dependable move is to make the new score clearly better. LSAC's retake page reports that second-time takers in the same testing year gain 2 to 3 points on average, while some hold steady or drop. A gain well above that average is what changes how a mixed record reads.

Use LawHub's official PrepTests to measure progress. To add targeted practice between those tests, RetakePrep's study plan ranks your weakest question families and asks for 20 minutes a day, with daily 20-question drills and an explanation after each answer.