Making LSAC LawHub a One-Stop Shop for the Legal Education Journey
We’ve come a long way with LSAC LawHub®, the online service LSAC launched early last year to provide LSAT prep tools to candidates. We now have about 100,000 LSAT Prep Plus account holders and more than 2,000 daily active users. From enabling candidates to practice in an authentic LSAT environment to providing a library of previous LSATs to practice with, LawHub has plenty to offer.
But we think there’s even more this platform can do — not just for candidates, but also for law students and people who’ve already earned their degrees. During a recent LSAC webinar for prelaw advisors and law school admission professionals, I was thrilled to join Annmarie Levins, LSAC’s executive vice president and chief strategy officer, to share our vision of where LawHub is going next.
LawHub began as a way to prepare test takers for our move from a paper-and-pencil LSAT to a digital format — after all, if you’re going to take a digital test, you don’t want to practice with a book and a No. 2 pencil! Soon after we launched the platform, though, the pandemic hit, meaning we had to cancel two LSAT administrations. In six weeks, the LawHub team turned the platform into a way to actually administer the LSAT, specifically the LSAT-Flex, and allow about 70,000 candidates to take the exam in the summer of 2020.
It was clear then that the platform could do more than offer test prep to candidates. When people think about law and legal careers, admission is only one step on the journey. And LSAC’s expanded mission seeks to support people along all steps of that journey, from prelaw through practice. In that spirit, we’re planning to broaden our support by expanding the offerings and programming we offer through LawHub, with some content created by LSAC and other pieces produced by our trusted partners.
When it comes to prelaw students, we’ll continue to offer LSAT prep tools, but we’ll also add pre-1L learning opportunities, such as Law School Unmasked™, a series of lectures and panels on topics essential to law school success. We debuted Law School Unmasked this year to more than 1,500 attendees, more than 90% of whom said the event made them feel more confident in their skills and more prepared for law school. We’re also looking at including our Prelaw Undergraduate Scholars (PLUS) programming on the platform.
Another area we’re exploring is a service for reviewing candidates’ personal statements. Many people don’t have access to a prelaw advisor to provide feedback and basic editing for their statements, so we potentially could offer such a service at a below-market rate as a way to level the playing field for this important application component. Finally, we’re looking at noncognitive testing, a way of giving a candidate feedback on where they might fit best in the world of law.
But we want to expand LawHub to appeal to more than just prelaw students. For those already enrolled in law school, we could offer ancillary skills courses, such as in finance or data analytics, that could help students stand out, along with instruction on professional identity and what it means to present oneself as a lawyer. There’s also the possibility of formative assessments that would enable students to gauge how they’re progressing. And we don’t want our support to stop at law school graduation, so we’d also like to offer continuing education, especially in ancillary skills, for those already working in law.
In short, we aim to make LSAC LawHub a one-stop shop for people at all stages of their journey into the world of law. But input from our prelaw and admissions partners is vital for us to make this the best platform possible. Our recent webinar was only the opening of that conversation, and we’re excited to get input from all stakeholders as we think through LawHub’s future in the weeks and months ahead. If you have thoughts about what LawHub should be, don’t hesitate to reach out to the LSAC Ambassadors team at ambassadors@LSAC.org.
