If you’ve taken the LSAT and you have not decided to stop applying to law school, then the next problem facing you is dealing with the LSDAS.

What the hell is the LSDAS?

The LSDAS is an online service provided by the LSAC.  The LSAC is the Law School Admissions Council, and “LSDAS” stands for Law School Data Assembly Service.  Weirdly, the LSDAS is referred to as the “credential assembly service” despite the fact that there is no ‘C’ in the acronym. If you want to apply to law school, you’ll have to deal with the LSAC and the LSDAS because they pretty much have the process locked down.  Most schools “require” that you use the LSDAS.  I’ve quoted the word require because various attorneys have advised me that I can send in a paper application to any and all of those schools that say it is required.  If you’re feeling brave, feel free to find out and let me know.

Regardless of this seemingly bad advice, you will certainly have needed to set up your LSAT test date through the LSAC.  Use the same website to sign up for the LSDAS.  The cost is somewhere above $121, depending of course on which fees they decide to charge you.

Why should I use the LSDAS?

The answer is that you’re gonna save a lot of time.  You have to get between one and three letters of recommendation, a personal statement, your LSAT scores, any and all college transcripts, and any other random written pieces that the school wants to see into one place.  Without the LSDAS, you would have to get each of your recommendation writers to send a letter to each of the schools you’re applying to.  You would have to send off the same number of personal statements.  You would also have to pay your school for that number of transcripts.  In addition, the LSAC would have to send your LSAT scores anyway.

Instead of wasting a ton of your time, the LSDAS will let you deal with it all at once.  You just have to get your rec writers to send one letter to the LSDAS.  Your transcript and personal statement only need to go once as well.  When everything is together, including the LSAT score that the LSAC automatically adds to your LSDAS account, you just tell the LSDAS which schools get which recommendations, etc. and sit back while the Internet delivers everything.   They even have a form that you fill out so that they can automatically fill in most of the fields on the application forms provided by each school that uses the LSDAS.

If this doesn’t seem convenient enough, many schools waive their application fees for applicants who use the LSDAS.  As far as one could tell from the available facts, the LSDAS saves everybody money.

When should I sign up for the LSDAS?

Setting everything up takes about a month.  I’d say that you should get started earnestly on the process at least one month before you want to have applications in to the schools you’re applying to.  Be careful not to get started too soon though.  Many schools do not offer applications for the next academic year until after the current one has started.  for example, you won’t be able to start filling out applications for the fall of 2011 until after the applications are available at some point in the fall of 2010.  I ran into this problem and it became frustrating.  Because of the way that the LSDAS collects your data, you won’t be able to get much done within your LSDAS account before applications are being offered for the year you’d like to apply for.

Good Luck!

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