Law School Application Deadlines, Fees, and Early Decision 2026-27, School by School

Law School Application Deadlines, Fees, and Early Decision 2026-27, School by School

Most of the money and almost all of the calendar risk in a J.D. application cycle is decided before you write a word, and the numbers are not the same at any two schools. Of the thirty programs below, checked on September 5, 2026, application fees run from $0 to $90; regular deadlines run from February 5 to July 15; and the early-decision contracts are not one thing at all — one school attaches a published six-figure scholarship to admission, another publishes a nonbinding program it still calls Early Decision, two have abolished the option outright, and one answers the question "is there a deadline to apply Early Decision?" with "There is no deadline to apply Early Decision." Every cell below is quoted or paraphrased from the school's own admissions page on the date shown, with the page linked in the school's name.

This page covers dates, money, and what each early-decision agreement commits you to. What each school asks you to write is a different table: the 2026-27 law school essay prompt crosswalk has the prompts and length caps for sixteen schools, quoted the same way.

What changed for 2026-27

Four things happened between the last cycle and this one that change the arithmetic rather than the advice.

1. The cycle that just closed was the largest in years. LSAC's ABA volume report, run on September 5, 2026 against data received through September 3, 2026, puts enrollment-year-2026 applicants at 82,486 against 76,476 the year before — up 7.9% — with applications at 579,837 against 523,270, up 10.8%. Against two years ago the same report shows applicants up 27.4% and applications up 35.5%. Those are counts for the cycle that ended, not a forecast for the one now open; what they tell you about 2026-27 is that per-school application counts have been climbing, which is why deadlines and rolling-review timing are worth reading closely rather than assuming.

2. The LSAC GPA change everyone was told about is a delay, not a change. On August 18, 2026, LSAC's Susan L. Krinsky wrote: "After careful review, we have decided to delay implementation of the policy until summer 2027, enabling candidates and law schools to adjust to the new policy." For the cycle now open, the operative sentence is: "For the 2026-2027 application cycle, for all applicants with college credits earned in high school, LSAC will continue the policy that has been in place for many years, and calculate the LSAC GPA with their dual enrollment grades included." The exclusion starts with 2027-2028: "Starting with the 2027-2028 application cycle, LSAC will exclude grades from all college credits earned while in high school from the calculation of their LSAC GPA." If you took college classes in high school, your dual-enrolment grades are in your LSAC GPA this cycle. What that means for whether you write an addendum is worked through in the LSAC GPA change and the GPA addendum.

3. The 2026-27 LSAC fee schedule is published and is the larger half of most applicants' bill. For the testing year August 2026 to June 2027: the LSAT, including LSAT Argumentative Writing, is $253; the Credential Assembly Service subscription is $219; each CAS Law School Report is $45; LSAT Score Preview is $46 if you sign up before testing and $87 after.

4. Free applications are no longer rare. Cornell states plainly that it is "waiving our traditional $80 application fee for all applicants this year" and that "There is no need to request a code." WashU publishes "a $0 application fee for all." Florida writes: "In an effort to make the application process more accessible to all, there is no fee to apply to UF Law." Berkeley charges nothing for its early-decision application specifically. Those four facts alone move a twelve-school budget by more than $200.

How to read the table

• Quoted where it matters. Where a cell carries a date, a dollar figure, or a binding commitment, the school published it in those terms on September 5, 2026. The operative sentences are listed under the table.
• "Not published" means the school's own admissions pages do not state it, not that no rule exists. Several schools keep their fee, their prompts, or their exact deadline inside the LSAC form. Read the form.
• "Not retrieved" means the school's website refused our request on September 5, 2026. Michigan and Virginia both did. Their rows are left empty rather than filled from a copy of last cycle's text, and their links still work in a browser.
• The AI column reports one thing only: whether the school publishes a J.D. admissions rule about artificial intelligence. Five of the thirty do. For the rest the honest entry is "none on record (checked September 5, 2026)" — absence of a published rule is not a permission, and the certification you sign inside the LSAC application governs regardless of what the website says.

The 2026-27 J.D. cycle: 30 programs

The sentences behind the columns

Quoted from each school's own page on September 5, 2026.

• Yale. "Yale Law School will open its application for the Class of 2030 on September 1, 2026, and applications can be submitted beginning on October 1, 2026." · "Applications must be submitted by no later than February 15, 2027." · "The application fee is waived automatically for those applicants who have received an LSAC fee waiver."
• Stanford. "Please note that our fee waiver criteria and process are distinct from that of LSAC." Stanford runs its own form and quotes a five-to-seven-business-day turnaround.
• Harvard. "The J.D. application deadline is February 5, 2027 at 11:59 p.m. ET." · "The HLS Fee Waiver Request Form for those applying for Fall Term 2027 enrollment will open on September 1 and will close on February 1. We cannot accommodate any fee waiver requests made outside of this window." That window closes four days before the deadline itself.
• Chicago. "Admission through the Early Decision program is binding on the applicant." · "If you have an LSAC fee waiver, you do not need to fill out the form."
• Columbia. "Candidates applying on an Early Decision basis commit themselves to matriculate at Columbia if admitted."
• Penn. "Application fee in the amount of $85.00 or an approved Penn Carey Law or LSAC fee waiver." · "LSAT/Credential Assembly Service Fee Waiver recipients; members and alumni of AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, Teach For America; and active members and veterans of the United States Military receive automatic application fee waivers."
• Duke. "Application fee waivers are offered one-time-only. Submit your request no later than 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time on February 15, 2027. We are unable to waive LSAC fees." · AI: "All writing samples must be your own work. This means that the ideas and expressions originated with you, and you wrote all drafts and the final product without the assistance of generative artificial intelligence. It does not preclude asking family members, friends, pre-law advisors, and others for proofreading assistance or general feedback."
• Berkeley. "Berkeley Law's early decision program is binding." · "If you are admitted, you automatically will receive a $120,000 merit scholarship, split evenly over the three years (six semesters) while at Berkeley Law." · "There is no application fee for the early decision program." · "we will automatically waive your Berkeley Law application fee if you receive a LSAC fee waiver." One caution: the same page states "The deadline to submit either fee waiver application is 5pm PT on January 1, 2026" — a date that has already passed for a fall 2027 cycle. Treat the fee-waiver deadline as unsettled and email the office rather than working to that line.
• Northwestern. "Applicants admitted through the ED program and who begin the three-year JD program in August 2027 will receive a $135,000 merit scholarship, split evenly over the three years of their legal education." · "Northwestern Pritzker Law's ED program is binding." · "Completion of an online video interview is a requirement for ED applicants."
• Cornell. "We are waiving our traditional $80 application fee for all applicants this year! ... There is no need to request a code for a fee waiver."
• Georgetown. "Georgetown Law grants merit- and need-based fee waivers on a case-by-case basis. Please note that we cannot grant fee waivers for the Credential Assembly Service (CAS)." · "applicants who used a fee waiver in the previous admissions cycle are not eligible to receive a waiver." · AI: "While you can (and should) receive and incorporate feedback on drafts, the only person who may be engaged in the actual writing is you. Friends, family members, advisors, etc. – whether real or artificial – are not applying to Georgetown Law – you are."
• UCLA. "Applications for Fall 2027 will be available through the LSAC online application service on September 1, 2026. Applications will be due by February 1, 2027." · AI: "The use of any artificial intelligence tools to assist in the completion of this application is prohibited."
• Texas. "Successful candidates will automatically receive a competitive scholarship award over the course of their three years. The amounts will be aligned with our scholarship giving as under our Regular Decision program. Nonresident students will also automatically receive resident tuition during their time at Texas Law."
• Vanderbilt. "All fee waivers for the 2026-27 application cycle will expire on December 31, 2026." · "All candidates accepted under Binding Early Decision will receive an annual scholarship."
• WashU. "WashU Law boasts a $0 application fee for all." · "Is there a deadline to apply Early Decision? There is no deadline to apply Early Decision."
• USC. "Fee Waivers for the 2026-2027 application cycle for regular decision applications will be reviewed beginning August 28, 2026. We will not accept application fee waiver requests after our February 1, 2027 priority application deadline." · AI: "We expect that the written portions of the application reflect your own experiences, ideas, and perspectives. While you may use tools (including artificial intelligence) for editing or guidance, the final content should authentically reflect you."
• Notre Dame. "NDLS eliminated the Early Decision Application as an effort to promote a more inclusive admission process and remove the financial barriers and anxiety around such a program." · "All fee waivers expire on March 1."
• UNC. "The application, required statements, resume, and any other attachments to the application through LSAC must be submitted by May 1." · AI: "The UNC School of Law Office of Admissions prohibits the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools (Gen AI Tools) in order to draft and generate substantive content with respect to application materials submitted to Carolina Law."
• Wisconsin. "The Early Decision program is binding – applicants must commit themselves to matriculating at Wisconsin if they are admitted through the Early Decision Program, and may not be an Early Decision candidate at any other school during the same admi[ssions cycle]."
• Ohio State. "Candidates must agree that if admitted to Ohio State under the Early Binding Decision Option, they will withdraw their applications from all other law schools."
• Florida. "Binding Decision applications are reviewed on the same rolling timeline as Regular Decision candidates. Binding Decision is not an Early Decision program."
• Baylor. "2027 Applications (Spring, Summer, and Fall) opened on August 1, 2026." Baylor is the only program here that lists an "Early Decision (Non-Binding)" track.

What a twelve-school list costs, with the arithmetic

Take a twelve-school list drawn from the table: Yale, Harvard, Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Penn, Duke, Berkeley, Georgetown, UCLA, Texas, Cornell.

Paying full freight.

• LSAT, one registration: $253
• Credential Assembly Service subscription: $219
• CAS Law School Reports, 12 × $45: $540
• Application fees: $85 (Yale) + $90 (Harvard) + $90 (Chicago) + $85 (Columbia) + $85 (NYU) + $85 (Penn) + $85 (Duke) + $75 (Berkeley) + $90 (Georgetown) + $75 (UCLA) + $70 (Texas) + $0 (Cornell) = $915
• Total: $253 + $219 + $540 + $915 = $1,927

Notice the shape of that number. The school fees are less than half of it. $1,012 of $1,927, just over half, is owed to LSAC, not to any law school, and it barely moves whether you apply to eight schools or twelve, because the LSAT and CAS charges are fixed and only the $45-per-report line scales.

The same list with a Tier 1 LSAC fee waiver. Tier 1 covers two LSATs, the five-year CAS subscription, LawHub Advantage, and six law school reports.

• LSAT and CAS: covered, -$472
• Reports: six covered, six not, 6 × $45 = $270
• School fees waived by a published automatic rule for LSAC waiver holders — Yale, Harvard, Chicago, NYU, Penn, Berkeley: -$510
• Cornell: already $0
• School fees still owed unless a discretionary request is granted — Columbia $85, Duke $85, Georgetown $90, UCLA $75, Texas $70: $405
• Total if no discretionary request is granted: $270 + $405 = $675. Total if all five are granted: $270.

So on this list the waiver is worth between $1,252 and $1,657, and the last $405 of it turns entirely on five separate requests to five separate offices, each with its own form, window and evidence rule. That is the part of the cycle that rewards a calendar.

The fee-waiver mechanics that decide that number

LSAC publishes two tiers, and which one you land in changes the count of free reports, not just the discount. Tier 1 is "Two LSATs (including LSAT Argumentative Writing and LSAT Score Preview)", a "Five-year Credential Assembly Service (CAS) subscription", a one-year LawHub Advantage subscription, and "6 law school reports". Tier 2 is "One LSAT", the same five-year CAS subscription, a one-year LawHub Advantage subscription, and "3 law school reports". Eligibility runs on federal poverty guidelines: independent applicants at "Up to 235%" for Tier 1 and "235 to 260%" for Tier 2; dependent applicants, counting combined household income, at "Up to 200%" and "200 to 300%". A waiver is "valid for two years from the date of LSAC's Conditional Approval", decisions arrive "within two to five business days" once documentation is in, and supporting documents are due "no later than 45 days" after you apply.

LSAC is careful about the next step, and so should you be: "Some law schools waive their application fee for applicants who have received a Fee Waiver." Some. Not all. The table above shows what that word is doing — Yale, Harvard, Chicago, NYU, Penn, Berkeley and Vanderbilt publish an automatic waiver for LSAC waiver holders; Duke wants an email with documentation; Emory grants a need-based waiver only if LSAC granted one first; Georgetown decides case by case and will not do it twice; Texas, Georgia, Columbia, Ohio State, Iowa and Northeastern publish no route at all on the pages we could read.

Three deadline traps are worth writing down, because none of them is the application deadline:

• Vanderbilt's fee waivers "expire on December 31, 2026" — four months before its April 1 regular deadline.
• Notre Dame's expire March 1, the same day as its application deadline, which leaves no room for a late request.
• USC stops accepting waiver requests after February 1, 2027, its priority deadline, while still accepting applications until April 1.

And two rules about asking rather than paying: Duke's waivers are "offered one-time-only", and Georgetown will not grant one to an applicant who used a Georgetown waiver in the previous cycle. Reapplicants should assume last cycle's waiver is spent.

What to do with this before you write anything

Three passes, in this order.

One: sort your list by the money clock, not the deadline clock. Fee-waiver windows close earlier than applications, sometimes by months, and the LSAC waiver has to be approved before school waivers keyed to it can fire. If you intend to apply for an LSAC waiver, that is the first date in your cycle, not the last.

Two: decide the early-decision question on the contract, not the label. The word "binding" is doing very different work across these thirty programs. Berkeley and Northwestern publish a specific merit award attached to admission. Texas publishes an automatic scholarship plus resident tuition for nonresidents. Vanderbilt publishes an annual scholarship without a figure. Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgia, Ohio State, USC, Wisconsin, Emory, Northeastern, BU and UCLA publish a binding commitment with no scholarship attached to it in the text. Baylor's is nonbinding, and Florida's binding option is explicitly not an early-decision program. Two schools — Notre Dame and UNC — have no early option at all, and Notre Dame says why. Read the agreement PDF each school links; that document, not the marketing page, is what you sign. Where an offer would be binding before you see a financial-aid package, several of these schools say so in plain terms; Cornell's FAQ, for instance, states outright that the binding process requires the deposit before aid notification.

Three: only then look at the writing. Once the list is fixed, the number of distinct documents is fixed too, and it is usually smaller than it looks: the long statement is reusable at most of the sixteen schools in the prompt crosswalk, and the real work is the required short pieces. Yale's 250-word essay, Duke's required short answer, Stanford's 250-word response and Georgetown's optional 250-word menu are separate drafting jobs, not trims of the statement. The prompt crosswalk sets out who asks for what, and the law school essays hub covers the rest of the shelf — perspective statements, addenda, why-school essays, letters.

When you have a draft of any of those, a law school personal statement review reads it against the rubric for that specific document — the personal statement and why-school rubrics ask different questions of the same paragraph. It is a reading of the draft you have, not a prediction about any admissions outcome.

One last thing this table cannot do for you: every school here asks you to certify something about your own application, and several ask about artificial intelligence specifically. Five publish a sentence on the web; the rest keep it in the form. The certification you sign is the rule that binds, whatever a website says or does not say. If you want the per-school picture we maintain, it is at the law school AI policy lookup.

Sources

All pages checked September 5, 2026.

• LSAC — LSAT and CAS fees, 2026-2027 testing year · LSAC fee waiver tiers and eligibility · ABA volume summary, data through September 3, 2026 · "Providing More Time for Schools and Candidates to Adjust to the LSAC GPA Changes," August 18, 2026
• Yale Law School — application process and application components
• Stanford Law School — J.D. application process
• Harvard Law School — J.D. application components
• University of Chicago Law School — application requirements, apply early decision, fee waivers
• Columbia Law School — apply and early decision
• University of Pennsylvania Carey Law — how to apply
• NYU School of Law — admissions information and instructions
• Duke Law — J.D. degree programs
• University of Michigan Law School — applying to the J.D. program (refused automated retrieval)
• University of Virginia School of Law — J.D. application process (refused automated retrieval)
• Berkeley Law — ready to apply
• Northwestern Pritzker School of Law — applying and early decision program
• Cornell Law School — J.D. FAQ
• Georgetown Law — dates and deadlines, application requirements, application fee waivers, J.D. admissions FAQ
• UCLA School of Law — first-year J.D. applicants and fee waiver
• Texas Law — apply and early decision admissions
• Vanderbilt Law School — J.D. admissions and binding early decision
• WashU Law — J.D. program application
• USC Gould School of Law — J.D. application and dates and deadlines
• Notre Dame Law School — apply, fee waiver application, J.D. FAQ
• UNC School of Law — J.D. applicants and admissions FAQs
• University of Georgia School of Law — dates and deadlines, early decision process, standard admissions process
• University of Wisconsin Law School — J.D. applications and application procedures
• Ohio State Moritz College of Law — apply to the J.D. program and early binding decision option
• University of Florida Levin College of Law — J.D. admissions
• Northeastern University School of Law — first-year J.D. applicants
• Boston University School of Law — application instructions and dates, deadlines and fees
• Emory University School of Law — J.D. apply and J.D. FAQs
• University of Iowa College of Law — J.D. admissions
• Baylor Law — dates and deadlines

Minnesota, George Washington, Fordham, Boston College and Arizona State were in scope for this table and are not in it: their admissions pages refused automated retrieval or published their application details client-side on September 5, 2026. They will be added when their pages can be read and quoted the same way as the rest.