LSAT Addendum Examples - Write One, or Not?

LSAT Addendum Examples - Write One, or Not?

The question is almost never how big the gap between your scores is. It is whether you can name something that happened, put dates on it, and stop. If you can, the document writes itself in four lines. If you cannot, the strongest version of an LSAT addendum is the one you do not file — and one school in the sample below removes the choice entirely by publishing a number.

Start with the table, then read the first skeleton under it. This page covers the test-score addendum only. The academic version, and what LSAC's 2026 GPA announcement did and did not change, is in the GPA addendum guide; a "yes" to a character-and-fitness question triggers a different document with opposite rules, covered in the two documents both called an addendum; and five annotated addendum examples work through GPA, employment, and education-gap cases with a different set of facts from the three below. All of them are read against the public law school application addendum rubric.

Write one, or don't

Skeleton one: a score difference with a work cause

All three skeletons below are constructed teaching examples written by us. The employers, dates, and scores are invented, describe no real applicant, are attached to no school or outcome, and are not output from any review tool. Each is numbered so the beats are visible: the fact · the dated cause · what changed · what you are and are not asking.

This one is written to Texas Law's optional statement, which invites candidates to establish "that one LSAT or GRE score is more representative than another" (checked September 1, 2026).

Optional statement, Standardized Test Performance: January and June 2026 administrations

1. I scored 154 in January 2026 and 163 in June 2026. Both scores are on my report.
2. From November 3, 2025 to January 16, 2026 my warehouse ran a posted mandatory six-day schedule, and I sat the January administration having completed nine of the sixteen study weeks I had planned.
3. The overtime notice was lifted on January 16 and I studied eleven uninterrupted weeks before the June administration.
4. You ask which score is more representative. The June score is the one I prepared for on the schedule I set; the difference in preparation weeks is the only fact I am adding to the report.

Establishes: one schedule change, fixed by two dates, sitting between two reported administrations — and that the writer has read the prompt they are answering.

Deliberately omits: how tired anyone was, how hard the work was, how many points the schedule was worth. No adjective of severity appears, because two dates do the same job and can be checked.

Length discipline: 104 words. Berkeley's 350-word cap on the closest published document, and LSAC's own "a paragraph or two will be plenty," both sit well above that.

Who actually asks for one

Every sentence below was read on the linked page on September 1, 2026 — except Michigan's, whose page refuses direct automated requests (HTTP 403 to us that day) and was read the same day through a public text-proxy rendering. Of these seven schools, exactly one publishes a numeric trigger, and it makes the document mandatory rather than optional. The rest publish an invitation with no figure attached.

Three details are worth pulling out of the table.

Richmond's is the only number. "More than eight (8) points", and "must". Six of the seven publish no figure at all, which means the widely repeated rule of thumb about a five-point gap is not a rule any of these schools wrote down. The number that matters is the one on your own schools' pages.

NYU and Duke both put the document somewhere specific. NYU attaches it to the personal statement; Duke has a named attachment slot. Filing an addendum into the wrong field is a way of not filing it.

Yale's two sentences belong together. It names test scores as a legitimate subject in the same paragraph that tells you many applicants file none at all. That is the honest frame for this whole genre: the document is available, not expected.

Skeleton two: an interrupted administration

LSAT addendum: testing conditions, August 2026 administration

1. During the August 2026 LSAT the building fire alarm sounded twelve minutes into the third scored section, and the room was evacuated. We resumed forty-six minutes later, after the alarm was cleared.
2. I completed the exam and did not request a rescheduled sitting.
3. I have one reportable score, 158, from that administration, so there is no second sitting to compare it against.
4. I am reporting the interruption because it is a fact about the administration rather than about my preparation, and it is the kind of event the test center can confirm.

Establishes: something that happened to a room, with a start point and a duration, and the administrative fact that the writer did not ask for a do-over at the time.

Deliberately omits: the arithmetic. A writer who says the evacuation cost four points has swapped an observation a reader can weigh for a calculation nobody can perform.

Length discipline: 92 words, and its shortest sentence — the one about not requesting a reschedule — pre-empts the obvious follow-up. How a disruption is even possible depends on how the exam was delivered on your test day, and that has been in flux; our coverage of the LSAT's return to in-person testing has the timeline.

Skeleton three: a retake already in motion

This one is usually not an addendum. Duke publishes the mechanic in plain terms (checked September 1, 2026): "If you are planning to retake the LSAT, and you would like to have your file placed on hold to await the new score, select the test date in Section 8. If you decide to retake the LSAT after you submit the application, notify the Office of Admissions to place your file on hold for the new score." Where a school offers that, use it. Where none is offered, the same four lines can sit in an addendum.

Note to the Office of Admissions: November 2026 administration scheduled

1. My file currently shows one LSAT score, 157, from June 2026.
2. I am registered for the November 2026 administration and have selected that test date in the application.
3. I am not asking that the June score be discounted or set aside.
4. I am writing so the committee knows a second score is on its way and can decide when to read the file.

Establishes: a scheduling fact and a request about timing. Nothing else.

Deliberately omits: a prediction about the second score. A note that promises a number is a note that will be re-read against the number when it arrives.

Length discipline: 63 words, the shortest of the three. If yours runs much longer, check whether the extra sentences are doing work or apologizing.

What an LSAT addendum is not for

Three uses fail reliably, and the full version of this argument is in the guide that splits the two documents. Re-arguing the score: the reader has the report open, so disputing the number spends the document on the only fact already visible. Explaining an increase: a higher second score speaks for itself unless a school invites you to say which one is more representative. A second personal statement: if your addendum has a theme, it has changed genre — themes belong in the law school personal statement, and a reader who finds one here stops trusting the facts around it.

The "giant excuse" problem

One applicant put the fear exactly: "Idk how to not make the addendum feel like a giant excuse." (thread 1vzfcc2, August 27, 2026). It is the right thing to worry about and it has a mechanical answer, not a tonal one.

A document reads as an excuse when its causes have no edges. "A difficult stretch," "everything going on that year," "personal reasons" — none of these can be checked, so a reader has only your framing to work with, and framing is what an excuse is made of. The same document reads as a report when every cause has a start, an end, and a name: a posted schedule from November 3 to January 16; an alarm at twelve minutes and a forty-six-minute delay. Nothing in the second version asks the reader to feel anything.

Two further habits do most of the remaining work. Delete every adjective of severity — the dates already carry the weight, and an adjective invites a reader to disagree with you. And end on the most recent verifiable fact rather than on an interpretation of it. A document that stops at a fact cannot be read as pleading, because it never asks for anything.

One thing this page does not cover: LSAT Writing is a test object, not an essay. It is produced under LSAC's conditions and travels with your score report, and no admissions rubric of ours is built to review it — we do not offer one, and you should be wary of anyone who does.

Getting a second read

Every call in the three annotations above is a reading call, not a knowledge call. Whether the disputed score appears in the first sentence. Whether any adjective of severity survived. Whether the second skeleton stops before the arithmetic. None of them required knowing anything about the writer, which is exactly why they can be handed to someone else.

The public law school application addendum rubric checks that list: whether the first line names the score or administration at issue, whether the cause carries dates, whether the record after it is given, and whether the document stops instead of arguing. Paste the school's own instruction above your draft, because Richmond's mandatory trigger and Yale's "not necessary" are asking for different documents. Two limits are worth stating: a review reads writing, so it cannot confirm a score against a report it has never seen, and it cannot tell you what a committee will do with the page. Two free Quick Reviews are available each day; your first Full Review costs $5 and is typically ready in about 2–3 minutes, and Pro includes ten Full Reviews for $50. Full Reviews include an AI-authenticity check, which is a signal, not proof — a reason to re-read your own sentences, never evidence about anyone's authorship.

Read your school's rule before you run any tool over any part of your application. Authorship, AI, and assistance rules differ school by school, change by cycle, and at least one school names addenda specifically; the certification you sign at submission is the sentence that applies, over any summary including this one. Do not use a review where your school prohibits it, and submit only your own writing. GradPilot reviews writing you already wrote and never drafts replacement prose. The law school AI policy directory holds the published language school by school, and absence of a rule is not permission.

The rest of the file has its own instructions: the school-by-school prompt map is the 2026-27 law school essay prompts crosswalk, the main essay is what our law school personal statement review reads, and the rest of the shelf sits on the law school essays hub.

Before you file

• Does any school on your list publish a number? Richmond does; check the rest yourself rather than assuming.
• Can you name a cause with a start date and an end date? If not, do not file.
• Is the disputed item in the first sentence, in the words the reader is already using?
• Have you avoided saying what the circumstance cost you in points?
• Are you inside the school's published cap, if it publishes one?
• Does the document end on a fact, or on an interpretation of a fact?

---

Sources checked September 1, 2026. Every quotation was transcribed from the page linked below; where retrieval needed a different method, it is recorded.

• University of Richmond School of Law, Apply — reachable only after the site's consent redirect; a plain request returns a content-free page. Page season label: entering Fall 2027.
• Texas Law, Apply
• UC Berkeley School of Law, Ready to Apply (J.D.)
• Yale Law School, Application Components — page updated July 2026
• NYU School of Law, J.D. Application FAQ
• Duke Law School, J.D. Application
• Michigan Law, Apply to the J.D. Program — HTTP 403 to direct requests on September 1, 2026; read the same day through a public text-proxy rendering of the live page, and the method is recorded here rather than implied.
• LSAC LawHub, Addenda to Your Law School Application
• Applicant thread cited by id and date only, one sentence, no username: 1vzfcc2 (August 27, 2026).

Nothing here is legal advice and nothing predicts an admissions outcome. School instructions change by cycle; re-read the page you are applying to before you file anything.