ABA 509 Reports Explained
What the ABA Standard 509 report is, why every law school files one, and how LSD.Law uses them as a ground truth for admissions, employment, and financial data.
The ABA (American Bar Association) accredits U.S. law schools. Standard 509 requires every accredited school to publish the same set of facts about itself each year so applicants can compare schools on the same terms.
The Standard 509 Information Report, or "509," is the PDF each school files — admissions, enrollment, employment, bar passage, tuition, and financial aid. It is the public source behind most school-level numbers on LSD.Law.
Read this first
The 509 describes a class that has already enrolled. A school's 2024 report, published December 2024, describes the students who matriculated in fall 2024 and applied during the 2023–2024 cycle. Numbers rarely shift much year to year, so the latest 509 still benchmarks your stats well — just remember you're comparing to students who already have seats, not the applicants you're competing against right now.
Who the class is
The class profile reports the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile LSAT and GPA for students who matriculated — not applicants, not admits. The 50th percentile is what people mean by a school's "median LSAT" or "median GPA" and is the clearest signal of whether you're in range.
Schools also report total applications, offers, and matriculants (which give you acceptance rate and yield), along with breakdowns by age, gender, race and ethnicity, veteran status, and state of residence. GRE scores appear for schools that accept the GRE, though coverage is thinner than LSAT.
What graduates are doing
The employment section reports what graduates are doing ten months after graduation, classified by whether the job required bar passage, whether a JD was an advantage, whether it's full-time and long-term, and employer type (law firm, government, public interest, clerkship, academia, business). Firm jobs are bucketed by firm size, which tracks salary. Jobs funded by the school itself are flagged separately so school-funded fellowships don't inflate the employment rate.
Two schools with similar medians can have very different employment profiles. The 509 is where that gap shows up.
Bar passage
The 509 reports first-time bar passage for each jurisdiction where graduates sat, and ultimate bar passage measured two years out (graduates who fail once but pass later still count). First-time rates reflect how well the school prepares you for the exam; ultimate rates show what share of the class eventually clears the bar.
What it costs
Schools report tuition (resident and non-resident where applicable), fees, and a cost-of-living estimate. They also report grants — what share of the class got scholarships and the 25th/50th/75th percentile grant amounts — so you can see whether a school's sticker price is what most students actually pay.
Conditional scholarships are grants tied to keeping a certain GPA in law school. Schools must disclose how many recipients lost or had their aid reduced after the first year; a high stripped rate means the scholarship was priced off a curve guaranteed to knock some students off. Schools also report average graduating debt for students who borrowed, though this field is sparser and sometimes suppressed.
When it comes out
The ABA releases 509s in stages. Admissions and enrollment tables for a given matriculation year drop that December — the class that started in August 2024 appears in the December 2024 report. Employment and bar passage tables follow the next spring, roughly four years behind admissions, since they measure a cohort that started law school four years earlier and graduated three years after that.
No 509 exists for the cycle you're currently applying in. The most recent report always covers the previous class, which is why LSD.Law layers self-reported applicant data on top of the 509 to show the cycle in motion.
Where to find it on LSD
Every school profile pulls medians, acceptance rate, employment, bar passage, tuition, and grants from the 509 — see reading a school profile for a walk-through of each field. The ABA 509 data table lists every school's admissions and financial figures side by side, and law school trends charts how those numbers have moved over time. The rankings page is a good entry point for browsing.
The 509 has limits. It doesn't publish salary medians (only ranges, often suppressed), it doesn't show how LSAT and GPA are jointly distributed (so you can't read splitter counts off it), and it doesn't explain how schools award scholarships. Self-reported applicant data fills those gaps, cross-checked against 509 aggregates. The 509 also doesn't feed the LSD ranking — that's pure cross-admit, built from where applicants chose to enroll when they had multiple offers.