How the LSAC Credential Assembly Service Processes Canadian Transcripts for US Law School Applications

What the Credential Assembly Service actually does

Register for CAS through your LSAC account, then request that every post-secondary institution you ever attended, in Canada or anywhere else, send an official transcript directly to LSAC. This includes CEGEP transcripts, a single exchange semester, or any university you attended briefly and later transferred from, not only your degree-granting institution. See LSAC's Credential Assembly Service page for the current transcript request process and requirements.

How LSAC recalculates your GPA

LSAC does not use the GPA printed on your Canadian transcript. It converts every grade you received to its own standardized scale, so admissions committees compare applicants from different education systems on one consistent number. This conversion usually counts every attempt at a course, including courses you repeated, which pulls your LSAC GPA below the GPA your Canadian university displays, since many Canadian schools only count your most recent attempt in their own official average.

Request your unofficial transcript early and check how many courses you repeated, so the CAS-calculated number does not surprise you close to an application deadline.

Letters of recommendation

Your recommenders upload letters once to your LSAC account, and CAS forwards them to every law school on your list that requires them, so you avoid asking one professor to send the same letter to five separate schools individually. Confirm each target school's exact number of required letters directly with that school, since the requirement is not uniform across schools.

Timeline for Canadian applicants

Order transcripts from Canadian schools well before your first application deadline. Canadian universities often take several weeks to process and send a transcript to LSAC, longer than some US schools. Start the CAS transcript request the same term you start writing personal statements, not after you finish them.

Common issues for Canadian transcripts

• CEGEP transcripts: Quebec applicants request these separately from their university transcript, since CEGEP counts as its own post-secondary institution under LSAC's rules.

• Percentage versus letter grades: some Canadian schools report percentages rather than letter grades, and LSAC's own conversion table handles the translation, so leave the conversion to LSAC rather than doing it yourself first.

• Pass or fail exchange terms: these still need reporting and an official transcript sent, even when the credit did not affect your home GPA.

What CAS does not do

CAS assembles and standardizes your academic record, it does not evaluate, rank, or judge your application in any way. Admissions decisions stay entirely with each law school's own committee. CAS exists purely to save every school from separately collecting and interpreting transcripts from applicants who attended dozens of different institutions across different countries.

Fees to budget for

CAS charges a registration fee to open your file, plus a separate report fee each time you send your CAS report to a law school on your application list. These fees change and LSAC publishes the current amounts directly on its own site, so check the current fee schedule on LSAC's page before you budget for your application season, rather than relying on a figure from a forum or an older source.

Your LSAT score flows into the same file

LSAC administers the LSAT and automatically adds your score to your CAS file once you register for both under the same account, so you do not submit your LSAT score to law schools separately. Register for CAS and the LSAT early in the same cycle so both pieces of your file line up under one account before your first application deadline.

If your Canadian school cannot send transcripts electronically

Some Canadian university registrars only support electronic transcript delivery for certain partner services, or process every request by mail. Check with your registrar's office directly on the fastest option to LSAC, and if only mail delivery is available, add extra weeks to your timeline to account for postal transit on top of the school's own processing time.

Before you request anything

• List every post-secondary school you attended, including a single summer exchange term.

• Confirm each school's transcript request process and typical turnaround time.

• Register for CAS on LSAC's site before you request any transcript, so each one routes to your file correctly.

• Keep copies of every transcript request confirmation, so you can follow up with a registrar's office if LSAC does not show a school on your file within a few weeks.

• Check your CAS file status through your LSAC account regularly during application season, rather than assuming every transcript arrived once you requested it.