PHILADELPHIA (LN) — A federal judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania dismissed all three antitrust claims against the Law School Admission Council in a putative nationwide class action, holding that the plaintiff's proposed markets were implausibly defined and his monopolization theory fell short — but leaving the door open for a rewrite.
Linvel James Risner paid $510 to the LSAC in the summer of 2022 — $195 upfront and $315 in per-application fees — to apply to seven law schools, and was not permitted to apply by other means. He sued on behalf of a class of similarly situated applicants, alleging that the LSAC and the 197 ABA-approved member law schools that control it conspired to fix application-processing prices and locked out competitors in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.
U.S. District Judge J.F. Murphy held that Risner cleared one significant hurdle: the complaint plausibly alleges concerted action. Drawing on the Supreme Court's American Needle decision, Murphy rejected the LSAC's argument that it was a single entity incapable of conspiring, noting that the member law schools allegedly created the LSAC, elect its entire Board of Trustees, and receive what Risner calls "kickbacks" in the form of grants ranging from $50,000 to over $100,000, and get the LSAC's school-facing enrollment management platform — LSAC Unite — for free. Murphy concluded that a group of competitors' creation of an entity to do their bidding, in a way materially related to the operation and financial success of their respective businesses, is the type of action subject to Section 1, drawing an analogy to division rivals who play on Sundays and law schools competing for the best students.
Murphy also held that Risner has antitrust standing, since he purchased directly from the LSAC.
The complaint fell apart on market definition. Risner proposed two markets: a J.D. education market comprising all American law schools, and a law school application platform market covering the LSAC's platform and those used by the roughly 15 percent of schools that go their own way. Murphy dismissed both as implausibly pled. On the J.D. education market, the court held that lumping together every law school in the country — from top-tier programs to lower-ranked institutions — without addressing interchangeability or cross-elasticity of demand was insufficient, likening the defect to claiming that top-tier Division I football programs are interchangeable with lower-tier ones. The proposed submarkets fared no better, with the complaint leaving the court to speculate about which schools compete with which, how many submarkets exist, and why.
The application platform market failed for a different reason: the complaint's own allegations undermined it. Risner alleged that medical and business school platforms are inadequate substitutes for law school platforms, but elsewhere acknowledged that law school admissions do not pose any unique technical requirements that could not be addressed by experienced vendors serving other professional schools, and used Georgia Tech — which runs the same application software across all its graduate programs — as an example. Murphy held those allegations were irreconcilable, citing the principle that contradictory pleading on market definition may be fatal.
Even setting aside the market definition problem, Murphy applied the Supreme Court's American Express two-sided platform doctrine and held it independently fatal to Count II. The LSAC's platform simultaneously serves applicants — who pay $215 upfront and $45 per application under current pricing — and member law schools, which pay nothing and receive the platform under one-year auto-renewing agreements. The complaint itself described the LSAC as a "middleman" and alleged that competitors would have "no feasible way to access potential customers on either side of the platform." That language, Murphy held, conceded the two-sided structure. Under Amex, a plaintiff challenging a two-sided transaction platform must allege anticompetitive harm across the whole market — not just on one side. Risner's complaint alleged only that applicants were overcharged; the fact that law schools receive the platform for free, Murphy held, is consistent with a rational two-sided pricing strategy, not evidence of anticompetitive harm.
The Section 2 monopolization claim went down for the same market definition failure, and also because Risner did not plausibly allege both supracompetitive pricing and restricted output — the conjunctive showing the Third Circuit requires for direct evidence of monopoly power. Risner argued the test was disjunctive, but Murphy rejected that reading of the circuit's precedent, noting that market power is the ability to raise price profitably by restricting output, so the two elements go hand in hand.
All three counts were dismissed without prejudice, with leave to amend.
According to the complaint, the LSAC has collected $93 million in application fees over the last three years, and in 2025 alone allegedly processed more than 500,000 applications from over 60,000 prospective law students — a 23 percent jump from the prior year — meaning the stakes of any amended complaint will be measured against a market that is still growing.