July 26, 2019

Don't Dox Yourself

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Don't Dox YourselfSpivey Consulting Group

I almost beg this of you. Please do not post identifiable information online associated with your law school application ever. It costs multiple people admission every year.

Here is an example, because it can start off in the most benign of ways. You post your info on Reddit — say, 3.9, 168, non-URM from a large state school, and your softs include professional baseball in single and double A for 3 years. "Chance me everyone!" Four months later, having entirely forgotten about that, you are discussing waitlist and scholarship information. "Well, I'm on hold at Princeton Law, and I think I will get admitted, but I'm just going to use them for scholarship negotiation leverage anyway, I'm not going to Princeton Law because I plan to practice in CA."

Some Princeton Law admissions officer happens to be reading files all day, with the day blocked off, and has some downtime. The search "Princeton" on the law school admissions Reddit, see your post, then start looking through your post history. "Oh look, that is that person's file we were about to admit. Oh well, deny." Sure, you didn't want to go to PLS. But you do want to get admitted there. It always favors the applicant to get admitted to as many schools as possible that you apply to. And this is just a benign example. I have plenty of worse ones that have cost people their dream school.

As an FYI, if you want go post something about yourself generally, all you have to do is change one variable and it messes up the sleuthing process, because no one has time to figure out false positives. As a second FYI, I have no idea if I used the word "dox" correctly – but I hope this sticks and helps some.

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Mike Spivey

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