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This week, we're re-releasing a 2021 episode of Status Check with Spivey that is more relevant to our listeners than ever—our interview with Dr. Guy Winch. In what has ended up being one of our favorite episodes ever, Dr. Winch discusses his own experiences with rejection in admissions, the research behind these feelings, and specific interventions for moving forward confidently and positively. He also tells a story about the first time he applied to graduate school—he applied to 10 different programs, was denied by 9, and was "ghosted" (he literally never heard from them) by the 10th. Which makes his conversation with us not just incredibly helpful, but also relatable. We've all been rejected at something, many things—including those at the very pinnacle of their professional careers.
Dr. Guy Winch is one of the world's leading psychologists and speakers. He has delivered three TED Talks with over 30 million views combined, all three of which can be seen here. He has published three books and along with best-selling author Lori Gottlieb co-hosts the podcast Dear Therapists.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Orin Kerr, a prominent law professor and legal academic who currently serves as a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In his 25+ years as a law school faculty member, Professor Kerr has written 75+ law review articles, authored casebooks, and been cited in 4,500+ academic articles and 500+ judicial decisions, including several U.S. Supreme Court opinions. He has held tenured positions at Stanford Law, GW Law, USC Law, and UC Berkeley Law, and he has been a visiting professor at UChicago Law, Penn Law, and Yale Law.
In addition to his career in academia, Professor Kerr completed two clerkships, including a Supreme Court clerkship with Justice Anthony Kennedy, argued before the Supreme Court, and practiced law for a number of years, including as a trial attorney for the Department of Justice in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. He has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University, a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Professor Kerr discusses how law schools try to balance preparing students to be practice-ready with teaching how to think like a lawyer (5:49), what Professor Kerr sees as the “ideal” legal training (11:27), what professors actually think when someone messes up a cold call (37:58), how and when he knew he wanted to become a law professor (1:47), the “old way” and the “new way” that law schools hire faculty (3:41), advice for prospective law students who want to become law professors (12:32), the different types of law professors (12:51), every professor’s least favorite part of the job (23:12), the built-in advantages that some students enter law school already having (32:48), Professor Kerr’s most-read law review article (33:50), and more.
They also discuss a video that Professor Kerr recorded last year, “So You’re About To Start Law School: A Law Student’s Guide with Stanford Law Professor Orin Kerr.” You can watch that video for free on YouTube here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco discusses the strategy of reapplying to law school, joined by former law school admissions officers and Spivey consultants Sir Williams and Julia Truemper. They give a great deal of insider insights and strategic advice, including common reapplication mistakes (8:11, 17:57, 34:26), how to explain why you’re reapplying (32:15), whether admissions officers review reapplicants’ previous applications (2:31), whether they hold a previous denial against reapplicants (5:25), how discrepancies between the previous application and the current application can be problematic for reapplicants (3:52, 30:06), whether and how you need to revise and create new materials for a reapplication to the same school (6:32, 16:06), how to critically assess your previous application (10:43, 17:57), how you should change your school list (23:07), advice for the sometimes difficult process of rewriting your personal statement (25:42), how law schools look at reapplicants who were previously admitted (and how to mitigate potential negative impacts of that) (30:41), advice for reapplicants who weren’t admitted anywhere the previous cycle (40:01), and more.
You can find Part 1 of this two-part series, “Should You Reapply to Law School,” here.
Other resources mentioned in this episode:
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Vincent Sheu, an attorney and AI startup founder with a JD and a Master’s in Computer Science from Stanford (in addition to degrees in Statistics, Molecular and Cell Biology, and Bioengineering).
Mike and Vincent discuss how he uses AI in his legal work today (19:20, 22:20), how he expects to be using AI in legal work in the future (37:23), how important his human contributions are vs. the contributions of AI (25:32), whether AI will be able to learn EQ (27:12), the sorts of AI tooling skills that employers are (and will be) looking for (29:19, 42:45) and how they screen for those skills (33:39), the benefits of using AI for legal work as well as the risks (24:04, 31:21, 44:23), how the next generation of lawyers will be advantaged and disadvantaged in the new landscape of legal practice (30:03), whether Vincent would hire a new lawyer who was brilliant and likable but has no familiarity with AI (32:52), Vincent’s recruiting process out of law school (14:03) and what his hours looked like in biglaw vs. as an in-house general counsel (19:36), how Vincent went 23 for 25 during his law school admissions cycle as a “super splitter” (3:32), and more.
Near the beginning of the episode, Mike and Vincent chat about a viral video from 2014 in which Vincent rapidly completed a Rubik’s Cube at a college basketball game. While the original video is now private, you can find the referenced SportsCenter article here.
Mike also mentions the recent case of a defendant attempting to use an AI avatar to make their opening argument in court. You can find that video here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.
