*Note: We have limited availability for Single Application Reviews for the 2025-26 cycle—sign up here.
X
.png)
In this episode of the Status Check with Spivey, Mike has the opportunity to have a conversation with Lauryn Williams, four-time Olympic athlete and financial advisor with a specialty in student loans. In addition to discussing Lauryn's life and experiences as an Olympian, they also talk about the differences between taking out student loans for undergrad vs. for law school, income-driven repayment plans, public service loan forgiveness (PSLF), how to save for retirement while paying off your student loans (and the perhaps surprising tax benefits of doing so), and more.
As an Olympic sprinter and later bobsledder, Lauryn earned the accolade of being the only American woman to have won medals in both the summer and the winter Olympics. Today, she is a financial advisor, student loan expert, author, and podcaster specializing in improving financial literacy in young people and athletes. Lauryn's book, The Oval Office, is out now, and also be sure to check out the Student Loan Planner podcast and the podcast Lauryn hosts, Worth Listening.
You can listen and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
Mike also references the legal field's bimodal starting salary distribution in this podcast. See below (via NALP):
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews Miller Leonard, author of How to Get a Job After Law School: The Job Won’t Find You (free online here), on the lessons he’s learned about networking and getting a legal job in his 25+ years as an attorney. Throughout his career, Miller has been a prosecutor, public defender, legal aid attorney, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, and Municipal Judge, and he regularly shares legal employment and practice advice for his 40,000+ followers on LinkedIn.
Miller discusses concrete steps anyone can take to network with lawyers in their field of choice (8:03), the jarring dynamic shift that happens when high performers go from being students to job-seekers (17:01), networking advice for introverts (19:34), predictions for the future of the legal hiring market and AI (25:16), what law schools are doing right (31:35) and wrong (38:06), overlooked opportunities for new law school grads (42:22), and more.
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 has a conversation with two of Spivey’s newest consultants—Sam Parker, former Harvard Law Associate Director of Admissions, and Julia Truemper, former Vanderbilt Law Associate Director of Admissions—all about the law school admissions advice that admissions officers won’t give you, discussing insider secrets and debunking myths and common applicant misconceptions.
Over this hour-and-twenty-minute-long episode, three former law school admissions officers talk about the inner workings of law schools’ application review processes (31:50), the true nature of “admissions committees” (33:50), cutoff LSAT scores (23:03, 46:13), what is really meant (and what isn’t) by terms such as “holistic review” (42:50) and “rolling admissions” (32:10), tips for interviews (1:03:16), waitlist advice (1:15:28), what (not) to read into schools’ marketing emails (10:04), which instructions to follow if you get different guidance from a law school’s website vs. an admissions officer vs. on their application instructions on LSAC (14:29), things not to post on Reddit (1:12:07), and much more.
Two other episodes are mentioned in this podcast:
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 Dayna Bowen Matthew, Dean of the George Washington University Law School, where she has led the law school since 2020. Prior to her time at GW, she was a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, the University of Colorado Law School, and the University of Kentucky College of Law, and she has served as a Senior Advisor to the Office of Civil Rights of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She is a graduate of Harvard University (AB), the University of Virginia School of Law (JD), and the University of Colorado (PhD).
Mike and Dean Matthew discuss the increase in law school applicants this cycle (7:42 and 18:11), advice for applying during a competitive cycle (12:16), how the large firm hiring process in law school has changed into something that "bears no resemblance" to how it worked for decades (5:11), how the public interest and government hiring process has changed as well (6:27), how AI could impact legal employment in the future (24:10), why she chose the law school where she attended (2:33), what she would do differently if she were applying today (3:36), how to assess law schools' varying "personalities" (13:22), the fungibility of a JD (16:45), advice for law students (18:53), and what it's like being a law school dean in 2025 (28:53).
You can read more about Dean Matthew here.
We discussed two additional podcast interviews in this episode:
Note: Due to an unexpected technical issue during recording, Mike's audio quality decreases from 7:35 onward. Apologies for any difficulties this may cause, and please note that we have a full transcript of the episode below.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. You can read a full transcript with timestamps below.
Correction: Dean Matthew's family reminded her that she actually applied to three law schools rather than two, including Harvard Law, where she received a denial.
As Emmy-winning news anchor Elizabeth Vargas stated in one of our recent episodes, "There is nobody out there who is at the top of their field, in any field, who has not been told 'no.'"
