The Biggest Non-Negotiable Rule in Law School A...

As much as we deign to use absolutes, there is at least one principle we can think of that is absolutely non-negotiable in law school admissions. Regardless of your qualifications, breaking this rule can tank any applicant's chances—this episode of Status Check with Spivey discusses that rule.

Mike mentions our blog post predicting the 2023-2024 admissions cycle in this episode—you can read those predictions here. You can find our interview with Terry Real, which Mike also mentioned in this episode, here.

You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, and Google Podcasts.

Welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. As we're just about to enter the new 2023-2024 law school admissions cycle, there's going to be a lot of change, and we've talked a lot about that change. We’re about to talk more about that change, but I wanted to actually focus on the singular—or maybe the most important—non-negotiable aspect to law school admissions.

So, I heard a CEO of a company recently give an analogy, which I love, which is his lighthouse analogy. So there's a story of this lighthouse and this ship, and they're out in the ocean, it's dark, and they're miles apart, and the lighthouse gets a radio message, “Change your course 30 degrees,” and the lighthouse radios back, “No, you need to change your course 30 degrees.” And then the ship radios back, “Look, we're a four-star class HMS ship, you change your course right now.” And then the lighthouse of course radios back, “We’re a lighthouse.”

So what is the lighthouse in law school admissions? And this story actually piggybacks very well off of it, this analogy. It's how you treat admissions officers. Because there's a lot of things in admissions outside of your control, a ton outside of your control. One of the reasons I like what we do is your essays, your interviews are more in your control. But the thing that's singularly always in your control is how you would treat admissions officers, the people making the decisions. And here's the amazing thing about this. For many years of my career, because I was an admissions officer, I traveled with admissions officers, and we all had nightmare stories about people who were going to be admitted, and they were rude to the front desk people of the admissions office, were rude in an email, were rude in a phone call, or they were one-uppity like that ship I just alluded to. Their numbers were high, so they were so grandiose in how they approached a school, almost like, not looking people in the eye and their head up like the person was an afterthought, rude to students, rude to faculty. I don’t know how else to say this, but we're all equal here on planet earth, right? I’ll quote Terry Real, who had a wonderful podcast on our show about self-doubt. “You're here, I'm here, congrats. We both made it, no different than anyone else.” You're going to have bad moments in the admissions process; that's true for almost everyone. Best case scenario, those bad moments might be waiting and waiting. Anna Hicks, our COO, interviewed in three parts someone going through the admissions process, and she was admitted to every school she applied to including Yale. But she had bad moments, because she was admitted later than a lot of posts that popped up early on Reddit, and of course her mind understandably registered, uh-oh, what’s going wrong? Because people are getting admitted to schools, I’m above the medians and I haven't yet, and it’s October. She ended up going something like, I don't know word for word, but she didn't get a single denial. So that's the easy part. But it's not easy while waiting. On the flip side, you might get an early admission and then four denials in a row, and that might cause you to act a little bit more with worry.

We're going to have an upcoming podcast on worry towards the school, and worry often comes out not as positive messaging to the school. And in the worst case, maybe you've been admitted to five schools but you haven't heard from two, and we've seen this. I'm not saying you, the person listening to this, because most people are extraordinarily kind, but 100%, people have done this. They start acting uppity to those two schools. “Why the wait? I'm 5 for 5 in the admissions process. What's the slow-up on your end?” Why would you ever risk something incredibly important to you? Please don't. Another analogy would be like, I never attack people online. There's no win in it. Doesn't even feel good. And now when people falsely attack me online, which happens from time to time—this is part of anyone in the professional world, it’s going to happen to a lot of people listening to this—I just don't respond. I'm like 0 for 12 in responding. So why would I respond? I mentioned Anna Hicks, our COO, I was—one day I think I was having a bad day, and I was totally faking it, and I finally was like, “You know what Anna, I'm just faking it. This is a stressful day.” But sometimes you have to fake it with admissions if you're having a bad day, because upbeat, ebullient, likeable people—believe it or not, in my 24-25 years of doing this—when things are equal, particularly on the waitlist when all the medians are locked in and a law school wants to admit someone, it's the people who have interacted and are upbeat, professional, but happy manner with the admissions office that get admitted. And now the LSAT metric has been halved as far as U.S. News weight, the GPA metric has been halved. Our best guess is—and Dean Z mentioned this in one of our two podcasts we did recently—there may be more admitting off the waitlist based on softs or based on just people who, how you interact with the law school.

So this is non-negotiable—and I’ll stop belaboring the point; I just heard that lighthouse analogy and I hit record on my phone. And it might come across as a little bit preachy, and I want you to know that obviously I have bad days, you have bad days, everyone on this planet has bad days. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to live their life or how to voice their frustrations. My point is simply this: the lighthouse in this analogy is a positive attitude, even in the thick of things when things get hectic and tense. And they do. And this is going to be a very slow cycle; our prediction blog is coming out soon. [Editor’s note: that prediction post is up now, here.]

As the cycle progresses, things are going to get tense. People are going to say things that might offend you or hurt you, and me too, for that matter. I think that it's completely fine to be yourself amongst your inner circle. It is incredibly value-added to be happy, upbeat, positive in any interaction with any law school. I hope this was helpful. This is Mike Spivey, the Spivey Consulting Group.

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September 22, 2026

UVA Law Admissions Dean Natalie Blazer on Top 5 Tips, What Happened Last Cycle, & What’s to Come

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike and Anna interview Natalie Blazer, the Dean of Admissions and Chief Admissions Officer at UVA Law. Mike and Dean Blazer discuss the unusual nature of this past 2025-2026 admissions cycle (2:11), why Dean Blazer loves waitlists and why this past cycle ran about three months longer than usual (4:32), why having high numbers means less for an applicant now than it did in the past (10:59), the “prisoner’s dilemma” of increasing medians (13:59), predictions for the upcoming 2026-2027 admissions cycle (15:21), the impact it can make for an applicant to submit in September (17:14), why admissions interview matter more now than ever (20:12), Mike’s two best pieces of admissions advice (21:54), and Dean Blazer’s two best pieces of admissions advice (23:22).

Then, Anna and Dean Blazer discuss Anna’s biggest admissions mistake/piece of advice (26:50) before answering questions from Reddit: why UVA’s LSAT and GPA medians stayed flat this year (28:47), how the tough job market for new college grads influences how admissions offices look at resume gaps (32:45), whether retaking a 173 or 174 is a red flag (38:04), whether Dean Blazer anticipates medians continuing to rise (43:34), advice for reapplying to UVA Law (46:56), and the “soft” factors Dean Blazer values most (49:40).

Dean Blazer’s podcast, Admissible, is available here. Listen to the episode she mentions, one of her favorites, with a successful reapplicant here.

You can listen to our previous episodes with Natalie here: 2025 | 2023 | 2022

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.

September 8, 2026

Interview Prep for Law School Admissions, with Meg Krishnan

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco is joined by Spivey consultant Meg Krishnan, former Director of Admissions and Programs at UChicago Law, for a conversation about preparing for law school admissions interviews. Meg spent nine admissions cycles at UChicago Law, ultimately running the school’s interview program and personally conducting thousands of admissions interviews. She shares what admissions offices are looking for in interviews and how applicants can prepare in a way that feels confident, natural, and intentional.

They discuss the different roles interviews can play in the admissions process and the different formats applicants may encounter (3:51); what an interviewer may review from your application before speaking with you (6:55); how to prepare your “why law” answer using Meg’s “ghosts of Christmas” framework of past, present, and future (9:08); and how to start researching and preparing for “why this law school?” questions well before receiving an interview invitation (12:18). Meg also shares a simple method for keeping track of school-specific research over time (15:52); what to prioritize once you actually receive an interview invitation, from logistics to reviewing your own application materials (19:35); and why applicants should practice from bullet points rather than scripting and memorizing their answers (24:28).

Anna and Meg also dive deeper into what makes a strong “why X” answer and the importance of connecting what a law school offers back to your own experiences and strengths (28:54); common interview mistakes and how to recover when something goes wrong (31:55); strategies for building confidence before an interview, including an exercise from psychologist Dr. Guy Winch (41:09); and practical ways to reduce distracting filler words and become more comfortable with pauses (43:36). They close with advice on taking care of yourself throughout the process, learning how to reset after a difficult moment, and remembering that receiving an interview invitation itself means the law school is interested in you (51:43).

A note on interview formats: Much of the advice in this episode is most directly applicable to invited interviews and one-on-one interviews with a human interviewer. However, many of the preparation strategies discussed also apply to other formats, including Kira and other prerecorded interviews.

Related resources: For a broader overview of law school interviews, including different interview formats and additional preparation advice, see our Interview Strategy Deep Dive with Former Law School Admissions Officers podcast. For more on the types of questions applicants may encounter, listen to Five Categories of Law School Admissions Interview Questions & How to Answer Them, with former Harvard Law Director of Admissions Karen Buttenbaum—including a bonus sixth category of curveball questions.

For more advice and resources on researching individual law schools and developing a strong, differentiated “why X,” see our Why X Essay Deep Dive: Advice from Former Law School Admissions Officers podcast episode. Anna also references our earlier conversation with psychologist Dr. Guy Winch, Dr. Guy Winch on Handling Rejection (& Waiting), which includes the confidence exercise discussed 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.

August 25, 2026

Dr. Gabor Maté on Self-Doubt, Stress, Anxiety, & the Pressure to Succeed (Re-Release)

Originally published in 2021, this conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté explores self-doubt, stress, anxiety, addiction, and the pressures that can come with pursuing ambitious academic and professional goals.

Mike Spivey speaks with Dr. Maté, world-renowned physician and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, When the Body Says No, and The Myth of Normal, about how these challenges can affect prospective law students and others navigating high-pressure environments.

One of Dr. Maté’s insights for prospective and incoming law students:

“You're going to look at all your confident classmates, and you're going to go in there with all manner of self-doubt. You're making the big mistake of comparing their outside with your inside. You have no idea what their inside is like. And believe me, you're not the only one.”

This episode is a re-release of our 2021 conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté.

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The Biggest Non-Negotiable Rule in Law School Admissions

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