*Now accepting transfer clients—Single Application Review available! Sign up here.
X
For Halloween this year, we'd like to share some peculiar stories from some of the Spivey consultants' days as admissions officers.
Here are some things to think about—tips we offer as you go about crafting your list:
Advice for attending law school forums.
A message of calm for applicants who are stressed about timelines.
A big hat tip to Emory Law School for the epically clear C&F instructions. They give reasons behind why they are asking, samples, and explicit instructions on what to do if someone told them not to disclose. Couldn’t have said this better — thanks Emory, and I hope this helps everyone demystify some of the ambiguity around C&F issues. Please do note that C&F instructions is one of the areas where school instructions vary the most, read each carefully. GUIDANCE ON BAR CHARACTER AND FITNESS REQUI
The incoming class' GPA/LSAT stats and look at how they changed from last year.
With more than 100 years of law school admissions experience between us, we have read over a hundred thousand law school essays and applications. That is an incredibly rewarding experience, but there can be times when you start to see the same words used, or used out of context, again and again. The following list of words includes some of the most overused and/or at times aggravating usage of words we see in applications. Keep in mind that not all of these words annoy every admissions officer —
We wanted to help you sort out how to think about the GRE—so we took some of the most commonly asked questions to our friends, law school admissions deans.
When are law school applications opening?
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews Kate Reder Sheikh, a Partner at Major, Lindsey & Africa, one of the top recruiting firms for legal hiring in the nation. Mike and Kate discuss the legal hiring market, how legal hiring may be impacted by the state of the economy in the coming months and years, what you can do to best position yourself for the employment opportunities you aspire to, and more advice and tips for law students and graduates.
Before becoming a recruiter, Kate was a litigator in San Francisco for almost a decade. She is regularly the highest performing associate recruiter at Major, Lindsey & Africa globally, and she was named a partner after 4 years with MLA, among the fastest in company history.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode, Mike interviews a current applicant (who we'll call "Barb") about her application process so far. Barb is a splitter with a 176 LSAT and a 3.1 GPA, and she's also a non-traditional applicant with 10+ years of full-time work experience after college. In this interview, we talk through her motivations for going to law school, her school list, the three different personal statement topics she's debating between, and more.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this podcast, Mike Spivey talks about the LSAT-Flex, particularly is it relates to timelines and the pace of admissions this cycle. It is important to note that LSAT scores are higher at the top bandwidths right now than one would expect in any cycle. There are several hypotheses out there for why that is.
LSAC maintains that they will organically come down to natural levels. Spivey Consulting (and others we should note) believes that we won't maintain this pace of increase, just like every cycle, but that we are already past the point where they could come down to "natural" levels barring some extremely inorganic occurrence, and that until now law schools have been trying to figure this equation out. To LSAC's credit, they have provided law schools with data that we think should now speed up the pace of admitting for the cycle — although exactly when and at what pace that happens is still impossible to predict.
You can listen to this podcast below or via SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
Please note that our reservation list for next cycle (2021-2022) is now open.
In this video, Spivey Consulting Group founder Mike Spivey answers questions from r/lawschooladmissions on strategies for splitters, international students, non-traditional applicants, reapplicants, and more.
You can also listen to the interview as a podcast on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
COVID-19 isn't going anywhere in the near future, yet only 3 law schools and only 8% of universities and colleges have announced they will be entirely remote for fall 2020.
What is the most recent update, and is there a middle ground that can be reached to decrease on-campus density so that the likelihood of cluster outbreaks is significantly reduced?
Watch below, or listen on SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts.
Spivey Consulting Partner Mike Spivey talks about the two primary things at the highest order that make applications stand out and elevate in the admissions process.
