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A distinct perspective on the law school admissions process.
This was from today's one-hour Spivey Consulting internal conference call where most of our admissions team shared observations from speaking with hundreds of applicants on a daily basis and admissions deans each week. Thought I'd share a bit of it and hope it helps! * Top schools are maybe seeing even bigger increases in apps, from what we're hearing * As a result, decisions are coming out much more slowly compared to past years, particularly at the top 7 or so schools * E.g. right no
This is a great guest blog post from Warren Buff, who took it upon himself to crunch the numbers and look at the data behind Law School Numbers.
The easiest answer to this question is "almost never" — but obviously there are some qualifications. So let me start with a real life story and then the qualifications. A few cycle ago I got a call from someone who had taken the June LSAT and just received his score, in the upper 170s. He also had a strong LSAC computed GPA and was asking me if I thought he could get into Harvard next cycle (keeping in mind it was like roughly July 1 and Harvard clearly said on their website the application dea
A look at this law school admissions cycle's competitiveness.
This was written by a client the day after he was admitted to his dream school despite being almost double digit points below their median LSAT. Published with permission, only edits were to take thanking me out of it a few times :) You thrived academically in undergrad and now you’re hoping to do the same at one of your dream law schools. You look at their median GPA numbers and you’re above them and feel like you’re already in... but then there’s the LSAT. Maybe you just can’t master logic ga
Advice from a below-both-medians student who got accepted to her (T-14) dream school.
When are applications opening this fall?
This is for everyone who didn’t get the LSAT score they wanted, or who were not admitted into their dream school—basically, most people.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco is joined by Karen Buttenbaum, one of Spivey's most experienced consultants and a former Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School, to talk about law school admissions interviews. They discuss a strategy for thinking about and preparing for interviews by categorizing the potential questions you could receive into five groups (plus a bonus sixth category at the end!).
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 below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco speaks with three Spivey consultants—Tom Robinson, former Harvard Law Director of Admissions; Sir Williams, former Wisconsin Law Director of Admissions; and Anne Dutia, former Michigan Law Assistant Director of Admissions—about the relatively new category of law school admissions essays that we're calling "experience/perspective essays" or "E/P essays," many of which are variations on the essays previously known as "diversity statements." They walk through the specifics of what these essays can look like (going through several example prompts), how to approach those different prompts, common mistakes applicants make with these statements, traits of outstanding E/P essays, and more.
This episode is part of an ongoing deep dive series on the main components of the law school application. You can listen to our episode on personal statements here and our episode on resumes here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews How I Lawyer podcast host Jonah Perlin on some of the many differences between college and law school, from cold calls to being graded on a curve to the nature of attending a professional school and more.
Links to other resources:
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Spivey Consulting President Anna Hicks-Jaco has a conversation with three Spivey Consultants and former law school admissions officers—Sam Kwak (Stanford Law, Northwestern Law, Indiana University Law), Paula Gluzman (UCLA Law, UW Law), and Joe Pollak (Michigan Law)—a group that has collectively spent over 20 years advising law school applicants one-on-one as consultants. In that time, they have assisted hundreds of law school applicants in creating strategic school lists, the topic of today's episode.
How do you estimate your chances of admission to determine reach, target, and "safety" schools? How many schools should you apply to? How many schools do most applicants apply to (and how is the oft-cited average number of applications per applicant somewhat misleading here)? Where can you find the best and most up-to-date information about law schools when doing your research? We cover all of the above and more.
This episode is a companion to our recent blog post on this topic, How to Create Your Law School List. Here are a few other resources we mentioned in this episode:
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco introduces "John" (not his real name; u/Muvanji on Reddit), the applicant who we'll be following throughout his law school admissions cycle for 2024-2025 (a series back by popular demand!). We talk more about John, his background, his application materials, and his goals in the episode, but here are some basics about his profile:
John got his undergraduate degree outside of the U.S. and so does not have an LSAC-calculated cumulative uGPA (his performance was evaluated as "Above Average" on his CAS report). He took the LSAT once and got a 174 (we talked about his LSAT study process and test day experience in the episode). He earned a law degree in the U.K., where law school is at the undergraduate level, and is a recent graduate. He is currently looking for work and so does not yet have any full-time post-graduate work experience. He worked part-time during undergrad, did an internship with a biglaw firm, and participated in a number of law-related extracurriculars in leadership positions. His goal after earning his J.D. is to go into corporate law, and he has a special interest in antitrust law. He is originally Canadian and has experienced parts of his education there, in England, and in Kenya, which he plans to discuss in his experience/perspective essays (or "E/P essays," the category of law school admissions essay that has largely supplanted the "diversity statement"). He is African-American and has felt some pressure to discuss his race/ethnicity in his application, but he isn't sure whether or how he would like to do so. He has one relatively minor but somewhat complicated Character & Fitness ("C&F") issue that he will need to disclose on some applications.
In this first episode of the series, we discuss John's LSAT process, his personal statement, his E/P essays, his resume (and how he thought it was done before listening to our resume deep-dive podcast episode!), his school list, letters of recommendation, Reddit, and more.
We'll be checking in with him throughout the cycle for updates!
Relevant Links/Resources:
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 below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike Spivey has a conversation with Associate Dean Don Rebstock—who, among multiple other departments, heads both Admissions and Career Services at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law—about the first 2024-2025 law school applicant data that was released last week, what it means for applicants, and why it's not as scary as it looks.
Some of the questions they discuss include, will the numbers go down? How much will they go down? Why are LSAT scores so high? How will this impact competitiveness? How will it impact the pace of the cycle? Will law schools enroll more students next fall? Plus thoughts on grade inflation, rankings, employability, and their best advice for applicants in light of the new data.
You can find our recent blog on predicting this cycle here. Mike's interview with Justin Ishbia, also mentioned in this episode, is 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 below.
