Eight examples of great law school personal statements.
Spivey Consulting Group fully supports equitable access and diverse representation in legal education, and in 2025, this responsibility is more important than ever. As a part of this ongoing commitment, we are excited to announce the fifth year of our annual Spivey Consulting Group Pro Bono Program.
International students face unique challenges in the U.S. law school admissions process. This article presents an analysis of how top law schools treat international applicants, using data from the past three cycles, and explains what's new for 2024-25!
As of March 20, 2025, nearly 7,000 offers of admission remain at the top 100 law schools, including 2,500 from top 20 schools. While we don't have definitive data yet, these figures provide a snapshot of the cycle’s progress.
There are some seemingly simple questions on law school applications that still have a tendency to confuse applicants. As former admissions officers, we hope to help you understand and feel confident answering them.
Admissions officers are settling into a winter of reading, and the file review process is really just beginning to get into full swing for most of them. So when will decisions be coming out?
This week, the American Bar Association published this year's required 509 disclosures—standardized data on admissions, enrollment, scholarships, faculty, and more. We took a look at that data, and here are our early takeaways.
There is often a shroud of mystery among applicants once they submit their applications. As former admissions officers, we'll walk you through how the process tends to work.
A list of how the top 50-ish schools refer to themselves in their marketing materials.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco has a conversation with Paula Gluzman—a Spivey consultant and former law school admissions officer at UCLA and UW—as well as two of her past clients who successfully transferred law schools: Katie, who transferred from a regional law school in Texas to Columbia Law School, and Melissa, who transferred from a regional school on the west coast to Harvard Law School.
The conversation covers a wide range of topics related to transfer admissions, including personal statements, letters of recommendation, 1L activities, application timing, the relevance of undergraduate GPA and LSAT in transfer admissions, and more.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco speaks with Pre-L consultants Rob Cacace and Jordana Confino (bios here) about the growing importance of work experience in admissions, why the impact of being a "KJD" (going "from Kindergarten through law school" without full-time work experience) has increased over time, and—importantly—how work experience (or a lack thereof) plays out during law school and in the search for legal employment.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike discusses the various factors that play into any given applicant's chances of admission coming off the waitlist. He also gives a quick preview of our (very early) predictions for next cycle.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco has a conversation with three Spivey consultants—Anne Dutia, Paula Gluzman, and Derek Meeker, former law school admissions officers at Michigan, UCLA, Penn, and more—diving deep into the law school personal statement. They discuss the brainstorming and topic selection process, how to structure a personal statement, writing tips, broad-level traits of A+ personal statements, common mistakes, and more.
You can watch the video Derek mentions in this episode, in which he walks through how to choose a personal statement topic, here. You can read bios for Anne, Paula, Derek, and Anna 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, SCG Pre-L Consultant and Fordham Law professor Jordana Confino has a conversation with legal writing coach and Dear 1L author Amanda Haverstick about legal writing and tackling your 1L year.
You can learn more about Dear 1L here, connect with Amanda via LinkedIn here, or email her directly at amanda@dear1L.com.
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 speaks with two Spivey consultants—Karen Buttenbaum, former Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School, and Nathan Neely, former Associate Director of Admissions and Director of Global and Graduate Programs at the University of Houston Law Center—about the law school application resume: what to include and what not to include, differences from professional resumes, common mistakes, best practices, and more. You can read Karen and Nathan's full bios here.
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. Next up: diversity statements (the new versions—also known as E/P essays).
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
