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It's that time of year again — law schools are beginning to place applicants on the dreaded waitlist. Luckily, we have two helpful resources if you've been waitlisted this cycle.
Advice and data on deciding where to attend.
First, a quick disclaimer (get used to writing these, future lawyers): when we say “law schools” we do not mean to speak for every single law school. There likely are a few outliers. But at the macro-level, here is what is going on. Most law school Early Decision (ED) programs don’t provide the substantial boost that applicants believe. An analogy I often use is that a Las Vegas casino wouldn’t have a blackjack table that loses money. In blackjack, if a player follows perfect betting strategy,
Big news — we just launched our new Spivey Consulting Group YouTube channel!
The short answer is... it doesn't matter that much.
A lesson to be learned from the passing of a beloved pet.
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.
In this special episode of Status Check with Spivey directed toward parents of law school applicants, Anna Hicks-Jaco and two Spivey consultants—Danielle Early, former Harvard Law Associate Director of Admissions, and Shannon Davis, former Assistant Dean for Admissions and Communications at Lewis & Clark Law—discuss how parents can best support their children through the application process. They walk through differences between the law school and the college admissions processes, how much parental involvement law school admissions offices expect, common mistakes parents can make that may end up hindering rather than helping, and some of the ways that parents can be most helpful and supportive to their applicants.
You can read Shannon and Danielle's full bios 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 has a conversation with Mitch Leff, author of My Addiction, My Superpower, about his experiences overcoming addiction at a young age, the lessons he learned, and how others can use his insights to improve themselves. As attorneys suffer significantly higher rates of substance abuse and depression relative to the wider public, Mitch's insights are highly relevant to anyone who is a part of (or considering joining) the legal profession.
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 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.
