For several years now, the focus of law school admissions offices has been trending more and more toward employability. What does this mean for law school admissions strategy?
Employers and clients value a lawyer who can succinctly and informally explain a legal issue or communicate effectively by email, and those are skills that (probably) will not be covered in your first year of law school.
You have probably heard before that networking is crucial in this day and age. The lawyers who have the most success in law firms are the “rainmakers,” those who bring in new clients and new business, and the lawyers who have the most success finding new clients are also masterful networkers.
Law school, you may have heard, trains you to “think like a lawyer.” What does it mean to think like a lawyer?
Too few applicants know this — this is actually what starting salaries look like for those right out of law school.
Every ladder has a first step. Enjoy!
In a sense, this is a blog post 25 years in the making.
Every year at the end of the summer, law schools invite law firms to their campuses to interview students for jobs.
We've reached out to a number of friends at law schools and firms and companies to see what things applicants did that made them grouchy.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike discusses some of the psychological and societal reasons that rankings seem to matter so much to people—then explains the reasons that they shouldn't matter as much as they do.
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 PowerScore Founder & CEO Dave Killoran about the removal of the Logic Games section of the LSAT, the new writing section, and what all this might mean for the future of the law school admissions.
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 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.