A parable of leadership.
Advice on summer associate positions (part 2).
Advice on summer associate positions.
Jay Price discusses how the third year of law school has changed.
A guest blog by Jay Price.
A brief snippet from two very happy and endearing emails I received. Tell a story, not just now, but in your interviews! - On 19 January 2015 at 10:01 Hi Mike! I just wanted to give you an update on how first semester went: I just had callbacks with Cooley for a 1L SA position, and Munger, Skadden, and Wilson Sonsini just requested my grades. I have to thank you again because a lot of the materials we prepared f
A deranged student sent the following email to a close friend and CSO officer this morning.
This is a simple way to differentiate yourself, yet my experience has been that only about 1% of applicants and 5% of law students do it. But 50% of professionals do. Before I reveal it, a very quick backstory is necessary. Without this understanding, I think it is hard to genuinely “get” what I am about to say. The backstory is simply that professionals are really busy, often stressed, and at times frantic. Moreover, they know all of this. Anything tedious that requires a shred of time increas
Our first guest blog comes from a hiring authority at a Fortune 50 company.
In this episode, Mike interviews best-selling author and storyteller Mishka Shubaly about personal creative writing. Mishka holds an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University and teaches writing at the Yale Writer's Conference. You can find his new book, The Long Run & Other True Stories, here.
If you're looking for writing advice specifically pertaining to law school applications and personal statements, listen to our podcast on The Genre of Application Essay Writing here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
Content Warning: This interview includes content related to suicide and the guest's experience with a school shooting.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike speaks with long-time Spivey consultant and former Penn Law Admissions Dean Derek Meeker about tackling the genre of law school applications.
Crafting a well-written essay is just one part of the equation — necessary but not sufficient for a strong application — and in this interview, Derek takes lessons from his graduate-level writing coursework, combined with his extensive experience in admissions decision-making, to offer valuable insights into how you can connect the dots in your law school application within the full context of your experiences, background, and personality.
Mike and Derek mention a few different examples and resources in this episode, including our blog post of example personal statements, Derek's video on choosing a personal statement topic, our interview with Michigan Law's Dean of Admissions Sarah Zearfoss, an example of a Georgetown video from one of our former clients, and an essay from Mike titled Failure is a Liar. Also check out our recent podcast with Mishka Shubaly.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike and Dave answer questions from the Law School Admissions Reddit. This will be a series of two episodes, with Part 2 coming out next week! Part 1 covers predictions for the upcoming 2022-2023 law school admissions cycle, discussion about the LSAT and GPAs, application timing, and more. Part 2 will cover more of the "soft factors" of a law school application, including personal statements.
Relevant links from this episode:
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews Natalie Blazer, who currently serves as the Assistant Dean for Admissions and Chief Admissions Officer at the University of Virginia School of Law. Dean Blazer talks about her path to law school and admissions, the differences and similarities between the admissions operations at the various law schools where she has worked (including Columbia and Georgetown), her thoughts and insights into the application process at UVA (including the new application question they added this year, on resilience), and both her biggest frustrations and her favorite parts of working as a Dean of Admissions.
Dean Blazer's new podcast, Admissible, launched earlier this month—you can listen here!
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike interviews Bill Eddy, an award-winning mediator, attorney, author, and therapist who developed "high conflict personality theory" and is an expert in dealing with high conflict people in the practice of law. Bill is the Co-Founder and CIO of the High Conflict Institute and faculty at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this first episode of an upcoming multi-part series of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco (Spivey Consulting's COO) speaks with an applicant from the r/lawschooladmissions Reddit, "Lucy," as she prepares to submit her applications. We will be interviewing Lucy at a number of points throughout her cycle to check in about how things have been going, what she's been up to in terms of her application process, and how she's feeling about it all.
This episode covers Lucy's applications as she gets ready to hit the submit button, including the LSAT (she scored in the upper 170s and shares her tips!), personal statements (she worked on hers with the help of one of Spivey's admissions consultants, independently of this podcast), letters of recommendation (she's still waiting on one), resumes (including the one page vs. two page debate), optional essays, and more.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.