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 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.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Spivey Consulting COO Anna Hicks-Jaco checks in with "Lucy," u/Accomplished-Body785 on Reddit, an applicant currently in the middle of her law school application process. We are interviewing Lucy at several 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. You can find Part 1 here.
This episode is primarily focused on interviews! Lucy has had a number of law school admissions interviews at this point, including one group interview and a Kira interview, and she shares how those interviews went, what sorts of questions they asked, and how she prepared. She also shares some of her first decisions.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this short episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike talks about applicants' (deeply understandable) tendency to catastrophize in law school admissions.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Justin Kane, Spivey Consulting's Director of Business Intelligence and resident rankings expert, about recent developments in the U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings.
If you haven't already heard, a number of law schools have recently announced that they will no longer be participating in the rankings. But what does that actually mean? Why are they doing it, and why now? What impacts might it have on applicants, law students, and legal education as a whole—both this current cycle and down the line?
You can find an up-to-date list of law schools that have announced they will no longer be participating in the rankings here.
Important Disclaimer: At this point, all of our forward-looking thoughts are purely speculation. We can't emphasize enough that we don't know yet what U.S. News is going to do—no one does, not even U.S. News itself. This is an actively-evolving situation in the short term, and the longer-term effects are even more difficult to predict. This episode is meant to provide an insider look into what law school administrations and other major legal education stakeholders are thinking about right now, but we can't predict the future.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts.