News

columnscolumns

Blog Posts

April 12, 2023
U.S. News Significantly Reduces the Weight of LSAT/GRE & GPA. What's Next?

A few months ago, many law schools announced they would boycott sending U.S. News direct (and non-third party audited) data, essentially forcing U.S. News to change their methodology. The rates of the admissions metrics were significantly reduced. What does this mean?

April 11, 2023
2023-2024 U.S. News Law School Rankings T14

U.S. News has yet to publicly release the full 2023-2024 law school rankings, but today they released the Top 14 with their new methodology.

March 2, 2023
Some Commentary on the U.S. News Op-Ed

U.S. News & World Report is not sitting idle while its rankings come under fire. The CEO published an article in the Wall Street Journal offering his views on the rankings boycott. We have some thoughts.

January 2, 2023
Official U.S. News Statement on Law School Rankings Methodology Changes, Following Rankings Exodus

U.S. News & World Report has sent the following letter to law schools regarding methodology changes for the upcoming 2023-2024 rankings. This comes in the wake of 20+ law schools announcing they will no longer submit their data for rankings purposes.

November 19, 2022
List of Law Schools Withdrawing from U.S. News & World Report Rankings Participation

On November 16, 2022, as we recently blogged about, two law schools announced that they would no longer be participating in the U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings (first Yale, then Harvard). In the days since, other schools have begun to announce their plans to do the same.

November 17, 2022
Answering U.S. News Law School Rankings Withdrawal Questions from 11/16/2022

November 16, 2022 may not have been the single most pivotal day in law school decision-making, but it was likely up there.

November 16, 2022
Implications of Yale Law Withdrawing from the U.S. News Rankings

As many people have no doubt seen, Yale Law School will no longer participate in the U.S. News Law School Rankings.

May 5, 2022
ABA Strategic Review Committee Recommends Elimination of Standardized Test Requirement

Yesterday, the ABA publicly released an April 25 memo recommending the elimination of the standardized test requirement for admission to law school.

November 13, 2020
LSAC Statement on LSAT-Flex

Please note this comes directly from LSAC, not our firm.

Podcasts

August 12, 2022
Law School Admissions AMA with Mike Spivey & Dave Killoran (Part 1)

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.

September 20, 2022
UVA Law Admissions Dean Natalie Blazer Dives Deep into Law School Admissions

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.

September 9, 2022
The One Biggest Piece of Advice for New Lawyers from Bill Eddy, JD/Therapist

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.

September 24, 2022
What It's Like Applying to Law School, Part 1

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.

November 10, 2022
What It's Like Applying to Law School, Part 2 (Interviews)

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.

October 12, 2022
Catastrophizing in Admissions (& Why It's Going to Be Okay)

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.