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A question we get asked a lot these days is “will there be more waitlist activity this summer than in recent years?” It is, of course, a pertinent question for the vast majority of law school applicants because most applicants will be waitlisted at least somewhere. While there is no definitive answer yet, data from this cycle and historical trends give us at least one theory. And “the new norm” of law admissions leads to another. Let’s take a look at both. **Theory 1: The dominoes will fall. **
Wouldn’t it be awesome to know when schools will look to take applicants off of the waitlist?
Highly likely it’s not. Unless the applicant is some form of “special interest,” meaning that they have people who are donors interested in their admission, connections to the law school itself, etc. you really wouldn’t defer someone just to intentionally deny them later. That isn’t doing either you or them any favors. Rather, you defer them to see how your numbers look throughout the entirety of the cycle. At some point almost every school, including T3, will say “our medians look like x and z
A brief note on anticipated WL movement, worries of lack thereof, and in general how the summer may play out.
The hardest part of the admissions cycle is the wait.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco discusses the strategy of reapplying to law school, joined by former law school admissions officers and Spivey consultants Sir Williams and Julia Truemper. They give a great deal of insider insights and strategic advice, including common reapplication mistakes (8:11, 17:57, 34:26), how to explain why you’re reapplying (32:15), whether admissions officers review reapplicants’ previous applications (2:31), whether they hold a previous denial against reapplicants (5:25), how discrepancies between the previous application and the current application can be problematic for reapplicants (3:52, 30:06), whether and how you need to revise and create new materials for a reapplication to the same school (6:32, 16:06), how to critically assess your previous application (10:43, 17:57), how you should change your school list (23:07), advice for the sometimes difficult process of rewriting your personal statement (25:42), how law schools look at reapplicants who were previously admitted (and how to mitigate potential negative impacts of that) (30:41), advice for reapplicants who weren’t admitted anywhere the previous cycle (40:01), and more.
You can find Part 1 of this two-part series, “Should You Reapply to Law School,” here.
Other resources mentioned in this episode:
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 with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Vincent Sheu, an attorney and AI startup founder with a JD and a Master’s in Computer Science from Stanford (in addition to degrees in Statistics, Molecular and Cell Biology, and Bioengineering).
Mike and Vincent discuss how he uses AI in his legal work today (19:20, 22:20), how he expects to be using AI in legal work in the future (37:23), how important his human contributions are vs. the contributions of AI (25:32), whether AI will be able to learn EQ (27:12), the sorts of AI tooling skills that employers are (and will be) looking for (29:19, 42:45) and how they screen for those skills (33:39), the benefits of using AI for legal work as well as the risks (24:04, 31:21, 44:23), how the next generation of lawyers will be advantaged and disadvantaged in the new landscape of legal practice (30:03), whether Vincent would hire a new lawyer who was brilliant and likable but has no familiarity with AI (32:52), Vincent’s recruiting process out of law school (14:03) and what his hours looked like in biglaw vs. as an in-house general counsel (19:36), how Vincent went 23 for 25 during his law school admissions cycle as a “super splitter” (3:32), and more.
Near the beginning of the episode, Mike and Vincent chat about a viral video from 2014 in which Vincent rapidly completed a Rubik’s Cube at a college basketball game. While the original video is now private, you can find the referenced SportsCenter article here.
Mike also mentions the recent case of a defendant attempting to use an AI avatar to make their opening argument in court. You can find that video here.
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 with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco has a conversation with two Spivey consultants and former law school admissions officers, Kristen Mercado and Nathan Neely, on the decision whether to reapply to law school. What are good reasons—and what are bad reasons—to reapply? How much of an LSAT improvement is enough to justify reapplying (6:00)? How much of an impact can improved work experience have (16:09)? Can it be a game-changer if the only thing you do differently is applying earlier (36:09)? Does it ever make sense to reapply based purely on the hope that next cycle will be less competitive overall (38:17)? And what advice can we share for applicants who weren’t admitted anywhere (47:10)?
This is part one of a two-part series. Coming late next month: part two all about the STRATEGY of reapplying.
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 with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike has a conversation with Rob Baker, a long-time practicing entertainment lawyer who has served on hiring committees for multiple law firms, ranging from biglaw to mid-law to a small firm, and who leads Spivey Consutling’s new employment coaching and law school mentorship program. Rob discusses his law school application process (3:49), what it was like starting 1L year (5:18), how law school prepared Rob for practicing (12:16) and how it didn’t (16:18), how legal employers view rankings (10:00), whether law school is “fun” (19:07), what makes a good lawyer (21:32), one key talent of the highest-earning lawyers (15:15), the one trait that can make all the difference in excelling in biglaw, becoming an entertainment lawyer, or getting admitted off the law school waitlist (17:28), and more.
Mike mentions our podcast episode with Jeff Chapman in this episode, “Interview with a Biglaw Partner (Jeff Chapman, Gibson Dunn Co-Chair of Global M&A),” which you can listen to here.
If you’re interested in learning more about Rob’s coaching and mentorship services, please reach out to info@spiveyconsulting.com.
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 with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike discusses the five reasons that being denied from law school hurts—and the concrete ways that you can handle it.
Mike mentions a few other podcasts and a video clip in this episode:
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 with timestamps below.
In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, we take questions from Reddit! Mike Spivey, Mike Burns, and Anna Hicks-Jaco discuss just how slow this cycle is (10:19) and how that might impact late-cycle applicants (6:47), why law schools place applicants on “holds” (1:23), decision timelines and how/why they vary (4:23), advice for scholarship reconsideration (11:20), whether schools rescind admits or scholarships if you ask for more money (13:31), how the new student loan caps might impact your request for scholarship reconsideration (14:00), whether you should email a school if you haven’t heard from them since you applied early in the cycle (23:44) and whether they might have forgotten about your application (24:44), predictions for next cycle (19:31) and waitlist season this cycle (15:00), the cannonball strategy of law school waitlists (25:50), how important softs are and whether “soft tiers” are admissions pseudoscience (27:48), essays about institutional injustice and how to avoid coming off overly negative in a way that could harm your chances (34:36), advice for becoming an admissions officer (37:40), and more.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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 with timestamps below.
