Ten Tips for Law School Admission

10 Tips to Succeed in Applying to Law School

1. Carefully proofread and edit your application and all material you submit. Make sure your application is as well written as you can make it and as mistake free as possible. This includes all material submitted as part of your application including your resume. This will allow your application to make a good first impression on whoever reads it. It will also avoid making a bad first impression by careless errors such as misspellings or incorrectly identifying the school you are applying to because you simply copied material written for another school. Moreover, law is an exacting discipline where form matters. Law schools may assume that students who are not careful in submitting their applications lack the qualities they need to succeed in law school and in the legal profession.

2. Make sure your personal statement improves your chance of admission. Think carefully about whether the content of your personal statement and supplemental written explanations are likely to positively impress the people evaluating your application. To make this judgment, you have to imagine that you are on a law school admissions committee and are reading an application filed by a complete stranger. Ask yourself what opinion you would form about the applicant exclusively based on the content of the submitted material. You don’t want readers of your application to form the view that you complain a lot, have a bad attitude, don’t work very hard, only want to go to law school to make money, and other negative sentiments. You do want them to conclude that you would make a positive addition to the law school community. In deciding what to write, think about what motivates you to want to attend law school or what exposure you’ve had to the legal system. Rather than saying something general such as that you want to go to law school so that you can help people, try and write something specific and personal. If you can, talk about an experience you've had working with people who needed legal assistance, or family members in a similar circumstance. Even if your college application essay is available, don’t revise it and submit it with your law school application. It may save you time, but it isn’t a good strategy. Law schools are interested in experiences that are relevant to the kind of law student and lawyer you would be rather than the sort of extracurricular activity, like being a high school athlete, that might have been appropriate when you were applying to college.

3. Apply to law school early, even if there is a late deadline. Lots of schools use a rolling admissions system with a final deadline in February, March or even April. However, it is often easier to get in earlier in the admissions cycle as compared to later in the cycle even though you have applied before the absolute deadline. Getting your application in early is one way to improve your chances of being admitted.

4. Make sure you prepare for the LSAT before you take the exam. That first LSAT score is the most important one and if you do well you’ll never have to take it again. On the subject of retaking the LSAT in an effort to improve your score, see "How many times should I take the LSAT?" by Diane Curtis (Director, Pre-Law Advising, U. Mass at Amherst) available at https://sbspathways.umass.edu/resources/law-school-applications-how-many-times-should-you-take-the-lsat/. Since all scores are reported to law schools, the schools you apply to will see all your scores even if schools say they will only use your highest score for calculation purposes. A first score below a school’s LSAT range followed by a marginally higher second score could hurt your chances of admission particularly if your second score is within the school’s LSAT range, but toward the bottom of the range. You would be much better off spending more time preparing to take the test so that your first score is within a school’s LSAT range. There are many resources for preparing for the exam. Some are free and some are not. Your school may provide free or low cost preparation options either in the form of classes or a library of study aids. The Law School Admissions Council, the organization that administers the exam, provides some preparation aids at no cost. These are available on the LSAC website at https://www.lsac.org/lsat/prep. The LSAC has also collaborated with Khan Academy to provide free LSAT preparation which is available at https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/lsat/lsat-lessons. Other websites also provide free assistance of varying quality and quantity such as 7Sage at http://7sage.com/free-lsat-prep-tools/#FreePracticeLSAT, and AlphaScore at http://www.alphascore.com/resources/free-lsat-course/. Some websites that provide preparation services for a fee, such as AlphaScore, also provide some free resources as come-ons. There is no reason not to take advantage of these free resources even if you are not interested in their fee-paying services. The basic point of preparation is to (1) get very familiar with the different question types so you know how to approach them when you take the exam, and (2) identify question types that you have trouble answering correctly. Your objective should be to improve your performance generally, but particularly to try and improve your performance in areas of your greatest weakness. An article in National Jurist's preLaw magazine, "3 Reasons Your LSAT Score Isn't What You Hoped," gives several tips for improving your LSAT performance - http://nationaljurist.com/prelaw/3-reasons-your-lsat-score-isnt-what-you-hoped. The magazine frequently publishes articles about improving your LSAT performance including "10 steps to a stellar LSAT score" at http://nationaljurist.com/prelaw/10-steps-stellar-lsat-score and "How to Prepare for the LSAT"at https://bluetoad.com/publication/?i=439868&ver=html5&p=17#{"page":16,"issue_id":439868}. Links to other articles published in the magazine about taking the LSAT are available at http://www.nationaljurist.com/prelaw/lsat.

As an alternative to the LSAT, over 100 law schools are now willing to accept a score on the GRE in lieu of the LSAT. With the early adopters of this policy including Harvard, Georgetown, and Northwestern, it is not surprising that so many other law schools now accept GRE scores. You should keep this possibility in mind if you have taken or are already planning to take the GRE. A list of law schools that accept the GRE is available at https://www.ets.org/gre/institutions/accept/law/jd_programs/.

5. Choose the right references. Law schools are interested in hearing from references who can comment on your abilities in a specific context. The classic letter is from a professor who taught a seminar in which you were an active participant, wrote a substantial paper, and got a good grade. That professor can write in a positive way about many of the exact traits that law schools care about. This kind of letter will be a lot more impressive than a letter from a professor who taught a 200-student lecture class and has had no personal contact with you. Even if you got a high grade in the course, the reference letter won’t be likely to add anything to the information that already appears on your transcript. In addition, don’t think that a letter from a well known person who is a close friend of your parents, but barely knows you, is a good choice for a reference. If the person, no matter how famous, doesn’t know you personally and can’t describe the kind of interactions that can justify a positive reference, the reference letter will not help you to get admitted. You would be much better off with a letter from someone who supervised your work directly, whether a faculty member or an employer, even if that person is not well known. If you graduated a few years ago, you may have letters from one or more faculty members on file at your school that can be easily updated by former professors. If this is the case, try and update the faculty member about your current activities. If you don’t have letters on file, it is helpful to remind faculty member you ask for reference letters about the courses you took, the grades you got, and anything else notable about your performance in a course. If you’re a real pack rat, you may even have a graded copy of a paper you wrote for a faculty member’s course that you can send to a recommender. Anything you can do to make the faculty member’s job easier will improve the chances of the letter being very positive as well as ready before the deadline.

6. Give your references enough time to write your reference letters. As you know, many faculty are slow to perform tasks like grading and writing reference letters. Give faculty members as well as non-faculty references plenty of time to write your letter and make sure they know the deadline. Moreover, check to see if the letter has been submitted before the deadline and provide a gentle reminder if the letter has not been submitted.

7. Research each law school you’re considering before finally deciding where to apply. The last thing you want to happen is to get admitted to a group of law schools only to realize that, even though you want to attend law school, you don’t want to attend any of the schools that have admitted you. Make sure the schools you apply to have the kind of program that interests you as well as other characteristics you care about. There are lots of law schools and they aren’t all the same in terms of their curricular offerings, size of the student body, atmosphere, location, and many other factors. In addition, knowing something about the school may help when you fill out your application. For example, talking about your interest in a specialty a school doesn’t offer will be less impressive than including in your essay your interest in a specific program that the school does offer.

8. Apply to the right combination of schools. Applying to a range of schools will increase your chances of getting in somewhere as well as make it more likely you’ll get into the best school you can. You should apply to a combination of safety schools, schools where you are within the school’s credential range, and reach schools. What you want to avoid is applying only to schools you are very unlikely to get into or only schools that are safety schools for you. While admission to any particular school is based on a combination of factors, some qualitative and some quantitative, it is useful to review average statistics for schools you are considering on sites like the NAPLA Law School Locator (sometimes referred to as Boston College Matrix) at https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/offices/careers/pdf/2014%20NAPLA%20Law%20Locator%20Final.pdf, PublicLegal (Internet Legal Research Group) at https://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/1/desc/LSATMed?utf8=%E2%9C%93&name=&state=NY&commit=Search, and Law School Numbers at http://lawschoolnumbers.com.

9. Express a continuing interest when you’re put on a law school’s wait list. This advice assumes that you want to attend that law school more than the schools where you have been accepted. First, make sure that you respond positively and promptly when you’re asked if you want to be placed on the school’s wait list. Next, send the school an update to your application if you have new and significant accomplishments as a way of showing the school you remain serious about attending the law school. If possible, you could visit the school to show continuing interest. Schools are more interested in admitting students from the wait list who they believe are likely to attend the school. If you remain interested in attending, make sure the school knows it. In addition, the closer to the start of the school year it gets, the less likely a law school will reach out to students on the wait list. This is because the school will assume that students will be committed to attending another school or can’t relocate quickly enough to be there for the start of orientation. If you would attend if admitted at the last minute and it’s your dream school, contacting the admissions office late in the game is totally appropriate. Just don’t do it too often or you’ll seem like a stalker.

10. Only go to law school if you’re reasonably sure you want to attend. Law school is expensive and even if you get a substantial scholarship, it will occupy time you could devote to something you really want to do. In addition, it’s a lot of hard work. It’s not something most people would want to do just for the fun of it. On the other hand, this doesn’t mean you have to be sure you want to be a practicing lawyer. Law school is a useful credential for various jobs other than practicing law. For example, many people who work at non-profit organizations in policy positions have law degrees even though they don’t practice law. The background may be very useful for the kind of law-related work that they do. This is also true of various jobs in the for-profit sector such as jobs in the financial industry. If you’re not sure you want to attend, there are things you can do to get more information that will be useful in making your decision. You can arrange to attend one or more classes at a law school to get a first hand look at what the educational experience is like. It doesn’t have to be the school you are thinking of attending to give you a good idea of what to expect. You can go to a courthouse and sit in on proceedings to see lawyers in action. You can talk to a variety of people including current law students about their law school experience and practicing lawyers about their work. For some ways to approach deciding whether you want to attend law school see Deciding Whether Law School is the Right Path (Director, Pre-Law Advising, U. Mass at Amherst) available at https://sbspathways.umass.edu/resources/deciding-whether-law-school-is-the-right-path/ .