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The Top 15 Things Every Law School Applicant Should Know is a series that will teach you the ins and outs of successful law school applications. Stay tuned for the remaining elements. This week we’ll discuss the importance of extracurricular activities in the law school admissions process

Part of your strategy for applying to law school should be figuring out what makes you stand apart from the crowd. The numbers are the numbers, but what you do outside of school and how you spend your free time is uniquely your own. And how you present this information is just as important as the information itself. Here’s what you need to know.

In its purest form, law is still seen as a “helping profession,” so having a strong track record with involvement in the world beyond the classroom is important. Hopefully your extracurricular activities include some level of community service and volunteerism, but if not, you might want to consider adding that to your “strategy” for applying to law school. Volunteering for something related to the legal field, i.e. Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) or Legal Aid, for example, is a great way not only to demonstrate service, but will also give you a real world glimpse into what it is like to be an attorney. But the reality is that any kind of community service is valuable, so choose something that is meaningful to you and to which you can make a genuine commitment.

Other extracurricular activities that show your involvement with your school and community can include sports, hobbies, clubs, and other activities. Again, if you have written law related articles for your school’s newspaper – great! But if not, your extracurricular activities will give the adcom an idea of who you are and what is important to you. The best kind of extracurricular activities are the ones that are most meaningful to you and the ones in which you have taken a leadership role. You don’t need fifteen different activities, just a few that you really care about. Highlighting your authentic interest in and commitment to these activities will be an important part of your application. If you are uncertain how to go about doing this, admissions consultants can help you figure out how to best frame this part of your application so that you stand out from the crowd. It’s all part of your overall strategy to convey to your readers who you are, the causes that you care about, and what you can bring to the school to which you are applying. By making sure that you demonstrate this commitment to the world around you, you are setting yourself apart from the rest of the pack.

By Catherine Cook, an Accepted.com admissions consultant, published author and former Duke Law admissions officer. Accepted.com, the premier admissions consultancy and essay editing company, has helped applicants around the world gain admissions to over 450+ top schools since 1994.

This blog post originally appeared on Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog.

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Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

 The Top 15 Things Every Applicant to Law School Applicant Should Know is a series that will teach you the ins and outs of successful law school applications. Stay tuned for the remaining elements. This week we’ll discuss the importance of timing in the law school admissions process.

My brother’s favorite saying is, “Go early and go high.” This is the way he enjoys his hiking – pure, pristine, and in solitude. It is how he best appreciates the experience. In the case of law school (and really, all undergraduate and graduate) admissions, the ancillary sentiment is, “Write well and submit early.” There are several reasons for this, and here they are.

1.  While the deadlines for law schools vary (for the class beginning in the fall of 2013, Harvard’s deadline is December 1, 2012 whereas Santa Clara’s is February 1, 2013), it makes sense to work on your applications in parallel and try to submit more or less all at once. You will most likely be using the same, perhaps slightly modified, personal statement for every school, so there is no reason to drag out the process. Who wants to spend six months stressing out over it? Just get it done.

2.   Many schools will fill their class on a rolling basis, meaning if they read your application in September and they like it, you could be admitted in October or November. If you know you want to go to law school and you know you want to go the following fall, wouldn’t you rather start thinking about your options sooner rather than later? This gives you plenty of time to make your decisions, explore financial aid and other methods of funding your law school education, and preparing for this new chapter in your life. In addition, there is generally more financial aid available earlier in the application cycle than later, so your chances of obtaining assistance is greater the earlier you apply.

3.   Finally, and perhaps most importantly, part of the application equation is considering your audience. Admissions committees are made up of real people, who read every single application submitted. In a typical year, Berkeley receives 6000-8000 applications. Someone has to read them all, and it stands to reason that the enthusiasm the readers have for the first 3000 or so applications may wane a bit by the time they get to the last 500 or so. It’s basic human nature. Are you more alert and attentive at the beginning of a lecture than at the end? Are you more engaged when you start reading the New York Times, or after you’ve spent two hours poring over it? You want your application to land on the adcom member’s desk when they are fresh and excited, not when they are spent and exhausted.

We know that the process can be intimidating and it can be tempting to procrastinate. Professional admissions consultants can help you organize your thoughts, brainstorm about your personal statement, and assist you with getting your applications submitted in a timely manner. The earlier, the better!

By Catherine Cook, an Accepted.com admissions consultant, published author and former Duke Law admissions officer. Accepted.com, the premier admissions consultancy and essay editing company, has helped applicants around the world gain admissions to over 450+ top schools since 1994.

This blog post originally appeared on Accepted Admissions Consulting Blog.

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 Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

By Mary Adkins, Manhattan LSAT Teacher. Manhattan LSAT is a leading LSAT-exclusive test preparation provider. If you don’t know much about the LSAT, you can read the Manhattan LSAT intro guide or attend one of the free workshops (available in NYC and Live Online).

You may have heard the news. At the end of a decade of soaring law school application numbers, they’ve finally started plummeting. Over the past two years, there has been a notable dip in the number of people taking the LSAT and, accordingly, the number applying to law school. Interestingly, it turns out that the greatest decrease has been among test-takers scoring highest on the test. The smallest change has been among students scoring at the low end. In other words, the potential 170s are mostly the ones deciding to forego law school. The potential 150s (and under) are still showing up.

I have been troubled over the past couple of weeks by the chatter about why this may be the case. The popular consensus that has emerged: the smart kids are “getting the memo” that law jobs are few and far between, so they’re moving on to do other things. Then there the dumb kids, who just don’t get it. They’re still applying.

This speculation is pretty myopic, and I’m sort of awed by how readily the authors who suggest it—not only at The Atlantic and Above the Law—seem to assume that most people decide to go law school based on identical professional goals (with some minor lip service to the “less affluent” crowd, as if it’s at the fringe): super high-paying, big city, highly competitive.

No doubt that jobs at firms in major cities are hard to come by, have become harder to come by, and are easier (as in, perhaps possible) to come by if you’ve graduated from a top school, for which you need a high LSAT score. Sure. But there are many, many people who don’t plan or want to live in Chicago, New York, or Boston. For these folks, local and/or state law schools ranked below the top 50, or even100, are more than sufficient to obtain JDs and set up shop.

“Small town” lawyers and the lower-tier schools that train them are not the outliers of the legal profession, the minority. They are the majority.

I can think of five friends offhand who went to law schools proximate to where we grew up in South Carolina (and all to schools outside the top 100, by the way). What are these people doing now? They are practicing law near or in our hometown.

Maybe the reason the Potential 170s aren’t taking the LSAT isn’t because they’re picking up on something that the 150s-and-under are missing. Maybe they just want something different. The Potential 170s want Ropes & Gray or Cravath or to run Legal Aid, and in this economic climate, they make the reasonable assessment that for them, law school isn’t a great bet. Meanwhile, a healthy number of the150s have more flexibility in terms of what schools they’re willing to go to and/or what scores they need to get there.

The reason the decreasing number of applications seems to be skewed by LSAT score has, I imagine, more to do with people’s varying values than it does the ignorance of low scorers. Maybe they’re not missing the message; it’s just a message that doesn’t apply to them.

Here’s a recent inquiry from one of our listeners and some info from our podcasts that may be helpful: 

I am a college senior with one semester left before I graduate. I am currently studying for the LSAT. This semester I chose to take a logic class and while I am learning the material, the class is difficult and I already know it’s going to lower my GPA. Therefore I’m thinking of holding off on law school right after I graduate. How highly do law schools look at GPA’s if an individual takes time off from school to concentrate on employment or professional experience?

Not surprisingly, some of our guests, including admissions deans from top law schools, have offered their insight on these points.  So, why not hear (or read below) what they’ve had to say on these topics.  If you want to hear from our experts directly, just click on the podcast links below.

•  Mitigating Weaknesses in Your Law School Application: Identifying and Fixing Weak Spots.  In this segment, Dean Rita Jones, of Boston College Law School, emphasized the importance of taking challenging undergraduate courses and said that too many easy classes are a potential weakness in your candidacy.  “It could be a weakness if you’ve taken too many intro-level courses later in your college years, maybe having several jobs on your résumé but no apparent advancement in responsibility or position, lack of demonstrated leadership in co-curricular and extracurricular activities, no demonstration of a long-term commitment to any one endeavor. These are things that I would look for. I don’t know that candidates always think [about] that, but I think it’s something to consider.”

How should you deal with a low grade in a particular class or a weaker GPA?  Dean Jones had the following advice: “You can retake classes. That won’t raise a poor grade or change a GPA, but it might show you’re moving in a better direction. . . I would not suggest retaking a class to, say, boost the GPA unless the low grade was really due to not understanding the subject and that’s something you really want to know. I mean, if it works, if it’s important for you to really have that knowledge that you did not get from the class, it might well be worth repeating it. But I would suggest repeating it just for purposes of boosting the GPA.”

• What’s Your Major? The Courses That Help You Get In & Succeed in Law School is another segment tackling this issue.  Sarah Zearfoss, Senior Assistant Dean for Admissions,University of Michigan Law School says admissions officers like to see curricula that is both deep and broad. “You should  certainly be trying to take challenging courses in whatever is your chosen core field, to show that you can perform at a very high academic level. And then it’s also important though that you branch out and test yourself in areas outside your comfort zone. So classes that give you experience [such] as close reading of texts, detailed analysis, logical reasoning, and extensive writing are always helpful.”

In comparing different majors in the admissions process, Ann Perry, Associate Dean for Admissions, The University of Chicago Law School reviews the entire application, and discerns how the student performs in their major fields. “So, it’s looking at their transcripts, seeing what courses they took. Did they challenge themselves within their major, meaning they took upper level classes beyond maybe what was required? I like to see some writing classes — and even hard science majors sometimes take writing classes — because I think that’s a core skill that it would be nice to come with for law school, even though you take a whole year of legal writing. So it’s evaluating that, but also here’s where letters of recommendation become helpful, especially when they’re from a professor who the student had, who can really kind of talk about this student’s academic ability.”

• Nontraditional Law School Applicants & Students:  Tips to Help You Apply, Find the Right Fit & Succeed, focuses on the value of taking time off after earning your undergraduate degree and before starting law school. The show offers some perspective on how admissions deans view applicants who take time off.

For example, Frank Motley, Assistant Dean for Admissions, Indiana University Maurer School of Law said that when he started at Indiana in 1977, most people applying had not taken any time off. Increasingly, students are taking time off to work before coming to law school as is often seen with business schools.“Well, business schools require that students have some work experience because they find that they become better students and add more to the classroom experience. While law schools haven’t required that, I think that people are seeing one or two years experience does add to their maturity and makes the law school experience much more relevant.”

Johann Lee, Assistant Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Northwestern University Law School adds that nontraditional students tend to have time management skills, also a great help. “If you’ve been holding a very competitive complex job, then you learn time management skills. You learn really good time management skills. And so I think when you enter the law school environment, having to juggle a lot – juggle your class work, extracurricular, co-curricular activities, I think old students tend, to me and historically, they seem to do well because they have the ability to juggle a lot of things and do a lot of things effectively.”

Also in this show, Veritas Prep’s Adam Hoff explains that law school is a numbers game — until it isn’t.“Schools are not able to just disregard the LSAT or disregard the GPA. Even if they think those markers are not as appropriate for a nontraditional or an older applicant. But what they are able to do is say, look, we think that the rich experience this person has, we think their nontraditional approach, is going to add so much value to the experience for other students. They’re going to bring so much diversity and spice to the classrooms that we’re willing to absorb the hit on this particular LSAT score.”

Listen to these shows to get more information on this topic!

Should we anticipate saying good-bye to the traditional law school classroom experience, famously depicted in movies, television and shared by legions of 1Ls who have endured it while learning to “think like a lawyer?” Not quite, though there’s a lot of talk these days about changes in the legal profession — and how law schools should respond.  The debate centers on the value and relevance of the traditional law school curriculum and is prompted in large part by the dismal economy in recent years, the shedding of tens of thousands of legal services jobs, and the changing demands of legal employers showing an increased reluctance to underwrite the costs of training recent law graduates.

According to a January post in The National Law Journal, the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools in Washington a few months ago drew nearly 3,000 educators and many law schools have some type of plan for curriculum innovation.  These include ”a wider array of clinics, harnessing technology in simulations and student projects, and teaching transactional lawyering skills.”  And, more and more law professors are focusing scholarship on ways law schools should respond to the shifts in the profession.

The question is what balance should be struck between traditional law school curriculum (steeped in theory and books) and a more practice-based skills development.  Should curriculum changes be incremental – and include modest changes such as additional clinics and externships? Or should there be more sweeping reforms – where subjects like executive management, business skills, legal technology and behavioral management are taught?

Law School Podcaster is devoting an entire podcast to this important topic.  Our latest show, Beyond Thinking Like a Lawyer: What Changes in Legal Education Mean for Students features the following leading experts on this topic:

• Paul Schiff Berman, Dean and Robert Kramer Research Professor at Law, George Washington University Law School
• William Henderson, Professor of Law and Val Nolan Faculty Fellow; Director, Center on the Global Legal Profession, Indiana University Maurer School of Law
• Nancy Rappoport, Gordon Silver Professor, University of Nevada Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law
• Patrick J. Lynch, Co-Founder & Policy Director, Law School Transparency

Law School Transparency’s Co-Founder and Policy Director, Patrick J. Lynch, says increased skills training is something every law school’s looking at, to improve the services they offer. “I think for many that where they’re going to come down on that is that they have to provide some improvement in the way that they actually train people to practice law. A good example of that is the rise of solo practitioner sort of prep courses, where they prepare people on the chance that the only option to enter the legal profession is to hang out the shingle, that schools are now offering better training, so that people can actually do that right from the get-go. And I think that’s a great example of a really practical skill training method that is probably very necessary at a lot of law schools to do. I think that that sort of thing, it can be very helpful, I think, looking at… we’ve spoken with a number of law schools that are working more with local attorneys to develop mentorship programs, and actually get students very early on during law school really socializing and getting to know and pursuing internships and legal work with lawyers in the community, which I think is a great way to sort of supplement the traditional in-course curriculum with the type of networking and skills training that you really need to succeed in this profession.”

Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor William D. Henderson says additional skills training can give law school students a broader scope for future positions. “I think that there is some usefulness towards skill training in terms of legal writing, some litigation-type training, some transactional drafting-type training. But I also think it needs to go beyond that to focus on collaborative skills, teamwork-type skills, interpersonal skills, communication, effectiveness, trust building, listening skills. I think that these are more transferable and are going to allow law school graduates to be effective in a variety of professional contexts, not just litigation-associated or transaction-associated at a major law firm.”

Don’t expect law schools to completely abandon any time soon the core curriculum that has been the mainstay of earning your law degree.  Most law schools are just beginning to look at adding pilot programs and new opportunities for students to develop real-world skills and knowledge about the legal profession.

Not surprisingly, cost is a factor.  Practice-based training is expensive, says Paul Schiff Berman, Dean and Robert Kramer Research Professor at Law, George Washington University Law School.  “One of the ironies of the criticisms of law schools over the last year or two is that people are simultaneously criticizing schools for having tuitions that are too high, and at the same time criticizing schools for not offering enough practice-based training, given that the practice-based training is the most expensive training that we do, because it requires the lowest student-faculty ratio. So it is expensive to do this work, but I think it’s crucial. So, I’ve made a tremendous investment both in creating the professional development course in the first year, creating some more clinical and quasi-clinical experiences, creating a dedicated mentoring and alumni networking coordinator, and also we’ve created various programs at the back end to help students work their way into jobs and move into jobs in the public sector.”

Tune in to the full show to hear more!

Law school applicants hear this (sound) advice all the time:  Do your research and choose carefully when selecting a law school.  In the future, law school applicants will have better, more transparent, information to work with as they do that research. Better, though not perfect.

The ABA’s law school accrediting arm will require law schools to provide more detailed employment information.  According to Indiana University law professor William Henderson, writing on The Legal Whiteboard, “over the last 18 months, three separate ABA groups — the Questionnaire Committee, Standards Review Committee, and the Council on Legal Education — have given sincere and focused attention to the law school employment controversy. Frankly, I am in awe of the breadth and depth what they have accomplished. Going forward, prospective students will get, at a school-specific level:

• Type of Practice Setting. Law firms (#, broken down by size), business and industry, government, public interest, judicial clerkship (federal, statel, local by size), employed in academic, pursuing graduate degrees, unemployed (various types) and status unknown.
• Duration and Quality. For the first time, jobs will be broken out by: (1) full-time versus part-time, (2) long term versus short term; (3) number of law school funded jobs, (4) whether JD is required; (5) whether JD is preferred; (6) whether the job is professional or nonprofessional
• Uniform Web Reporting. All of this information, plus tuition, fees, employment data, scholarship (including renewal rates), entering student credentials, will be in a relatively standardized format on the schools’ websites.”

While this is a good start, Henderson writes that the ABA decision is controversial because “law schools will not be required to report any salary data (on the theory that they are too incomplete on the bad outcomes side to be reliable).”

Nevertheless, Henderson predicts that the new information “will give rise to a whole new rankings industry that will rival and potentially supplant U.S. News” and will allow potential students to use “hard data” to make more precise decisions.  Henderson gives the following examples of ways that applicants can weigh the new information:

• Why go to a law school ranked #60 and pay twice as much when the new Employment Transparency Rankings show essentially identical employment outcomes for a lower ranked school?
• More perniciously, why go to Law School X or Y at all when over half of their graduates routinely fail to obtain full-time legal or professional employment 9 months after graduation?
• And the potential death blow, why should the DOE continue to fund such miserable outcomes when the U.S. taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for the bill?

 

Henderson characterizes these new ABA industry-level transparencies as “a lot like cancer treatment: it can beat back symptoms and buy time, but it won’t necessarily cure the disease.”  For that, he says, law school educators must address ”structural problems” in legal education.

Law School Podcaster is devoting an entire podcast to what law schools are doing to address these “structural problems.” William Henderson, of Indiana University Maurer School of Law is a guest on our upcoming show, Beyond Thinking Like a Lawyer: What Changes in Legal Education Mean for Students.  Other guests include:

• Patrick J. Lynch, Co-Founder & Policy Director, Law School Transparency
• Paul Schiff Berman, Dean and Robert Kramer Research Professor at Law, George Washington University Law School
• Nancy Rappoport, Gordon Silver Professor, University of Nevada Las Vegas William S. Boyd School of Law

Stay tuned for the show!

The U. S. News & World Report “Best Law Schools 2013″ is out – and there’s a bit of shuffling around in some of the top spots and a few big jumps elsewhere.

Yale remains ranked #1 (holding the spot since 1990), Stanford moves up to the #2 spot (from #3) and Harvard moves to #3 (Harvard held the #2 spot since 2007 and Stanford had jointly held the #2 spot with Harvard in 2008 and 2009).

There was also some shuffling within the Top 14 (T14).  According to a U.S. News post:  “The University of California—Berkeley School of Law and the University of Virginia School of Law both moved up two spots to tie with the University of Pennsylvania Law School for 7th, while the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor Law School slid from 7th to 10th; Cornell Law School, now ranked 14th, and the Georgetown Law Center, at 13th, switched spots from last year’s list.”

Other notable news includes:

• After one year in the T14, the University of Texas—Austin School of Law, fell two spots to 16th in the rankings for 2013.
• The Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Lawleapt to the 26th spot, up 14 spots from 40th last year, following a 15-spot jump from 55th two years before that.
• Last year’s five-way tie for 30th dissolved in the 2013 rankings as the University of Washington School of Lawmoved 10 spots to 20th.
• Emory University School of Law and the Washington and Lee University School of Lawboth jumped six spots and remain tied at 24th.
• The Pepperdine University School of Law moved five spots to crack the top 50 (from 54th to 49th).
• The University of Miami School of Law jumped eight spots, from 77th last year to 69th in the 2013 rankings.

Here are the top 20-ranked law schools:

1) Yale University

2) Stanford University

3) Harvard University

4) Columbia University

5) University of Chicago

6) New York University

7) University of California at Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia (tied)

10) University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

11) Duke University Law School

12) Northwestern Law School

13) Georgetown Law School

14) Cornell Law School

15) UCLA Law School

16) University of Texas, Austin, Vanderbilt (tied)

18) University of Southern California, Gould

19) University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

20) George Washington University Law School

So, what do the numbers really mean?  Hear directly from Robert Morse, Director of Data Research for U. S. News & World Report in our podcast, Law School Rankings: What Do the Numbers Mean?

By Manhattan LSAT, a leading LSAT-exclusive test preparation provider.  If you don’t know much about the LSAT, you can read the Manhattan LSAT intro guide or attend one of the free workshops (available in NYC and Live Online).

Two of the more common questions asked by future LSAT takers are: 1) “When should I begin studying for the LSAT?” and 2) “How long does it typically take to prepare for this exam?”

The answer to these basic (yet extremely important!) questions provides a ‘jumping off point’ for folks and helps them plan their lives (or lack there of) during the months spent prepping for the LSAT.

If you are planning to take the June 2012 LSAT, I’ll save you the drama of the rest of this post: it’s time to start studying now! Get started with a diagnostic test. This will give you a great sense of where you are, although you should not get discouraged if you score well below the national average (151) your first time.

When Should I Start Studying for the LSAT?

The answer? Annoyingly, it is very difficult to generalize just how much time an individual needs to prepare for the LSAT. The trend we’ve noticed is that 2.5-3.5 months is typically necessary to maximize ones potential on the exam. This does not mean that it is impossible to thoroughly prep in 2 months or less, nor does it mean that you are a dummy if it takes you six months to prep – it simply means that everyone is different – and that this test is a major pain in the butt!

It is also important to recognize that the amount of real time that you have available to you to put in to studying on a daily/weekly basis will have an impact on how long (in weeks and months) it will take you to adequately prepare. A college student who has dedicated their summer to studying for the LSAT may only need 2.5 months to get ready for their test day, whereas a busy working professional with two children may require a bit more time.

Since the LSAT is only given four times each year (and on very specific dates), my advice for folks trying to determine their timeline is to pick a target test date, and then work backward from there.

When it comes to choosing a target test date, here is what you should be considering:

• Can I execute a dedicated study regimen in the three months (approximately) before my target test date?
• When am I hoping to start law school?
• Do I need a ‘back up’ LSAT test date?

By Linda Abraham, founder and president of Accepted.com. Accepted.com, the premier admissions consultancy and essay editing company, has helped applicants around the world gain admissions to over 450+ top schools since 1994. Visit Accepted.com for guidance with your law school application today.

I attended a lecture over the weekend. As the speaker began, he mentioned a couple of ideas that sounded intriguing, and I settled back expecting him to explore them, perhaps tie them together. Then came a few more unrelated ideas. OK, I thought, the first ones must have been warm-ups. It could be interesting if he develops these later concepts.  But he didn’t.

He continued with teasing non-sequitur after teasing non-sequitur. It was a frustrating monologue of disconnected, but potentially engaging, ideas. I was not a happy listener. The person sitting next to me dozed. 

Don’t frustrate your reader. Make sure your personal statement has a point — one point. If you introduce an idea in the introductory paragraph, develop it. Build on your premise, answer your question, tie plot strands together, and clarify as needed the significance of your examples.

Don’t waste your reader’s time or irritate. Deliver on the promise you make in your personal statement’s opening.

This blog post originally appeared on Accepted Admissions Consulting blog.

Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

You can hear more great tips on this topic from Accepted.com’s Linda Abraham in our podcast, Law School Personal Statements & Letters of Recommendation: Where to Begin?