Law School Application Update: Up, Up, and Away!

The law school application season is just beginning to wind down, and the application numbers coming in are up, up and away. Applications are up at many schools, but the "away" award goes to Cornell Law School -- reporting a 52% increase over applications filed last year. Cornell Law School's Dean of Admissions, Richard Geiger, told the University’s paper he was as mystified as anyone. “The increase is probably the result of a number of things working together,” Geiger told the Cornell Daily Sun. “What I can’t explain is why it’s 50 percent and not 20 percent.”

A 20 percent increase is more consistent with trends nationwide. The number of people who took the LSAT climbed 20 percent in October 2009, reaching an all-time high of 60,746. The New York Times recently reported that many other schools have reported substantial increases in applications over last year. "Washington University in St. Louis has had a 19 percent year-to-date increase in applications to its college of law. At the University of San Francisco School of Law, applications are up 35 percent over last year, and at the University of Iowa’s College of Law, applications are up 39 percent." According to the New York Times, "applications to the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University have risen 54 percent this year, an increase that might be related to its rise in the U.S. News & World Report rankings to 23 in 2009, from 36 the year before."

Richard Geiger, Cornell's Dean of Admissions, cannot point to any obvious reason for the increase in applications. He told the New York Times, “I’m a little thrown off by the fact that our increase is much bigger than expected. There’s nothing big we’re doing to explain that kind of increase.” Cornell's U.S. News & World Report Ranking has remained relatively stable.

Dean Geiger said that the 52 percent increase in applications means that “we’ll be a little more cautious in making decisions.” He explained that “the increase in applications will make us scrutinize things a little more carefully since we don’t fully understand what this is all about.”

What does this mean for applicants? Well, increased competition, most likely. The Cornell University newspaper reports that the law school "does not plan to increase its enrollment cap and remains committed to continue as 'a small, intimate collegial law school.'”

For applicants still waiting to hear from Cornell, that's not good news. Like most law schools, Cornell accepts students on a rolling basis, and many have already received their acceptance letters. Future law school applicants might want to make note of that for next year. Law school admissions deans around the country have been guests on Law School Podcaster shows and they tell us this over and over -- with rolling admissions, getting a law school application in early is key.

Cornell Law School Dean of Admissions Richard Geiger will be a guest on an upcoming Law School Podcaster segment, "Getting In Off the Wait List."

Latest Logic Game Challenge!

Our friends at Atlas LSAT have posted the most recent Logic Game Challenge #20 and invite our listeners to join in:
IPA Beer

A bartender is organizing a taste test of the newest IPA beer selections. Exactly seven different varieties of beer will be tasted – Long Lake, Moon Rune, Newtonbury, Olenguard, Pumpkin Pale, Quest, and Roundabout – one at a time and consecutively.

No other beers are to be tasted. The bartender must adhere to the following rules:
• Olenguard must be the third beer tasted.
• There is exactly one beer tasted between Newtonbury and Quest.
• Either Long Lake or Pumpkin Pale is the fifth beer tasted.
• Either Pumpkin Pale is tasted before Roundabout or Moon Rune is tasted before Newtonbury, but not both.

1. Which one of the following could represent the order in which the beers are tasted, from first to last?

(A) Long Lake, Newtonbury, Olenguard, Pumpkin Pale, Quest, Roundabout, Moon Rune
(B) Long Lake, Moon Rune, Olenguard, Newtonbury, Pumpkin Pale, Quest, Roundabout
(C) Long Lake, Quest, Olenguard, Newtonbury, Roundabout, Pumpkin Pale, Moon Rune
(D) Long Lake, Newtonbury, Moon Rune, Quest, Pumpkin Pale, Olenguard, Roundabout
(E) Long Lake, Quest, Olenguard, Newtonbury, Pumpkin Pale, Roundabout, Moon Rune

2. Which one of the following must be true?

(A) Long Lake must be the first beer tasted.
(B) Moon Rune must be the last beer tasted.
(C) Pumpkin Pale must be the fifth beer tasted.
(D) Either Newtonbury or Quest must be tasted fourth.
(E) Either Long Lake or Pumpkin Pale must be tasted first.

3. If Roundabout is tasted first, which one of the following must be true?

(A) Pumpkin Pale is tasted before Moon Rune.
(B) Pumpkin Pale is tasted before Long Lake.
(C) Moon Rune is the second beer tasted.
(D) Newtonbury is the sixth beer tasted.
(E) Quest is the sixth beer tasted.

4. Each of the following could be true EXCEPT:

(A) Pumpkin Pale is tasted second.
(B) Moon Rune is the first beer tasted.
(C) Moon Rune is the seventh beer tasted.
(D) Roundabout is tasted second.
(E) Roundabout is tasted seventh.

5. If Newtonbury is tasted at some point after Pumpkin Pale, which one of the following could be true?
(A) Long Lake is tasted before Pumpkin Pale.
(B) Neither Newtonbury nor Quest is tasted before Long Lake.
(C) Neither Moon Rune nor Pumpkin Pale is tasted before Olenguard.
(D) Olenguard is tasted after Long Lake.
(E) Moon Rune is tasted before Roundabout.

6. If Pumpkin Pale is tasted first, the seven beers could be tasted in how many different orders?

(A) Four
(B) Five
(C) Six
(D) Seven
(E) Eight

7. Which one of the following, if substituted for the condition that either Pumpkin Pale is tasted before Roundabout or Moon Rune is tasted before Newtonbury, but not both, would have the same effect on the order in which the beers are tasted?

(A) Either Roundabout is tasted after Pumpkin Pale or before Moon Rune, but not both.
(B) Either Long Lake or Roundabout is the first beer tasted.
(C) Either Newtonbury or Quest is tasted sixth.
(D) Either Pumpkin Pale is tasted before Moon Rune, or Roundabout is tasted before Newtonbury, but not both.
(E) Either Roundabout is tasted before Pumpkin Pale, or Newtonbury is tasted after Moon Rune, but not both.

Think you have the answers? E-mail them to logicmaster@atlaslsat.com. First person to submit the correct answers wins a $25 Amazon gift card. The best explanation posted on Atlas LSAT Forums wins $25 as well.

Answers to Logic Games Challenge #19: (1)B (2)A (3)E (4)C (5)C (6)C (7)D (8)D

For more information about the LSAT, check out Law School Podcaster's full show "The LSAT: Everything You Need to Know About the Test."

Law School Applicants and Students Face Changing Landscape for Employment

In “No Longer Their Golden Ticket,” the New York Times shines a spotlight on the rough and changing landscape of the legal job market and paints a dismal view of associate life at Big Law firms -- worse now than before the Recession. The article reports on the reshaping of law firm culture and describes the legal profession as one in a tight squeeze: “lurch[ing] through its worst slump in decades, with jobs and bonuses cut and internal pressures to perform rising.”

Not surprisingly, it's the economy. "The main reason for the squeeze is the Great Recession, which has cut deeply into the kinds of companies — in financial services, real estate, high tech — that are the wellsprings of fees for corporate lawyers. The client companies that survived are doing fewer deals, and driving harder bargains with their lawyers: many negotiate a flat fee for the job, meaning firms can no longer bill by the hour for every legal eagle on the case."

The squeeze felt by associates at BigLaw firms and other lawyers seeking employment is not news to those living the life or for anyone following the legal blogs, which track daily the attorney layoffs, start-date deferrals, salary freezes, scaled back recruitment programs and bonus cuts that have become so familiar. As one law firm partner interviewed for the story observed: “the next generation may have to expect less from a legal career.”

'Less,’ here seems to mean, ‘less money.’

What has come to pass is that a law degree is not a ticket to a six-figure salary and a six-figure bonus,” said Matthew A. Feldman, a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York. Smart, talented people will still find advancement within firms, he said. But “speaking candidly,” he added, “in the past, associates were a little oblivious” in presuming that if they “simply showed up every day and didn’t offend anyone, they were there indefinitely. They have had a wake-up call.

It's clear that certain things about law-firm life and the wider legal employment market are changing. But aside from "less money," experts say that some of these changes might actually be healthy. These include a wider array of recruitment practices, a shift from lock-step to merit-based, competency-based advancement and compensation, professional training and development that includes apprenticeship programs as well as generally a more diverse approach to the business model of a law firm. On a recent Law School Podcaster segment, Ashby Jones, Lead Writer for the Wall Street Journal Law Blog and Jim Leipold, Executive Director of NALP (National Association for Law Placement) shared some of their insights on these changes with our listeners.

Here is some of what they told us:

•Ashby Jones, Lead Writer, The Wall Street Journal Law Blog:

“Law firms are sort of trying to rethink the way they do business, rethink the way they hire people, rethink the way they pay their employees, pay their associates, compensate their partners et cetera, sort of everything that has been the textbook way that law firms run themselves is being reshaped and rethought right now, so it is sort of a crisis point and inflection point and law firms are having to adjust to it. How does that affect the current law student? For the most part, it is a challenge, it is a moment of crisis, but in crisis arises opportunity often. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look and knowing what opportunities are going to attract you.”

• Jim Leipold, Executive Director of NALP (National Association for Law Placement):

“In a way, things got so bad that firms were freed up from looking over their shoulder to see what the other firms were doing and it allowed them to try some new things. So we’re seeing some firms, for instance, implement what they’re calling apprenticeship programs where they’re bringing students on in the first year at a much lower salary but also with a much lower expectation in terms of billable hours and they’re devoting more of that first year to training. We’re seeing some firms lower their starting salaries and others not. We’re seeing some firms say, “We’re going to skip our summer program and just hire laterally. We’re not going to take first year law students right out of school. We’re going to wait and just grow our firm laterally.” So I think what that means is that, where in the recent past, law firms, particularly large law firms, have tended to all do the same thing in almost a knee-jerk way and salaries have coalesced very quickly around the common number and recruiting practices have coalesced very quickly around common practices. I think what we’re going to see going forward is more diversity of practice in all of these areas and I actually think that’s healthy. So you’ll have firms that compete with each other some of whom have apprenticeship programs, some of whom don’t; some of whom offer a starting salary of 160, some of whom offer starting salary that’s considerably lower, some of whom abandon a model of hiring first year new associates and others who continued to have traditional summer programs followed by first year associates. In the training and development arena, you see some law firms leaving this lock step model where each year you automatically get a promotion and moving to a more merit based, competency based system. And so you may or may not progress from year to year. All of those things were beginning to happen before the recession for a number of reasons but the recession accelerated most of those changes and I think will support those changes... .So students are just going to have to be prepared for a much broader range of practices and understanding for each firm that they’re interested in what course that firm is choosing.”

Check out our podcast “The Current Economic Environment: What It Means for Law School Applicants and Students,” to hear more on this topic.

Keep Law Schools Updated on Your Recent Accomplishments

Once your law school application is finally complete, you send it in and wait. Right? Well, there may still be more to do.

Most law schools have a rolling admissions process that extends over several months. If you sent in your application early, and it is deferred, held or even rejected, you should update the law school with any new and significant information you think they should have to evaluate your candidacy. We spoke recently with George Washington University Law School's Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid, Anne M. Richard, and she suggests you notify the law school and provide them with new and "material" information. "An improvement in your LSAT score, membership in Phi Beta Kappa, job promotions and awards." These are the types of things that strengthen and improve your application enough to merit notifying a school.

Dean Richard says that may even make sense if your application was already considered and rejected by a law school. Depending on what the new information is, it may be just enough to earn reconsideration and a spot in the incoming class. Dean Richard tells us that GW Law School wants to hear from an applicant with that type of new information.

Harvard too? The Official JD Admissions Blog at Harvard Law School recently offered similar advice to the first batch of applicants the school put on "hold". "Hold" status is where the admissions committee is "not quite ready to make a decision on your application yet and need[s] some more time to re-examine it in the context of the broader applicant pool." HLS Dean of Admissions, Josh Rubenstein, encouraged applicants placed on "hold" to send updates such as honors or awards you've recently won, a new job, or anything else that you think could materially impact our evaluation of you."

While LSAT scores and updated transcripts will need to come from LSAC or LSDAS, you might want to find out the best way to send other updates to a particular school (email or postal mail etc).

Listen to “Law School Application Strategy: What You Can Do Now To Help You Get Accepted” and "Creating the Killer Law School Application: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the Best Application" to hear other tips from experts inside the admissions offices at several top law schools about the ways to make your application go from good to better, to getting that acceptance letter!

Summer Associate Offers In January? NALP Report Recommends Changes in Recruiting At Law Schools

Ever wonder about the "logic" behind incoming 2L law students leaving their summer vacations in mid-August, heading back to campus, wearing their nicest business suits, to join the frenzied fray that is known as "on-campus interviewing (OCI)?"

Whether you look at it from the point of view of the students pressured to participate and decide early before fully considering the full range of employment options, the law firms trying to assess and anticipate future hiring needs two years in advance or the law schools pressured to schedule OCI just as the semester is starting, there's considerable dissatisfaction with the timing guidelines for law firm recruiting. Ashby Jones, Lead Writer for the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, observed in a recent Law School Podcaster show "the thing about law school and hiring is that it all happens in advance to a degree that a lot of people find sort of absurd."

These concerns, made worse by the economy, may finally lead to changes in the recruiting timeline. NALP's (National Association for Law Placement) Commission on Recruiting and the Legal Profession issued an initial report (PDF) this week recommending that law firms shift away from rolling offer deadlines to a framework based on specific dates ("Offer Kick-Off Days") before which offers for employment cannot be made. The ABA Journal reports that the NALP Commission recommends moving back the date for summer associate job offers until mid-January of the second year of law school (establishing an "offer kick-off day") and proposes "shortening the period of time during which offers remain open from 45 days to 14 days."

While this initial Phase I of the NALP Commission's report focused on potential changes that could be implemented as early as the 2010-2011 academic year, and thus focused mainly on timing guidelines, the NALP Commission also plans to look more closely at the topic of fundamental legal recruiting model changes. That could be pretty interesting.

While the American Lawyer reports that some law firms are worried the proposed changes will just mean they have to "wine and dine" candidates for a longer period of time, the NALP Commission suggests that a January Kick-Off Day might open up the possibility for employers "to experiment with more in-depth interviewing and assessment techniques" and "allow law firms to make decisions after receiving year-end financial data."

Jim Leipold, is the Executive Director at NALP, and was a recent guest on our Law School Podcaster segment, The Current Economic Envcironment: What It Means for Law School Applicants and Students. He gave us a bit of a preview of what we're hearing now and some insight into why the economy might be driving some of the possible changes in law firm recruiting. "Things were beginning to happen before the recession for a number of reasons but the recession accelerated most of those changes and I think will support those changes. I think, over time, we’ll see more firms drift toward recruiting later so, rather than the focus being on students as they return to school in the beginning of their second year, recruiting will probably begin to happen later in the second year, whether that’s late Fall or early Spring, and there too, different firms may choose to recruit at different times. So students are just going to have to be prepared for a much broader range of practices and understanding for each firm that they’re interested in what course that firm is choosing.”

To hear more on this topic, tune in to the full show, "The Current Economic Environment: What It Means for Law School Applicants and Students."

Latest LSAT Logic Game Challenge

Our friends at Atlas LSAT have posted the most recent Logic Game Challenge #19 and invite our listeners to join in: Lab Projects

Lab Work

Envirolab will schedule three projects—F, G, and H—to their lab facilities over a five-week period. Exactly one project will be assigned to each of the five weeks, and each project will be assigned at least once. One of the projects is made up of eight researchers, one is made up of ten researchers, and one is made up of twelve researchers. The scheduling of the lab must conform to the following constraints:

• Project F is assigned to more weeks than project H.
• There are more researchers assigned to project H than project F.
• More researchers are assigned to week three than are assigned to either week one or week two.
• The project assigned to week two does not have eight researchers.
• Project F is assigned to week four.

1. Which one of the following could be an accurate schedule of projects for the five weeks, listed in order from week one to week five?
(A) G, H, F, F, F
(B) G, G, H, F, F
(C) F, F, H, G, F
(D) H, H, G, F, G
(E) F, F, H, G, G

2. If there are more researchers assigned to week one than week five, how many different possible schedules for the projects could be made?
(A) 2
(B) 4
(C) 6
(D) 8
(E) 10

3. If project F has ten researchers, then which one of the following could be a partial assignment of projects to weeks?
(A) week two: project F; week three: project F
(B) week two: project H; week three: project F
(C) week one: project H; week two: project F
(D) week one: project G; week two: project F; week five: project H
(E) week one: project G; week two: project F; week four: project F

4. Which one of the following weeks must have twelve researchers assigned to it?
(A) week one
(B) week two
(C) week three
(D) week four
(E) week five

5. If project G has twelve researchers, which one of the following is a complete and accurate list of the weeks to which project F must be assigned?
(A) four
(B) two and four
(C) one and four
(D) one, two, and five
(E) one, four, and five

6. If ten researchers are scheduled for week one, which one of the following CANNOT be true?
(A) project G is scheduled for week one
(B) project F is scheduled for week two
(C) project H is scheduled for week five
(D) project F is scheduled for week five
(E) project H is scheduled for week three

7. If the condition that more researchers are assigned to week three than are assigned to week one or week two is replaced with the condition that more researchers are assigned to week one and week two than are assigned to week three, and if all other conditions remain in effect, then each of the following could be true EXCEPT:
(A) F is assigned to week one
(B) H is assigned to week three
(C) G is assigned to week three
(D) H is assigned to week three and G is assigned to week five
(E) G is assigned to week one and H is assigned to week five

8. Which one of the following conditions, if substituted for the condition that project F is assigned to more weeks than project H, would have the same effect in determining the schedule of projects?
(A) Project G is assigned to one or two weeks.
(B) Project H is assigned to exactly one week.
(C) Project F is assigned to more weeks than project G.
(D) Project G is assigned to a maximum of two weeks, and project H is assigned to a maximum of one week.
(E) Project F is assigned to a maximum of three weeks, and project G is assigned to a maximum of two weeks.

Think you have the answers? E-mail them to logicmaster@atlaslsat.com. First person to submit the correct answers wins a $25 Amazon gift card. The best explanation posted on Atlas LSAT's forums wins $25 as well.

For more information about the LSAT, check out Law School Podcaster's full show, "The LSAT: Everything You Need to Know About the Test."

Tips On That Critical Law School Personal Statement

If you haven't done so yet, it's time to tackle that law school personal statement. You've spent the last few years developing your GPA and you've given over months of your life to preparing for the LSAT. So how much does the essay part of your application matter?

Enough that we devoted an entire show to the topic! In "The Law School Personal Statement and Letters of Recommendation: Where To Begin?," we run down what you should know about putting together a winning personal statement -- where to begin, what to focus on and how law schools will use your essay to evaluate your overall application.

Aside from the hard numbers of your GPA and LSAT score, the personal statement and letters of recommendation really help admissions committees distinguish between applicants and it's the single most important part of your entire application which you can control. Accepted.com's Linda Abraham tells us “the personal statement is absolutely critical and letters of recommendations too, for that matter. It is absolutely critical when your numbers are competitive."

Are you wondering just how much weight your personal statement has in the admissions decision? Probably more than you think. Dean of Admissions at UC Berkeley Law’s Boalt Hall, Edward Tom tells us “if I had to quantify the weight I would weight it about one-third of what we look at, the other two-thirds being respectively the LSAT and the academic record. So if you look at it that way, the personal statement is the same weight as the LSAT score."

So, where to begin? Sounds obvious, but make sure you answer the question you are asked. Adam Hoff, Director of Admissions Consulting at Veritas Prep says “most people who read applications will tell you the one thing they wish people did with their personal statements is just answer the question that they have. Every application begs a question and the most important thing that you can do in your law school personal statement is to answer that question."

Accepted.com Senior Editor Paul Bodine authored the book Great Personal Statements for Law School and says “the first step in writing an essay is not really writing anything at all. It’s sort of asking yourself what is important to you, what experiences have influenced you most, what accomplishments you’re proudest of. Then the next step is developing stories that capture that self reflection.”

Emory University Pre-Law Advisor, Rodia Vance says that applicants should write about life experiences that reflect their interests, character traits and to find a way to connect those to going to law school. “You do want to be able to express to the committee why you feel that obtaining a JD is the right next step for you and one of the ways that you can do that is to think about those experiences that you’ve had that have been the most meaningful, what they have meant to you, what you have learned from them and then how those lessons connect to your interest in pursuing a legal education.”

So what is the admissions committee looking for when they read your personal statement? G. Todd Morton, Dean of Admissions at Vanderbilt Law says “a good personal statement really helps to demonstrate something about the individual as a prospective law student." He wants to see an essay that not only demonstrates "effective communication skills" but one that also reveals "candor and self-reflection" and "earnest engagement with the prospect of entering law school."

Tune into the full show to hear more. Also, learn how to prepare the people you chose to write your letters of recommendation so that your recommendations are consistent with your personal statement and help enhance the overall image you are building of yourself.