How to Choose And Get Into A Law School That Is Perfect For You

The decision to become a lawyer and the decision that accompanies it, to apply to law school, are two of the most important choices you can make in your life; decisions that will affect you significantly in all the years ahead. A book designed to guide you through evaluating law schools should be clear about just what benefits you can expect from using it. How this book can be useful to you will vary according to your background and your needs in choosing and applying to law schools.

If you are a straight A applicant with LSAT scores in the top 99th percentile, have many achievements on the undergraduate level, and can write an application essay to delight any admissions officer, this book will provide you with a comparative analysis of the law schools you are likely to consider attending. Given that you have a wider choice of schools than most applicants, this guide offers detailed descriptions of many of the country's most prominent law schools, which should help you to distinguish and discriminate among the qualities that will make one institution preferable to another. The analyses are based on the opinions of students currently attending the schools, administrators of the schools, and legal employment recruiters who are familiar over time with the graduates of these schools.


If, like most applicants, you have not aced every course or given a stellar performance on the LSAT, and your application essays are adequate but not cause for admissions officers to seek you out, then this book will show you how to maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. The pointers in the law school profiles are taken from admissions officers at these schools, many of whom offer admissions tips, and from the opinions of students as to why they think their applications led to acceptance.

Perhaps most important is the fact that we are here to make your life a little easier right now when you need it most. Although there are no 100% guarantees of acceptance into the school of your choice, we hope to keep you better informed about easier methods for navigating the maze of applications and admissions and coming out at the end with a satisfactory place in a school that satisfies your needs. On page xv a step-by-step guide begins to the different procedures in getting into law school—and paying for it.

When you first decided that law school was to be your destination, it is likely that you began your research into the subject by reviewing the website online catalogues of various law schools. Many of these catalogs are glossy and inviting enough for display in a travel agency, and you must remember, as you read their glowing descriptions of schools, that they have been created essentially as a marketing device.

They were designed to give the most favorable impression of their schools. Just as an advertising agency sets out to market jeans or the latest car, these institutions are selling their product to you, the potential consumer. This guide is meant to provide a more detached and objective view of the schools, to enable you to make an informed choice of a product that will consume thousands of dollars and at least three years of your life.

Learn the 10 Factors That Matter to Big Firms More Than Where You Went to Law School

Each year the LSAC/LSAS sponsors law school forums, held in large hotels and/or convention centers in major cities around the country, including New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. To hopeful applicants, this may be the only time to come in contact with a flesh-and-blood representative from the schools they have wanted to learn about. To harried admissions officers, many of whom bring support staffs consisting of students, alumni/ae, and/or law school professors, these frenzied settings frequently referred to as "road shows," can be high-stress experiences. Still, law school forums can be an effective way to learn something about distant or unfamiliar schools.

Believe it or not, admissions officers want you to apply to their schools as much as you want to get into them. Remember, the more applicants that apply to a school, the more the general public (at least a good percentage of the following year's applicant pool) will perceive that school as being popular and more important, worthy of that popularity.

Road shows can be an eye-opening experience to a prospective student who suddenly finds him- or herself crammed into a room with thousands of other hopefuls, all of whom are competing for the same admissions officers' attention. As you might expect, the more popular schools' tables tend to be the most difficult to get near while other tables draw little interest (this also depends on the site of the forum relative to the school), regardless of the size of the crowd. To prevent congestion, many of the more popular or "cornerstone" schools are spaced far apart from one another.

How can you make the most of these road shows? The following is a list of suggested dos and don'ts when attending a show.
 

• Don't expect an admissions officer to know your exact chances for getting into his or her school given your raw statistics (GPA, LSAT scorefsj) or based on a thumbnail sketch of yourself and your educational background. When they talk to you, they still will not know what their complete applicant pool will be like, so any determination would be premature.
  
  Admissions is far more complicated than number cutoffs, especially in view of the volatile swings in applications over the past two years. A school whose LSAT score was 34 a year ago may have had such a dramatic increase in applicants that the number is closer to 35 or 36 for your pool. Conversely, after anticipating an increase in applications, that same school may find that the percent of students who agree to attend, or its yield, has shrunk below anticipated averages, forcing it to take several students off its waiting list who have LSAT scores of 34 or lower.
• Don't monopolize admissions officers. As a rule of thumb, admissions officers tire quickly of students who dwell on the same questions, usually those about LSAT scores and GPAs, and chances for acceptance. Being around the admissions officer longer and even getting him or her to remember your name is unlikely to affect your chances for admission. This is particularly true of applicants who rank far below the normal admissions standards for these schools.
• Don't rely exclusively on the comments of students or the rest of the support staff that the admissions officer brings along to tout the school. This doesn't mean to ignore their laudatory comments. However, realize that these students are not always what is referred to as "representative." Besides, with an admissions officer or other school administrator lurking within earshot they aren't going to discuss, if even mention, any shortcomings that their school might have. Students are best questioned one on one in a private setting, if possible. Remember you aren't looking for "nuking" (see page viii), but objectively each school has areas that could use improvement, and you should be aware of them.
• Do be polite, kind, and courteous and never interrupt admissions officers when they're giving answers to other prospective applicants. We have seen this happen on several occasions, and it will generally draw a yes or no from the administrator, or at worsr wiJJ draw open fire in response to a perceived rudeness. You are going to be a lawyer and as such you should understand the meaning of decorum.
• Be prepared. Read up on the schools before you ask questions. Try not to ask GPA/ LSAT-type questions, but know your own background and reasons for studying law. Try to get past the surface and ask thoughtful questions about each school's programs. This is far more impressive to an admissions officer than, "What's your mean LSAT score?"
• Relax. Be yourself. Don't allow anyone at the forum to intimidate you. This includes administrators and/or other applicants who are dying to share the fact that they pulled a 46 on the LSAT. "And to think I didn't study or want to go to law school! Lucky huh?"
• Be adventurous. Go to a table from a school you haven't considered, but might have read about in this book or others. When we first began our search for the leading law schools we looked at each and every law school. Some critics said we should have cut immediately by GPA and LSATs, but we wanted to be egalitarian. Just as no applicant wishes to be "cut by the numbers," we didn't want to eliminate schools arbitrarily. We were pleasantly surprised to find a few schools that made our list that we might not have considered had we not stepped outside of the safe perimeters of "common perception."

Pre-Law Advisors And How To Use Them

What is NAPLA or MAPLA, or SAPLA for that matter? NAPLA stands for the Northeast Association of Prelaw Advisors, MAPLA is Midwest, and so on. Each of these associations has members from universities and colleges in its geographical region, including pre-law advisors and law school personnel. At a recent NAPLA conference, pre-law advisors were treated to lectures by guest speakers on subjects specific to law school such as financial aid, admissions, and the role of women in the legal profession. It is an informal setting where law school admissions officers and pre-law advisors rekindle ties, and many of the law schools take the opportunity to hand out lists of last year's accepted students to each pre-law advisor.

If you think about it properly, your pre-law advisor is the representative from your college or university who has the access code to get the attention of law school admissions officers. More experienced advisors, and those from schools known to be "feeders" to the law schools, will often have better access than advisors from lesser known schools or new advisors. Just the same, all advisors have the chance to mingle and learn more about what the law schools want in terms of applicants.

Think of your advisor (if your school has one) as an agent who is representing you to the law schools. But before you go off annoying your advisor to "push you in" you should know some facts:
 

• The best way for an advisor to build his or her reputation is to call the law schools sparingly and only with good reason. This means you should have done your homework thoroughly before you entered the advisor's office, because if you're "out of reach" for a law school, your advisor will lose credibility.
• You should get to know your advisor as soon as you can. Although there is no required pre-law curriculum, the better he or she is acquainted with you as a person and more important as a student, the better he or she will be able to make a match between you and the law schools when the time arrives.
• For older applicants who have been away from school, don't be afraid to go back to your alma mater for help from that school's pre-law advisor.

Admissions

Highly Competitive Schools

No matter what your qualifications, you will encounter steep competition at what are often known as "Top Twenty" schools. Of course, more than twenty schools think of themselves as part of this elite group, but you can get an idea of who belongs more or less in that tier by checking the Difficulty of Admission portion of the Report Card in the school profile section of this book.

Applications And Your Statistics

There is no infallible way to tell whether you're within reach. Even an admissions officer, early in the process, can't tell you, because the entire applicant pool has not been reviewed. What you can do to increase your chances of making accurate evaluations of your candidacy is to check carefully the admissions statistics in the Report Card for the schools that interest you. After you've narrowed your choices to ten or twelve schools that appeal to you, compare GPA/LSAT scores, difficulty of acceptance, and number of applicants accepted—both among themselves and against your own realistic review of your qualifications. Also look at the admissions information in the school profile to see what weight and order is given to different factors of the applicant's background.

When you do decide to apply, you can help yourself a bit more by observing the rules suggested below.
 

1. Apply Early. Write this down. On your books. On your notepads. Wherever it will help you to remember! Most admissions officers will tell you that by applying early you have a better chance of admission, especially for law schools on rolling admissions. Early in the cycle the admissions committee doesn't know if it will receive a sufficient number of superior applicants. A high volume of applicants doesn't always translate into applicants with high scores. Admissions committees may be willing to accept you earlier in the cycle if you have "last year's scores" before they have seen the pool with "this year's higher scores." Remember: To any admissions officer except those at an elite cluster of bluechips, an applicant in the hand is worth two that may or may not apply this year.
    
2. Apply with a strategic plan in mind. Your strategy should focus on your GPA and LSAT score(s), your personal achievements, and what you want out of law school and a career in the law. Before you can decide which schools to apply to, you should evaluate your record just as admissions officers will.

GPA: In assessing your undergraduate academic record, admissions officers will look first at your overall GPA. If you transferred, they will look at the average of all the schools you have attended. The second review will involve going over individual courses you've taken. Don't think you can fool law school admissions officers because you aced a class in astronomy that turned out to be a quick trip to the local planetarium and a short essay on Uranus. Admissions officers know that it was a gut, or if they don't, they'll check with your school's pre-law advisor.

Courses that show aptitude for skills crucial to legal study, like writing, may carry a little extra weight, but what the admissions officer is really trying to do is to decide whether or not you will make it through law school. No one wants to admit students who have limited or no chance for success. There are too many qualified applicants to waste a seat on someone who doesn't have what it takes to make it through the rigors of law school.

Where you went to school and what you majored in are also taken into consideration when looking at your GPA. Using provided indexes, the law school admissions officer can check the percentage of applicants from your college/university who scored above or below a given score on the LSAT. Many admissions officers will resort to college guides if they've never encountered any students from the applicant's school.

The Ivy League, the "Little Three," MIT, Stanford, and highly selective schools of this caliber may give applicants a slight edge, particularly at law schools that want to boast a percentage of students from these schools. As you get closer to the top tier law schools, however, you will find that where you went will not matter as much because these name undergraduate schools are often feeders, sending off hundreds of applicants to classes that have very limited space.

Last year, Harvard Law School received 400 applications from Harvard College alone. Obviously, not every applicant from Harvard College will get into Harvard Law. In distribution statistics of where students went to college, these name schools will generally have the greatest representation. This is not simply a prestige factor but also one of numbers. The more students that apply, the greater the statistical chance that more will be accepted. You will usually notice a heavy proportion of students from the law school's undergraduate college. Many admissions officers "trust the product" from these name colleges/universities based on the successes of their past students as opposed to schools that have sent few or no students in past years.

LSAT Scores: Most law schools average LSAT scores. A few schools noted in this book, however, do take the higher score regularly or in extenuating circumstances, like illness when you took the first test, or if your scores are five or more points apart. Other schools will look at LSAT scores on a case-by-case basis.

Just like GPAs, LSAT scores are used as predictors, to determine whether you will succeed during your first year of law school. Unlike GPAs, whose worth can vary based on where they were earned, every applicant must take the LSAT, making it the only measure of the applicant's aptitude that makes use of the same yard stick.

Test Preparation Courses—Yes or No?

The LSAT is coming increasingly under fire because more affluent students are able to afford prep courses, which give them a decided advantage at least in acquainting them with the format and pacing them for the exam.

One rather savvy admissions officer has remarked that he advises applicants to forgo costly test prep courses and instead pay a friend $100 to nag them at regular intervals to study for the LSAT from a stack of old tests available to any applicant.

Our recommendation is to assess your own ability to prepare for this important exam, including your ability to stick to a study plan.
 

• Are you a highly self-motivated individual?
• Do you need reinforcement in the practice of taking standardized exams?
• Do you have several hundred dollars to spend?

The LSAT is certainly an important factor in law school admissions. And since most of you have taken either the SAT or the ACT to get into college you know by now that standardized tests are in a dead heat with having your teeth worked on with a rusty nail. If you aren't confident that you will sit down regularly with a test prep book or some old tests, and you have the money, maybe a prep course will be beneficial to you.

Residency

Where you live is a factor in admissions when it comes to public law schools, which are often mandated by state legislation to accept a significant percentage of in-staters each year. Many of these schools acknowledge that if you are a resident you will have a better shot than a nonresident with similar scores. Take advantage of this. If there's a public law school in your state, examine it closely and consider applying there.

Transferring Between Law Schools

Students often think that if they didn't do well in college, they can go to a lower tier law school, get good grades, and "transfer up" after the first year. There are many reasons why this is a misconception. First of all, the attrition rate at the top tier schools is generally very low, so the need for transfers to fill empty spaces is also low. Your law school grades will be used as the major source for deciding your admissibility, but don't think your undergraduate GPA and LSAT scores won't be looked at as well. You shouldn't start a law school with the sole intention of transferring "up." Rather, you should assume wherever you choose to attend will be your future alma mater. In the event that you do wish to transfer you should know that often the school you transfer from must be AALS- or at least ABA-accredited.

Where Should You Apply?

There is, as we've mentioned, no hard and fast rule about exactly where you should apply or to how many schools. To give yourself the best chance for a satisfactory outcome, however, we recommend that you apply to at least one school in each of the following categories:
 

1. Reach Schools. Schools that are a real challenge for you. Harvard or Stanford may fit here for strong but not astounding records, whereas schools far below these may be your stretches if your GPA is around 2.9 and you have LSAT scores between 30 and 32. You may have extenuating circumstances to account for these scores. But putting yourself in the running with academic Olympic gold medalists, if your academic records show that you get out of breath walking around your backyard, can be a big mistake. Above all, be honest with yourself. The most compassionate admissions officer can overlook just so many problems before being forced to move on to applicants whose scores and achievements predict their future success as law students.
2. Fit Schools. Schools that you feel well qualified for and have chosen based on whatever quality that strikes you as appealing about them: admissions standards, programs, placement, location, the fact that students find the faculty attentive and easily accessible, or another important factor—you think you can afford this school. These schools will have GPA and LSAT means close to your own. Even given a more competitive applicant pool, you will be in contention because you will have written a well-thought-out essay that presents you in the best possible light.
3. Safeties. These schools may demand less than your record and achievements, but remember, you must be prepared to attend any one of them. As law school admissions become tougher and tougher, students are finding themselves fortunate to get into schools they might not even have considered when they were starting college.

Recommendations

How much do they count? This depends greatly upon the individual admissions committee. To be frank, some admissions officers have told us directly that recommendations mean very little in their evaluation of the candidate. They find most sound very much alike and that many professors, particularly at larger universities, use form letters.

Other admissions officers joke about the "code" in applicant descriptions given in recommendations. A "good candidate" may be interpreted as someone who is average, while "very good" may mean above average. Occasionally more evocative language like "an insightful and highly perceptive individual, capable of deductive reasoning and with a breadth of interests almost unparalleled by any undergraduate I have encountered in several years of teaching at this university," shows that
the applicant is someone special.

Make sure to start early when deciding which faculty members you want to write your recommendations. If you are just out of college, this person should be an academic and know you well. The ideal recommender is someone who has taught you within your major on both the introductory and advanced level. This person will be in a far better position to evaluate your overall performance. If you have conducted research for a faculty member at your school, he or she is also an excellent candidate for a recommendation. For applicants who transferred during college or attended a two-year college, we suggest that you use recommendations from faculty members at your final school. For older candidates, recommendations from employers and/or colleagues may also be satisfactory.

Personal Statements

How much will it help? Unquestionably, personal statements are important to admissions committees at all but a few law schools. We have heard from law schools across the prestige spectrum of candidates who do not possess the "paper" qualifications, but somehow come through in an essay that rings true or touches a chord in the admissions officer's heart. Sound corny? Maybe. But it happens. In a graduate school setting where students rarely have evaluative interviews, the personal statement is that opportunity on paper. Even for law schools that do not require personal statements, we recommend that you write one anyway. It can only help you.

Don't overdo it, however. Time and time again, we hear admissions officers talk about candidates who insist on sending additional information, be it a bound thesis, a play, or even a videotape. Most admissions committees are too overburdened to have the time to evaluate these "extras." You say, "That's not fair. I'm just trying to show that I'm special."
That's fine, but think of it from an admissions officer's perspective. At a highly selective law school you may have as many as three to seven thousand applications to review and pass timely decisions on. Many of your staff members are overworked, and your eyes can only handle so much reading before letters start to blur. Is it fair to read Applicant X's dissertation on life before even opening Applicant Y's academic file?

So what do you, the applicant, do? You say what you have to say and you say it with wit and economy. By now we assume you've written a good number of papers in your college career. The essay should be taken just as seriously, if not more so, than your most important final paper for a humanities class you really wanted to ace. And remember, brevity isn't just the soul of wit; it's the key to an admissions officer's heart.

Just like any other part of the application, don't put this off until the last minute. You will need time between stages to make sure everything you put down on paper is concise but long enough to convey who you are, what you have accomplished, and most important, what you are going to do for others with your law degree.

Before you sit down to write the personal statement(s) consider the following:
 

1. Know the programs at the schools where you are applying. Anything you can glean from this, or any other book, on the law schools' programs will demonstrate a more than superficial interest in these schools to admissions officers. You should be able to weave one or more elements special to the school into your reasons for wishing to attend.
   
   Needless to say, reasons like "I feel the prestige afforded me from attending your law school will help me make heapa big bucks" are taboo.
    
2. Know what it is about yourself that sets you apart from the pack. What makes you the wonderful, caring individual you are today? Geographic diversity may come into play here. However, if you are from a major city like L.A. and you're applying to a law school in another major city like New York, it isn't as potent as if you are applying to New York from a rural community in the Midwest.
   
   You needn't have climbed Mt. Everest to write about what you've done with your time until now. Connect your goals with your accomplishments. If you already have a track record as a Peace Corps worker in an underserved village in Africa, show how this achievement has helped you to focus on your present goal of serving disadvantaged groups in the United States. Now, if you find a school where the programs are strong in the areas in which you have strong interests, you're halfway there.
    
3. In preparing your essay, first outline, then draft, then take a pen/pencil to it. Once again, economy is key. If you have said something in more than one way, get rid of that extra sentence or paragraph. Don't take up room just to fill a certain space. You are not being graded on the number of words produced in your personal statement.
    
4. Proofread your essay until you never want to see it again. SpelJos, typos, any mistake you can think of, will not be taken lightly by admissions officers. This is your final product. A typo or spelling mistake on your draft is one thing. The final product is you, as you are representing yourself to the school and will be interpreted rightly or wrongly as how you will present yourself once you become an attorney. Have a friend check your essay. If that's not possible, take some time off from it and read it when you're fresh or bounce a pencil on each word. Mistakes can often go unnoticed when you want something finished after you've worked on it for a long time.