Developing a Strategy to Fill Out Law School Applications

Application forms mostly require you to provide detailed lists of objective information: names and dates of schools attended, addresses where you've lived, employment history, and so on. You may not perceive a need for a strategy for filling them out. But beyond the specific information you provide, the admissions officials will judge you in part on the overall impression your paperwork makes. They'll read between the lines. They will look at the forms to try to deduce what your personality is like and whether you have the disciplined intellect, the good work habits, the painstaking attention to detail, and the good communications skills that you will need to succeed in law school.

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For this reason you should give some thought to how each piece of paper will look to the officials who will read it. You can't entirely control the information, but you do have some freedom to phrase and arrange it in a way that will make it look like it came from the desk of a mature and capable person who is intelligent, hardworking, and thorough, and can write clearly and well.

To some extent, how you will do this, will depend on how good your qualifications are. If you're applying to an insurance school, you should view the paperwork-and every other aspect of the application process defensively. Since your superior GPA and LSAT score should be sufficient to get you admitted, the paperwork can't help you. If you're lucky, it will barely be glanced at. But the paperwork can hurt you if it's sloppy, incomplete, or not on time. The personal statement can hurt you if it reveals you to be a windy and tedious character or mean-spirited and dishonest. Beyond providing the required information and being neat and thorough, your best course is to say little, and take every opportunity to focus attention on your superior numbers.

But if you're applying to a possible school or a wish school, your numbers may not be sufficient. If the law school "goes beyond numbers" to "judge you as a whole person," your paperwork will be scrutinized with some care. You can use it to try to explain away some of your shortcomings. Or you can use it to document some alternative accomplishments or assets that indicate that you have the qualities for success in law school.

If you're applying to a top law school, you'll need to have superior numbers. But the numbers themselves will not guarantee you admission. You'll have to distinguish yourself in some way from all the other applicants who also have superb numbers. Your paperwork is very important; it gives you an opportunity to describe your unique personality-so unique that any entering class will be a poorer place if you are not in it. You do this by documenting overall strength or some unusual and very impressive accomplishment. And you do it by writing an essay in a unique, personal voice.

Before you start filling out any forms, sit down and think about your strengths. What is it that makes you truly unique? And, most important, how you will demonstrate this uniqueness to someone you've never met. You can't simply assert that you are, say, extremely persistent. But you can make sure that your paperwork prominently features occasions when you overcame some obstacle or achieved some goal against long odds. A good college record despite poor high school preparation is one bit of evidence; a letter from a coach describing how you once ran a race while you were injured is a second.

Obtaining Forms

All the necessary application forms are bound into or included with each law school's catalog. Most law schools don't often revise their forms. Some reprint the same forms year after year, perhaps changing the date printed at the top or using different colored paper to distinguish each year's paperwork. But occasionally there are revisions. It's a good policy to make sure in advance that the forms you have in your possession will be accepted. If you have an old catalog, call the law schools admission office and ask if it has been up dated and request a new one if necessary.

If your numbers are extremely strong, ask the law school rep whether the school has an accelerated admission program. If it does, you may be asked to fill out a special abbreviated form, and promised that your application will be considered immediately upon receipt. Washington University in St. Louis, for example, has its Preferred Applicant Program. Unusually strong candidates are sent "a short application that the student can quickly complete." The personal statement and letters of recommendation are optional, and candidates who use this application are notified of the admit/ reject decision within three weeks.

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The advantages of accelerated programs are obvious: less work, less risk, and prompt consideration. If you qualify for such a program, you should by all means submit the accelerated admission forms. But you will only qualify if your numbers are very high for the school in question-in other words, only if the school is an insurance school for you.

The future of law school applications is online. Eventually, you'll be able to submit easy and fast electronic application forms. But that future has not yet arrived. We are just beginning to see application forms generated by computer. Law Multi-App, the leader in the field, sells a software package that can be used to generate acceptable application forms for participating schools. You provide the requested information by filling in the blanks just once. Then you tell the computer which schools you are applying to. The software replicates each school's admission form, filling in the information you have provided.

Some General Considerations

Law schools are always looking for painstaking attention to detail. Lawyers are expected to be careful, well-organized and thorough. You need to demonstrate in your application that you are such a person.

For this reason, meeting deadlines counts. Following instructions counts. Completeness counts. Using the right form counts. Above all, neatness counts. If you were an admissions official, what would you conclude if you read a messy, handwritten form containing spelling errors and crossouts? What would you think if you read a form that was missing pages, or one on which some questions were left blank? Would you hire a sloppy lawyer?

Make a list of all the forms that each school wants you to fill out and return. Some schools have just one form, marked "Application for Admission." Others have an application and a number of supplemental forms- for residency, financial aid, and so on. Group the forms for each school together, perhaps in a manila folder. Make photocopies of all the forms. You'll do rough drafts, and when you're sure that everything is the way you want it, you'll type the information neatly on the final copy of each form.

When you make the rough draft, answer all the objective questions. You don't volunteer information, but don't leave a question blank. Admissions officials must work their way through thousands of forms, and there is a powerful temptation to set aside any form that is "not complete," even if the omission is a minor one. It's a defensible way to reduce the workload.

Follow the instructions exactly. Don't write below a line marked "Do not write below this line." Date and sign everything that calls for a signature. And there are admissions officials out there who consider it a very serious flaw if you use a red typewriter ribbon when a blue or black one was called for.

Make sure the lists are complete. You may not think that an omission of some trivial bit of information can harm you. What does it matter if you've listed all of the apartments you rented while you were in college? Well, it doesn't. But suppose you leave out that tenement on Slum Street that you lived in for just three weeks before the roaches drove you out and an old teacher writes in a letter of recommendation, "Johnny wrote a remarkable term paper, considering that he was living at the time in one of those hovels on Slum Street." The admissions committee doesn't care where you lived. But the omission itself raises questions. Is there a reason why you didn't list it? Is there something you don't want the admissions committee to know?

Whenever you're asked to give an address, take the time to look up the zip code. If you're asked to list the name of an adviser, job supervisor, or other reference, include a phone number, area code first. By making it easy to contact people who know you, you give the impression that you have nothing to hide.

As a rule, you should avoid volunteering information unless the information will do you some good. If the law school asks you to account for all your time since your graduation from college, then you'll have to tell them about the six weeks you spent in a mental hospital suffering from clinical depression. But if the form doesn't ask about all your time, there's no need to mention it. (Most forms don't go into such detail; they simply ask you to list all your jobs and all the schools you've attended.) If, on the other hand, you spent six weeks traveling in India and learning Urdu, you should find some way to work the experience into your application.

As much as possible, you should try to answer all the questions on the application form itself, typing your information only on the blank lines indicated. If the law school says you must answer a question in a given space, try to follow the instructions exactly.

Repeat information rather than referring back and forth. Cross-references can be confusing. You may find that you're asked to write the same addresses and phone numbers in more than one place.

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