Developing a Strategy While Filling Out the Law School Applications

If you're applying to a top law school, you'll have to have superior numbers. But the numbers themselves will not be sufficient to guarantee admission. You'll have to distinguish yourself in some way from all the other applicants with superb numbers. Your paperwork is very important; in it, you'll have to describe your personality as being so unique that any freshman 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.

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Sit down and think about your strengths before you start filling out any forms. What is it that makes you truly unique? And, most importantly, how will you demonstrate this uniqueness to someone you've never met? You can't simply assert that you are extremely persistent, say, or intelligent. 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 would make one piece of evidence; a letter from a coach describing how you once ran a race while you were injured would make another.

A Word on Honesty

You may have heard that it is common in some fields for job applicants to overstate their qualifications. Perhaps you've heard about some recent scandal in which someone, perhaps a government employee, was fired for lying on a job application. Accounts of these scandals in the mass media invariably include the observation that only a few of the resume-padders ever get caught.

If everyone is doing it, you may ask, why shouldn't I? Law school applications are different than job applications; there are good reasons to avoid lying on them. For one thing, lying can't do you much good. Your GPA and LSAT numbers are your main credentials, and reporting them is not within your control. LSAT scores are sent to law schools directly by Law Services, and your grades are sent by your college, through the Law School Data Assembly Service. You can't get away with a lie that contradicts or is inconsistent with the transcripts and other records that are available to the admissions officials.

The damage that you can do to your career if you get caught in a direct lie is considerable. Actually, it's terminal: the punishment is dismissal from law school. True, law schools possess few investigative resources, and they traditionally do little, if any, checking. But every once in a while there is a scandal, followed by a crackdown. In my estimation, there is more spot-checking going on now than ever before.

To be licensed to practice law, you must demonstrate to the bar examiners of your state that you are of good moral character. This requirement distinguishes law from most other white-collar occupations, and some bar examiners take it very seriously. They have more investigative resources than any law school does; in some states they conduct extensive background checks of bar aspirants. (I have received inquiries from bar examiners about the character of people I knew casually fifteen or more years earlier.) They've been known to uncover evidence of lying on law school applications.

Finally, again unlike most other professional occupations, law is a public career. You may want a government job or an elective office some day. You're more likely to need a security clearance at some point in your career than, say, a cardiologist. Or you may simply become involved in some high-profile event or activity-a well-publicized lawsuit, perhaps-that will bring you under the scrutiny of the news media. You shouldn't use a jump to prolong some essay or explanation beyond the limits that the law school allows.

For all these reasons, you're best advised not to put anything on a law school application that could be revealed as a direct lie.

If you're a nontraditional, you should also consider accounting for all of your time since your graduation from college. (Some law school applications explicitly request you to do this.) If there are gaps in your record, law school officials may think that you are concealing some questionable activity or problematic event in your life.

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This consideration is less important than it used to be, because the depressed state of the economy now makes it likely that business and professional persons will experience periods of unemployment through no fault of their own. But it is still more impressive to account for all your time, if you can do so. One woman typed, "The attached resume describes my career activities since graduation except for 1986-87, when I stayed home to care for my two small children," and then attached her resume. Another woman, who had a record of sales jobs in the computer industry, wrote the following:

The attached resume shows that I was continuously employed in computer sales for more than ten years, except for 1989. I made an attempt to start my own consulting firm that year but my two corporate clients both moved their offices out of the area. Luckily, I was able to get my old job back.

See 6 Things Attorneys and Law Students Need to Remove from Their Resumes ASAP If They Want to Get Jobs with the Most Prestigious Law Firms for more information.

There's a subtle plug in that statement: in the sales business, employers don't rehire former employees who were nonproductive.

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