Career Center, Career Files, Pre-Law

How to Spend Your Summer Before Applying to Law School

Ann K. Levine of LawSchoolExpert.com gives some guidelines to pre-law students on how to most effectively use their summer to prepare for law school.

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Spring is finally here and after a rough winter in most of the country, you’re probably longing for the lazy days of summer. But if you’re planning to apply to law school this fall, there are some things you should consider doing before you book that trip to the beach.

Your first summer homework assignment is to make sure you understand the law school admissions process and timeline. You can visit the Law School Expert blog for an overview of the process and a sample law school application checklist.

Once you have a good understanding of the mechanics of applying to law school, you should consider your motive in doing so. I challenge you to take this summer to explore whether the law is right for you – and I mean the reality of what it means to be a lawyer, not what you think you know from watching House of Cards. So your second assignment is to find at least three lawyers and interview them. There is a shared experience among lawyers and most will relish the opportunity to help an aspiring advocate. Talk to a good mix of attorney types, such as a transactional lawyer, a civil litigator and a prosecutor and/or public defender. Find one from Biglaw, one from a small firm and one from a non-profit. Talk to both women and men, and attorneys from different generations. When you meet with them, try to understand what the life of a lawyer is like. Inquire about the culture of their firms or organizations. Ask about expectations for billable hours and obtaining client business. Discuss how they balance their professional and personal lives. Check into their hiring practices and ask about the last person they hired – where did that person go to law school and what made them a desirable candidate?

If after gathering all of this information you still believe this is the path for you, then next you need to talk to a few law students from different schools that interest you to find out what life in law school is like. While it’s rare to find a current law student who raves about the process, listen to what they’re telling you. Frustration with the long hours and the bad parking is one thing. But if they’re ranting about the lack of response from the career services office, that’s another story altogether. You may even want to visit some schools, bearing in mind that summer is a pretty slow time at most law schools so you may not get a lot out of the visit.

Now write down your three most important law school related goals – not where you want to go to law school, but what you want to do while you’re there. What’s important to you? Moot court? Working on a journal? Having an internship at a government agency? While you’re at it, write down your three most important career goals – not necessarily your desired practice area, but what you hope to accomplish in your career. Do you want to help businesses or domestic violence victims? Would you rather work as a corporate counsel or a public interest crusader? Do you see yourself as a law firm partner or as the owner of your own business?

If you go through these exercises, you should find yourself either completely disinterested in the law or extremely motivated to move forward with the process of applying to law school. If you fall into the second category, you can spend what’s left of your summer getting serious about the application process.

First, you need to develop an attack plan for conquering the LSAT. It’s a critical component in the application process and any effort spent developing your skills in this area is a wise investment in your future. Your performance on this test both expands your list of potential schools and increases the amount of scholarships you may be offered. If you’re taking the September LSAT (and it is indeed September this year, not October), you need to plan your summer around your prep schedule. Choosing an LSAT prep course or study plan will help you get ready in an organized and methodical fashion. If you’re taking the December LSAT, plan to have a light enough course load in the fall to have the time to study appropriately for the test.

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As you think about the applications you’ll be completing this fall, consider your weaknesses. Identify the qualities that you worry would give pause to a law school admissions committee and work to address them. If you need to show you can hold down a job, find a local coffee shop or pizza place and work there for 20 hours per week. If you’ve lived a sheltered life, reach outside your comfort zone by volunteering or studying abroad or picking up an interesting hobby. Not only will this make your application more attractive, it will help in your continued growth and development. When I was in college, I waited tables at a really crappy pizza and beer joint in Miami. One of the unexpected benefits was that our customers included many local lawyers. This gave me a great opportunity to talk with them and start to understand what the lawyering life was all about (note that this counts towards your interview homework assigned above!)

None of this is to say that you must spend every minute of your summer working on the law school admissions process. But developing a deliberate plan and using this time wisely will leave you fewer regrets later about the outcome of the application cycle.

Ann K. Levine is a law school admission consultant and owner of LawSchoolExpert.com. She is the author of The Law School Admission Game: Play Like an Expert (affiliate link) and The Law School Decision Game: A Playbook for Prospective Lawyers (affiliate link).

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