Career Center, Career Files, Pre-Law

Tips on Five Key Pieces of the Law School Application

Ann K. Levine takes five major pieces of law school application packages and offers tips and insights for prelaw students.

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Last week I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of pre-law students at UC Berkeley with Matt Sherman of ManhattanLSAT.com.

Because I knew this would be a sophisticated group of students, I put together remarks which I hoped would be new information to them and not standard “law school application tips” available on every forum and blog post. I even came up with some new catch phrases (or at least, we’ll see if they “catch”), and I hope they will be helpful as you decide how to strategize your law school admission game plan.

I took the five major pieces of your law school application package and offered tips and insights. Here are the highlights:

1. Law School Resume

This is the most overlooked opportunity in the law school application: this is your chance to show how you’ve spent your time during college (and of course after college, for nontraditional law school applicants). Put that “barista” job back on there: it shows responsibility, early mornings opening the store, and dedication; embrace the mantra, “Grunt work is good.” Why is grunt work good? It shows you can roll up your sleeves, do things that aren’t glamorous, and that require you to smile and deal with people even when you’re not in a good mood (and even when people are irrationally irate over their quad-shot espressos). These are all qualities that you will need to call upon as an attorney. Another reason to err on the side of including more? It opens up your personal statement to talk about things that can’t be shared on your resume.

2. Law School Personal Statement Topics

How to pick a topic? Surprise the reader. How? By being insightful. Show them something they wouldn’t have otherwise known or assumed. Share a surprising or interesting motivation or reaction to something that is on your resume. Rather than just saying “I had this internship and then this one…,” show you learned something from a certain experience. The key words are: depth, insightfulness, and maturity.

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Lately, I hear from a lot of people who say, “I’ve read all these really great personal statements online and mine is just sort of blah….” Stop reading other people’s personal statements! Write an essay from your heart, that sounds like you, that is authentic to you. As I told the Berkeley students, I expect an English major to write something more flowery, more poetic. But an accounting major probably doesn’t write with the same voice and shouldn’t try. (And, in the end, most lawyers write like accountants should write–in a business tone, in a straightforward manner, and in clear-cut language, making an argument using facts).

3. Letters of Recommendation for Law School

I covered this in a recent blog post but have a few more little hints to share:

First, don’t just “ask” for a letter of recommendation–the key word is “CULTIVATE.” Build a relationship; build a record of performance, and then ask for a letter of recommendation. That’s how you get the really outstanding letter that sets you apart from those who are merely getting “good” letters of recommendation.

Second, go for substance of the letter over VIP status. I don’t care where your dad’s friend went to law school or that your roommate’s mother works for Biglaw. I’d rather see a letter of recommendation from a teaching assistant who can analyze your writing and presentation skills and compare you to others who have gone on to law school; who cares if she doesn’t have tenure?

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The catch phrase here is: “A Good Letter isn’t Good Enough.” You want “strong;” you want “convincing;” you want “enthusiastic”. Everyone’s letters are “good.”

4. Optional Essays

Just a couple quick tips here: if a diversity statement topic feels like a reach, don’t write one. If you already covered it in your personal statement, don’t write one. (Unless you have another stellar personal statement topic in your back pocket to pull out for schools that allow you to submit both a personal statement and a diversity statement.) If you have the opportunity to express interest in a school in the form of an optional essay and you don’t do it, you’re just being lazy. Catch phrase? “Effort shows interest.” Remember, interest helps yield by showing the law schools you are a more solid bet than someone who didn’t bother.

Lastly, please do not reuse your 250-word optional essay from your Georgetown University Law Center application for your Yale Law School 250-word essay. Yale people are not dumb. They know that the “one phone call” is a Georgetown prompt.

5. Addenda

There are two reasons to submit an addendum with your application: one is that you have to because you have a character and fitness issue to report or took gap time before or during school. The other is optional and is meant to provide context to other parts of your application, usually related to your LSAT testing history or your undergraduate GPA. In this case, the two buzz phrases are “Beware of the Overshare” and “Reason versus Excuse.”

For the first, give enough information to establish credibility and ensure that the circumstances won’t inhibit your success in law school. For the second, make sure you sound credible in how you are presenting the factors that impacted your performance. Avoid wishy-washy statements such as, “I wish I’d done better,” or “I believe I can do better.” Just prove it with the facts.

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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