If you read the about page for this site, you will see that I am currently in the admissions process for law school. Technology law has been an interest of mine for quite a while, and I look forward to actually starting the legal part of my education. I am fortune to have received many great offers from the law schools where I applied, and owe a lot of it to the very kind law student bloggers out there that have posted great tips on the application process. In the spirit of passing it on, I wanted to share some of my personal insights I gained during the application season. I hope some of you future law students find these tips helpful.

1. Sell Yourself

You must sell yourself when applying to law school. No, I don’t mean selling your soul or your values in order to pursue an interest in law. I mean that your job in this process is to convince the admission committee that you are a person worthy of their program. Recently, law schools have seen a tremendous increase in the number of applications for their JD programs (Thanks, Economy!). While you, your family, and possibly your classmates know what a great asset you will be to any school, the admissions committee has no idea who you are and must distinguish between you and the thousands of other applicants. You must sell them on You. So spend some time figuring out who you are, what makes you unique, and what you have to offer. Ask yourself, why am I applying to law school? What opportunities does a JD offer me that I can not have right now? What special experience, characteristic, or skill do I possesses that 50 other applicants don’t? Know thyself, then sell thyself.

2. Choosing where you apply

This should be easy enough. It is all about school rank, right?  Well, it depends. High ranked schools are there for a good reason, they are very good schools with good programs and widely known in the legal community. However, rank is not everything. Each applicant should develop their own criteria for choosing the school where they apply. A debt-adversed, married student with a couple years of experience who wants to practice Technology law on the coast is going to have very different needs from a school than a recent college grad who just wants to practice BigLaw. Figure out what factors from a school are important for you, then research each school you are interested in. Some good research sources are

• School Websites – Yes, they are written by the schools themselves, so you must take the information with a grain of salt, but the school website is normally the best place to find information about the programs a school offers, such as certain clinics or programs in your area of interest, or the existence of student groups focused on different aspects of law.
• Guidebooks on Schools – There a couple of good guidebooks on the various schools which provide summaries on their programs and student life. LSAC provides a free Official Guide to ABA-approved Law Schools that contains useful data on students that were admitted and a description of each school. At your library, you should be able to find the latest copy of the Princeton Review’s Best Law Schools guide, which contains some quotes from students at the schools taking about what they think is the best or worst things about their school. Also, BCG puts out a guide each year on the Top 50 Law Schools, which is aimed at firm recruiters but provides some good details on the various schools.
• Attorneys – A great resource. Look up the local firms in your area, find out what schools the attorneys there attended, then send a polite email asking if you can talk with them about their experience at the school. At worse, they ignore you. At best, you have now created an contact in the legal world and gained valuable insight in that school.
• Law Students – Same as attorneys, but with more current information. Look up the contact information of the heads of various law school organizations, and ask them for a quick chat about their school.
• School Counselors – Your current school, if you are in school, will likely have a counselor or advisor dedicated to law school admissions. This person is a wealth of knowledge on the various schools as they are the contact point that the schools and various other agencies send information about their programs. Set up an appointment with them and discuss your options.

After doing your research, weigh the factors important to you, then make a list of where you want to apply. A good list of schools should include two or three safety schools where you know you have a very high likelihood of being accepted, a good amount of target schools where you have a decent chance of admissions, and then a couple of reach schools that you will likely not get into but there is some chance of acceptance and it would be a dream come true (My personal rule is if you don’t get rejected from any school, you didn’t apply to enough schools). There are a couple of sites out there that will gauge your chances of admission, my favorite being Law School Predictor. Also there is a good site where you will find people who list what schools they are applying to and what the results were called Law School Numbers. Both of these sites are good resources.

After you determine what factors are important to you in a school, the next thing is what does the school consider important.

3. Admission Factors

Every school varies on what qualities they emphasize in their admissions process.  In general, they are looking for three key things: Will this person excel academically in our program? What does this person offer to expand and grow our school’s culture?  What future benefit will this person provide as an alum of our program? There is a lot that the admissions committee must divine to answer these questions. To help with this, they look into the following factors.

• GPA – Past performance is normally a good predictor for future performance, so schools consider your GPA as a strong factor in your application. Law schools will request your transcripts from all college level or higher schools that you ever attended. They normally gather this information by requesting you send all your transcripts to the Credential Assembly Service ran by the Law School Admissions Council, known as LSAC. LSAC will compile the transcripts into an academic summary for each school where you apply and provide them with your cumulative GPA that includes all courses taken prior to the award of your first bachelor’s degree. This is the GPA that matters for most law schools, so it is very important that you strive to do well in your courses before getting your first bachelor’s. This includes any transfer courses or courses you took in high school that awarded college credit. Once you received your first bachelor’s, your GPA is locked in and there is no way to increase it.
• LSAT – The  Law School Admissions Test, or LSAT, is administered four times a year by LSAC: February, June, September, and December. Schools use the LSAT as the great equalizer. Granted, there are a lot of issues with standardize testing in general, however the LSAT is still viewed as the one factor that is most in common among applicants, as it does not widely vary among schools like other factors such as GPA. Each offering everyone across the country takes the same test and is therefore suppose to have the same opportunity to do well. Because of this, your LSAT score will probably have the greatest weight on the law schools where you apply and on your chances for admissions. However, do not think that the LSAT is a test were you will naturally either do well or poorly. It is a learnable test where some easy to master skills will help your score considerably. Study for it. Do some prep tests. Go to your local library and check some study guides and workbooks and prepare for the test format. Then sign up and take the test. While there are four opportunities each year to take the LSAT, normally you will want to take the test at either the June or September offerings the year that you apply. This allows you enough time to receive your LSAT score and determine where you are applying, and still be get your application in early.
• Personal Statement – Each school will ask you to write a multi-page essay on some topic about you. Most schools will leave this as an open ended question, while others will ask that you address specific topics on yourself and why you are applying to their school. Your personal statement is your chance to not only show off your writing skills, but also to sell yourself to the schools. This is your opportunity to put that special spin on your application that makes you stick out from the rest of the herd.  Write about a unique experience you had in college. Tell them about the hardships you endured as a child. Share a time that you had to make some hard choices, and what you have learned from them. The important thing here is to choose the theme you want your application to take, and then stick with it. Try to avoid discussing too many topics, and instead focus on the most important. Also avoid gimmicky or common topics, as you want you application to stand out, but you don’t want them thinking that you meant to send it to their theater or clown program. Lastly, get started on your personal statement right away. You will find that it is a lot harder then you think to write about yourself, especially when your only guidance is to write about something they can’t know about from reading the rest of your application.
• Letters of Recommendation – About as important as what you have to say about yourself, the schools also want to know what others have to say about you. Most schools require some number of recommendation letters, and for those that don’t require any, it is still a good idea to send them anyways. Two to three letters is considered the norm for most applications. Arguably, it is best to get letters from your professors that have taught you in the past and can speak to your academic abilities. If you have a lot of work experience, then a letter from an employer is good, especially for schools that love work experience like Northwestern University, but you want to strive to get as many academic recommendations as possible, as law school is a school and the committee is concerned with how you will fare academically. Some good people to ask would be your professors, teaching assistants, work supervisors, volunteer coordinators, or research directors. Avoid using letters from people who hardly know you just because they themselves are well known. Admissions committees review thousands of applications a year and can spot the difference between a generic letter of praise, and a personal letter dripping with specific situations that the recommender wants to highlight for the committee. Additionally, avoid letters from people that seem hesitant to write one for you. If they view it as a chore or feel that they can’t write a good letter for you, then don’t let them write it and instead look for someone else. You really shouldn’t have this problem though, as most people will be flattered you asked them and will gladly write it. Finally, provide your recommenders with all the ammo they need to write your letter. Give them a copy of everything else in your application and samples of work you have done for them in the past. Make their job easier, and they can concentrate on turning their glowing praise of you into written words.
• Softs – This is all the other things about you. Where you have worked in the past, where you went to school, what volunteer service have you done, what awards have you received. These other items may not be significant in their own right, but they help to tell the whole story about you, and to provide a connecting theme between you, your personal statement, and your application. Normally, you will express these additional items though a resume you submit with your application, but if need be you can also write a short addendum to discuss them. Start compiling a list of these items now (I call it my “I love me” file), and it should be easy enough to to work them into your application effectively to enhance your story.

4. Next steps

Your first order of business should be to get an LSAC account and register for the LSAT and the Credential Assembly Service. Then you should start working on the first draft of your personal statement and making a list of possible people to write your letters of recommendation. Once you have all those parts complete, then start working on your application forms and get those in as soon as possible. While an early application (here by early I mean before Thanksgiving) means you end up having to wait longer for a decision normally and does not provide you any clear benefit or boost when it comes to admissions, a late application (January and later) may hurt you as there are less seats in the class as people who submitted earlier are already being admitted. So get those applications in, and good luck.