As law school approaches rapidly (unlike my friend, Mr. Mason, I will not orient until next week), I find myself casting my mind back to a year ago, when applications had yet to begin, and recalling the four-letter word of law school aspirants - the one that begins with "L" and ends in the past participle of "sit." See, as any law school applicant will soon learn, the admissions process is often brutally efficient. Unlike the disparate affair - perhaps better thought of as a "shotgun approach" - endemic to undergrad admissions, law schools conform to the singular, deity-like monolith that is the Law School Admissions Council. This has its advantages, such as cutting down wasted paper and wasted time. The first simply because the entire process is online. The second because, while most schools will still require a small supplemental portion or an idiosyncratic essay ("In less than 500 words, tell us what appeals to you about UC Irvine and why you would be a good fit here"), you will fill out your personal information once, when you open your lsac.org account, and from there on out that information will be automatically filled out on the main application for each and every school you apply to. Genius - makes the College Board look like a slipshod anachronism.
The result of this is a national system of law schools that is fairly unified. It's a delightfully federal system in many ways. But it does have its drawbacks as far as the students are concerned. And the LSAT is one of them.
Standardized testing is, of course, highly convenient for almost everybody involved - schools have a ready-made standard to judge applicants and students face a unified body of criteria to meet, rather than having to go through a confusing process for each individual school. The natural downside of this, however, is that a slip-up here can have detrimental effects on all future prospects, at least until the scores expire in five years. Unlike undergraduate schools, many of which are slowly moving away from reliance on the SAT and other standardized tests as a basis of admission, law schools hold dearly to them. In fact, the LSAC has made something of a science out of helping students calculate their chances of admission based on their score. If that particular link is perhaps a little too theoretical - we are lawyers, after all; we get the court to subpoena mathematicians to do this stuff for us when we need it - plug-n-play calculators can be found with a quick Google search, such as this one, to generate a list of school and show your probability of being accepted. The point of all of this? Your law school admission will essentially come down to two things: your LSAT score and your undergraduate GPA, and the LSAT score is a fair bit more important than your GPA. Other factors contribute as well, but these are the top two, bar none.
I knew this as I was going into my LSAT, and you probably have a least a vague sense of it by now without me telling you all this. There's a lot of pressure packed into the LSAT, more so than perhaps any other test (except perhaps the Bar exam, which I would know nothing about at this point). Looking back, I had a lot of disparate advice and, while I certainly managed well enough, I wish I had had a unified body of guidelines to go with in my preparations.
When my friend and I started this blog, our purpose was to provide our own thoughts on law school and offer a helping hand to those who will come after us. I think we would be remiss to not include a mention of some strategies for tackling admissions in general and the LSAT in particular. Therefore, I am compiling a list of five key tips that I think would be useful to law school hopefuls, based both on what I did and what I failed to do (I won't say which is which!).
1. Start Early
This seems like a no-brainer, but it has to be said. Don't procrastinate on getting on with this, especially if you're taking the September test and facing the tantalizing seduction of kicking back over the summer. Commit to at least an hour a day a few months beforehand. Give yourself time to both go over the strategies given to you and take multiple practice exams. Score yourself continually and isolate those areas you need to improve upon and get to work on them.
This also goes for applications. Some schools use rolling admissions (including a number of very good ones, such as UC Berkeley), which means the earlier you apply the better your odds at landing a spot. Even if your top choice doesn't practice rolling admissions, you'll feel better if you get it out of the way so you can focus on finishing off your last year of undergrad strong.
2. Buy a Good Book
Don't bother with overpriced tutoring lessons. There's nothing you'll get from paying an individual hundreds of dollars to train you how to take the test that you won't get from finding a good practice and strategy guide for about thirty bucks. If I may recommend one, Kaplan makes an excellent guide. Be sure to read it cover-to-cover and do all of the practice exams. They really do work quite well on training your mind to tackle some of the more difficult portions of the test, especially the logic games. In this light, the answer sheets are almost as important as the meat of the text itself - a good book will include detailed answers to the multiple choice questions, demonstrating exactly why the right answer is the right answer.
Also, non-LSAT-related materials can be helpful, too. If you want to read the "Very Short Introduction" series' book on logic, that can help put you in the right mindset. Heck, I even heard of someone who read
3. Don't Write Off the Writing Section
The essay portion of the LSAT is not reflected in your ultimate score. Do not let this prevent you from taking this seriously. In law school, you will need to be able to write effective arguments clearly and concisely. The LSAT is good training for this skill. Even though the writing portion is not scored per se, it is nevertheless sent to your law school admissions offices with the rest of the results and considered. Just because there's no numerical value assigned to it does not mean it has no impact.
The same can be said of your admissions essays (more commonly referred to as the personal statement). Whether you end up as a litigation lawyer or not, you will still need to be able to advocate effectively, and the personal statement shows admissions offices how well you advocate for your chief client - yourself. There are many ways to approach the personal statement, and Top-Law-Schools.com offers some top quality guidelines for doing so. The most important things to consider are your writing style and where you are currently sitting in terms of GPA and (if you have your scores) your LSAT. Some good approaches are to highlight your interest in the law and whatever relevant experience you might have in the field.
4. You Will Have a Law School Adviser. Use This Person.
On your lsac.org account, there will be a small section with the name and contact number of an individual designated as your law school adviser. This person is usually a law professor somewhere (mine happened to be one from the law school associated with my undergraduate campus). It is in your interest to contact this person. The adviser will be able to help you identify your problem areas on the LSAT before you go into it, look over your personal statements, and work through whatever other messiness may arise throughout the process. This person is there to help - make use of that.
5. Don't Stress Out Too Much.
Feeling a little anxious about the LSAT and admissions is probably healthy, but don't over-sweat it either. I know of people who literally burn out in the process. This does not help you. Remember to pace yourself. Start off early in preparation, but don't plan on doing eight-hour marathons daily. Law school will be hard enough without you killing yourself before you're even in the door.
I won't pretend that the law school admissions process is easy. But you can certainly take steps to make it easier on yourself and your family. Perhaps the last piece of advice I would offer is to not get discouraged. Thousands of people get into law school yearly - you will find the place for you out there. Not getting into your top choice will by no means determine how well you do in your legal education and career. You alone will decide that.
And being wait-listed isn't a death sentence for your chances, either - I'm proof of that.
~PAX
