There are some seemingly simple questions on law school applications that still have a tendency to confuse applicants.
“Could it hurt me to answer in X way?”
“Why are they asking about this?”
“Would it help me to answer in Y way?”
“What are they looking for?”
While these are totally fair responses, the application questions that we’ll discuss below are actually fairly straightforward, and law school admissions offices don’t want you to overthink them. But of course, a tendency to overthink is not an uncommon trait among prospective law students (no offense intended; trust us, we get it!). We hope this blog post helps you understand and feel confident answering them based on the knowledge of former law school admissions officers.
Two important baseline assumptions to note that apply to all of the below:
- In general, law schools appreciate it if you answer all of the questions on their applications (unless they just don’t apply to you at all, e.g. military information when you’ve never been in the military). As such, our advice here can be assumed to always begin with, “Answer the question.”
- That said, in the vast majority of cases, your answers (or lack of answers) to these questions will have only a marginal impact on your admissions chances. Don’t stress if you already sent in your application and submitted answers that don’t precisely align with the advice we give below. The primary purpose of this blog post is to help you understand why law schools ask these questions that many applicants find opaque or confusing, not to point out huge, important pitfalls. These questions are a relatively minor part of the process.
1. “Are you applying, or have you applied, to other law schools? If so, please list them.”
Typically, law school admissions offices primarily look at applicants’ responses to this question in aggregate, gathering data in order to understand which other law schools their applicants most commonly apply to. That said, law school admissions officers will still read your response, so it’s probably a good idea to include at least one or two peer schools of the school for which you’re answering the question, if you can, and we typically don’t recommend listing 20+ schools or exclusively listing super-reach schools, as that could potentially raise questions about your judgment. Additionally, it’s probably a good idea to avoid listing only schools that are in a singular geographic area that’s not near the law school for which you’re answering the question.
2. “What prompted you to apply to X Law School? Please select all of the applicable options below.”
The available checkboxes for this question typically include options for the law school’s website, faculty/students/alumni/etc., recruiting events, and publications. This is another one that law schools mostly look at as aggregate data that they use internally (for the same reasons that businesses ask how you heard about them) rather than in order to evaluate anything about you as an individual. Just answer it straightforwardly. Although, we probably wouldn’t recommend checking only the checkbox for “U.S. News & World Report.”
3. “If you have a specific interest in joining any of our student organizations, please indicate the ones of interest to you below.”
The primary purpose of this type of question only applies if the law school decides to admit you, in which case they may use this information in order to connect you with current students in the organizations you listed (in order to recruit you). So just select any organizations you’re interested in joining.
One caveat is that admissions officers will still likely read your answers, so we don’t recommend selecting student organizations that conflict with your stated interests and goals in your other application materials. This does not mean that every box you check needs to be related to something you wrote in an essay, but it does mean that if all of your essays talk about your passion for public service, you probably shouldn’t check the box for the Corporate Law Society.
4. “Please indicate the areas of law that interest you.”
This question typically comes with a field of checkboxes naming different areas of law, though some leave it open as a short answer. For the most part, law schools hope that you’ll write about your interest in becoming an attorney in your essays, so this question is not where they’re looking for the primary information about your legal goals. The main purpose of the question is very similar to #3 (and our advice for answering it is pretty much the same). If you’re admitted, the law school may use it to send you information relevant to the practice areas you said you were interested in. So again, just answer it honestly, unless that would strongly conflict with your essays (in which case, you should probably rethink your essays).
5. Day phone number/evening phone number
Most law schools include fields for both a “day phone number” and an “evening phone number” when they ask for your contact information. This is mostly a remnant of landlines. You can just put the same phone number twice.
6. High school degree, degree date, major, GPA, rank
A number of law schools include fields for you to input your high school information. There are a few reasons that admissions offices might be interested in this, but they’re all more of the “getting to know you” variety than judging you based on your high school. That said, it could potentially contribute to a negative impression of your academic abilities to include your GPA/rank if they were low (especially if your undergraduate GPA was also low). Otherwise, just fill this section out straightforwardly. You can leave the “major” blank, and just “High School Diploma” is fine for your degree.
7. Parent/guardian name, address, phone number, email address, highest level of education, primary occupation, etc.
Many law school applications ask for information about your parents or guardians, and applicants are often confused by it. Your responses here give the law school some additional context for understanding who you are and where you’re coming from. We advise filling it out in full, to the extent possible. They won’t email your parents.
8. Employment section
It can feel frustrating to spend hours working on a resume only to start filling out applications and find that they want you to reiterate a lot of that information in an “Employment” section. While that’s certainly an understandable frustration, this section does include some information that isn’t necessarily clear from most resumes—whether it was full-time/part-time/an internship/unpaid, the number of hours per week that you worked, why you left the position—and it also typically asks for “all” of your employment history, while many applicants leave some jobs off of their resumes for various reasons. We definitely advise you to fill out this section as fully as possible. (This applies to the extracurriculars section as well.)
9. Employment position (20-character limit)
Within the “Employment” section, the field for your position titles typically has a 20-character limit. This is often confusing for applicants who have job title(s) that are longer than that. What do you put if your title is “Associate Data and Business Intelligence Analyst” or “Junior Digital Marketing and Content Strategist”?
The most important thing to note is that admissions officers are well aware that the character limits are short here, and they will understand that you didn’t submit “Assoc. Data/Business” or “Jr Digital Marketing” because you were lazy or forgot your real job title. Use whatever abbreviations you can, prioritize the key words, cut off the end if you need to—just make sure it’s recognizable enough that they can cross-reference your resume and clearly know which position you’re talking about.
10. Employment hours per week
People sometimes get confused about this one if they worked variable hours per week in a given position (the field doesn’t allow special characters, so you can’t include a range, e.g. “5-10”). You can just give your best attempt at a weighted average. Do make sure that it doesn’t add up to an inordinate number of hours in a given week, though. Mike Spivey once read an application that listed various jobs during the same timeframe that totaled more hours than there even are in a week. Don’t be that person!