Advice

The Single Biggest Administrative Mistake Law Schools Are Making

Much has been said about the training of law students. Indeed, while it may seem like a recent discussion, this discussion on how best to prepare law students for their legal careers appears in the very first of law review articles. Should they be deeply immersed in theoretical underpinning of the law (a conscious decision made by the early law schools), enrolled in experiential apprenticeship type training (buzz words we often see today), or a combination of the two? If a combination, how shoul

There are no "shoulds"

By Anne Dutia, Senior Consultant at The Spivey Consulting Group When I was a prelaw advisor, and before that an admissions officer at Michigan Law School, I encountered so many students asking me what they should do to get into law school. Of course, there are certain procedures and processes applicants have to follow to be admitted to law school, but these students were looking for the right way to be a pre-law student or applicant. A lot of them were still stuck in the college application men

It's a tough cycle. Here's what you can do about it.

1. Do not obsesses over any one school. This cycle, probably more than any other, I have heard "I want X Law School by far — there isn't really any other school that's close." Often when I follow-up with a simple "why is that?" there isn't really a concrete answer. "For whatever reason when I think about UVa I just can't get it out of my mind," or something along those lines. We (Spivey Consulting) have already seen applicants denied by T14's and yet admitted by T3's. Point being, there are so

Law School Forums

Just a bit of a repeat of our last message, that the last six years we have been fortunate to receive and publish exclusive data for law school applicants. You can find us generally linking data like the below at two forums: LawSchool.Life [https://www.lawschool.life/] and the Law School Admissions Subreddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/]. But as we may not always be able to be as prompt on boards, you can also always get immediate data and rankings releases at our Twitter [http

The Spivey Consulting Group AMA Admissions Challenge

Where to find us posting [free] message board advice online

It's a tough cycle, so we are going to try to double down on giving out some advice when we have extra time and hope that it helps. Also note we will break all data, rankings, etc. first at https://twitter.com/SpiveyConsult Come find us so we can help. 1: https://www.lawschool.life 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/

Law School Admissions Advice: "Is it too late?"

The easiest answer to this question is "almost never" — but obviously there are some qualifications. So let me start with a real life story and then the qualifications. A few cycle ago I got a call from someone who had taken the June LSAT and just received his score, in the upper 170s. He also had a strong LSAC computed GPA and was asking me if I thought he could get into Harvard next cycle (keeping in mind it was like roughly July 1 and Harvard clearly said on their website the application dea

How Competitive?

In case you haven't seen it yet, the first volume report [http://blog.spiveyconsulting.com/december-2017-data/] for this (2017/2018) admissions cycle is out, and the numbers are almost categorically up. The fact that applications are up doesn't come as much as a surprise. We've had hard data on test-takers and forum attendance for a while now, and as far back as June we started having an inkling [http://blog.spiveyconsulting.com/predicting-to-2017-2018-law-school-cyce/] that apps and apps at th

Purpose

This is the type of thing you think about a great deal about in your forties, that I wish I had a little more in my twenties. It's also, I believe, very relatable to your law school journey, so I wanted to share. What is our purpose in life? I'll be brief here: I was a Philosophy major (like many law school applicants – it's the 8th most popular major of law school applicants as of the 2016/2017 cycle, and we beat this subject to death. I suspect most of us have a nuanced and different answer.

Do I need an admissions consultant?

At its best, working with an admissions consultant is a rewarding and enjoyable experience where both parties learn from one another, and where the consultancy can add a tremendous degree of value to the admissions process. The veritable admissions "bump" can occur exactly because of this teamwork and effort -- we have seen it happen hundreds of times and there is no greater professional feeling to get the phone call from an applicant who just was admitted to their dream school. Words we use in