Law School Admissions AMA with Mike Spivey & Dave Killoran (Part 2)

Status Check with Spivey

You can find Part 1 of this episode here.

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Mike and Dave answer more questions from the Law School Admissions Reddit! Part 2 discusses personal statements topics, reapplying, letters of recommendation, the relative importance of "softs" generally, Why X essays, work experience vs. going "K-JD," how law schools look at leaves of absence during college, and undergraduate record addenda.

Relevant links from this episode:

• 2022 LSAT/GPA Medians (spreadsheet)
• The Genre of Application Essay Writing (podcast with Derek Meeker, former UPenn Law Dean of Admissions & Financial Aid)
• Example Personal Statements**

You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Google Podcasts. You can read a full transcript of this episode on our blog.

** A note on our personal statement examples: Probably not every personal statement in this post will be your personal taste, and that is perfectly fine! However, they are all essays that contributed toward the applicant achieving great results, i.e. multiple acceptances where they were below both medians or substantially below the LSAT median. The examples come from our team of consultants with collectively over 250 years of experience reading law school applications and making decisions on files, and they were each deeply authentic and genuine for the applicants who wrote them (in addition to fitting well within the greater context of their applications). Ultimately, those are the personal statements that are the most positively differentiated—those written sincerely from the heart—so certainly don't try to write something like one of these essays if it's not your cup of tea. We hope they are helpful examples nonetheless.