Crafting Your Law School Personal Statement: Keep it Tight

Over the next four days, we’ll highlight one takeaway daily from Marion Roach Smith’s approach to memoir that will help you craft a strong personal statement. Also, be sure to check out her memoir manifesto.

Keep it tight. Focus only on the experiences, sentences, and words that you absolutely need to support your argument and demonstrate your growth in the piece. You want to go deep, not broad. Adding in additional stories can distract the reader, and potentially lose them. Once you have demonstrated growth and made your argument, your personal statement is complete. Fight the urge to turn it into an autobiography or a resume.

Crafting Your Law School Personal Statement: Keep the Audience in Mind

Over the next four days, we’ll highlight one takeaway daily from Marion Roach Smith’s approach to memoir that will help you craft a strong personal statement. Also, be sure to check out her memoir manifesto.

Don’t forget your audience. Your memoir should hit on universal themes that are relatable to the reader. When you’re writing, and more importantly editing and rewriting, keep in mind how your audience will take in what you’re saying. Did you provide enough detail of the experiences to show growth and to make your argument? Did you provide too much or extraneous detail? Were you vulnerable and honest in your writing? 

Crafting Your Law School Personal Statement: Deploy Details

Over the next four days, we’ll highlight one takeaway daily from Marion Roach Smith’s approach to memoir that will help you craft a strong personal statement. Also, be sure to check out her memoir manifesto.

Think small. Memoir requires that you share your growth with the audience, which can be done effectively by incorporating small details. Smith notes the power of observation for showing the reader your journey to transcendence. She writes, “Never forget about the small stuff and how it reveals the big stuff of life.” Small details also create a relationship with your reader, drawing them into the experience. 

Crafting Your Law School Personal Statement: Structure

Over the next four days, we’ll highlight one takeaway daily from Marion Roach Smith’s approach to memoir that will help you craft a strong personal statement. Also, be sure to check out her memoir manifesto.

Structure. Memoir is created out of three components. Prior to writing, sit down and consider the building blocks of your piece.

1) What is this about (think: universal, e.g., connecting with and empowering your team, trying and trying again to find the right approach to solve a complex problem)?

2) What is your argument (something that you learned based on your experience)?

3) What experiences from your life will you deploy to prove your argument? 

Crafting Your Law School Personal Statement: Lessons from Memoir Writing

A memoir requires more than a recounting of events from your life. Rather, you must show the reader that you’ve experienced transcendence. Marion Roach Smith calls it the “golden rule” of memoir. She writes, “Memoir is not about what you did. Memoir is about what you did with it.” The experience is not the focus or the reason for the writing, just the vessel for sharing a more universal learning with your audience. 

Smith expands this thought when she writes, “Specifically memoir is a promise from me that I experienced something, I’ve given some real thought to it and now know what it is, and now I am going to share what I now know with you. The promise is not that I am going to recreate the experience or make you relive it with me.” 

This approach also aligns with what admissions committees are seeking in your personal statement. From your past experiences, they want to learn more about your potential and character. Show them how a recent discovery helped you evolve, how you’ve refined your abilities in innovation and/or leadership, and/or teamwork. Prove to them that you are ready to pursue a graduate education and career path.

Over the next four days, we’ll highlight one takeaway from Marion Roach Smith’s approach to memoir that will help you craft a strong personal statement. Check in daily. Also, be sure to check out her memoir manifesto. 

Overcoming Loneliness

In our next Emotional Intelligence (EI) Friday blog series, we will examine loneliness by considering research on social isolation in the workplace. We will discuss who is affected, the psychological effects of prolonged loneliness, and how you can support yourself or others who may need your help. We hope you enjoy this three-part series.

Click here to read Part 1 of this series. 

Click here to read Part 2 of this series.

So, what should you do if you are experiencing loneliness? Being aware of the dangers of prolonged loneliness is a starter. Below, we have also compiled suggestions for keeping loneliness at bay, for yourself or within your workplace or network.

1. Take cues from your loneliness. If you feel lonely at work or in your personal life, act on the emotional prompt! Do not ignore the feeling or focus on work to the detriment of your own professional, social, and physical well-being. Consider how you can find more consistent person-to-person interaction. If you work remotely or travel frequently, think about facilitating work discussions over video conference or the phone rather than relying on email or instant messaging.

2. Form personal relationships. While you’re at work, speak to people and don’t allow yourself to rely solely on emails or other technology to communicate. Ask people about their lives outside work and tell them about yours. Leave your desk to have lunch and invite someone to walk and/or eat with you. Take the occasional coffee break with peers. Join office committees or participate in community service activities. In the Work Connectivity survey, almost three-fourths of Gen Z and just under 70 percent of Millennials say that they would be more inclined to stay with their company if they had more friends. As a manager working to staunch loneliness on your team, Barsade and Ozcelik warn against falling into inauthentic means of relationship-building such as holiday parties or company picnics. Relationships are built in small groups by people sharing about their lives. Large parties often result in people feeling more isolated as they witness the socially connected enjoying the event.

3. Find shared meaning. According to a Harvard Business Review study, finding shared meaning with colleagues—understanding the meaning that they derive from the work and connecting it with the meaning that you find in the work—creates meaningful “social cohesion” and insulates team members from feeling isolated. This also addresses Barsade and Ozcelik’s point about the meaning and identity that younger generations are looking for in their careers. Younger generations are seeking to be part of something bigger, not just to receive a paycheck. This may also provide a way to connect with others when there are not obvious shared interests or a foundation for a relationship.

4. Work for companies and managers who take their emotional culture seriously. Some companies have cultures that are more prone to driving isolation than others. Consider this as you look for jobs. Do the employees seem connected beyond meeting corporate goals? Do they seem to know and care for each other on a more personal level? “Mandy O’Neill (management professor, George Mason University) and I have done some work in emotional culture—the norms around what emotions you’re allowed to express at work and what you’re better off suppressing. We found that in emotional cultures of companionate love [that include] care, compassion, and tenderness, even lonely employees were more likely to be perceived as approachable and committed to the organization… Anything that a manager can do in terms of creating a culture that sends out cues that are supportive is helpful,” Barsade said. When interviewing, look for signs that your manager and co-workers will be interested in forming real relationships with you that extend beyond your work together.

The Loneliness Epidemic

In our next Emotional Intelligence (EI) Friday blog series, we will examine loneliness by considering research on social isolation in the workplace. We will discuss who is affected, the psychological effects of prolonged loneliness, and how you can support yourself or others who may need your help. We hope you enjoy this three-part series.

Click here to read Part 1 of this series. 

The reasons for the rise in workplace loneliness are many, and in some ways, apparent. Technology has allowed us greater efficiency in reaching out to coworkers and peers, without truly interacting with them. The Work Connectivity study found that, “almost half of an employee’s day is spent using technology to communicate versus in-person.” Additionally, working remotely and having constant access to emails has not only decreased our likelihood of forming meaningful relationships with our co-workers, but also can negatively impact our relationships outside of the workplace. Consequently, based on the nature of the work, different professions have greater rates of reported loneliness. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, and scientists are the most lonely while those with more social jobs such as sales and marketing report lower levels of loneliness.

Sigal Barsade and Hakan Ozcelik, management professors at California State University, Sacramento, point also to the importance that careers have in shaping Millennials’ identities and creating relationship opportunities, in an interview with knowledge@Wharton. “I think employees have an increasing level of expectations from their organization simply because our professions make up a huge component of our identity. We are not doing our jobs just for a paycheck; we want to be a part of the group. We want to be respected. We want to feel that we are having a good quality of life. I think this is getting more profound with the new generation. They might be more relationship-oriented than we are, so it’s important for companies to take that into account. They need to create that relational environment and provide opportunities for employees to build relationships,” Ozcelik said.

Moreover, Barsade and Ozcelik observe that loneliness begets loneliness, meaning that prolonged feelings of isolation harm an individual’s social behaviors and impact their networks. Theoretically, loneliness should serve as a signal. It can and should be a transient emotional state that motivates a person to seek out connections with others, particularly useful when a person is in a new environment. However, prolonged loneliness causes behavioral changes that deter interactions. 

“What the psychology literature has shown is that once loneliness is an established sentiment—you’ve decided you’re lonely—you actually become less approachable. You don’t listen as well. You become more self-focused. All sorts of things happen that make you less of a desirable interaction partner to other people. We found that was one of the things that explained the lower performance. The co-workers of lonely people found them less approachable. Because of that, they didn’t share things and didn’t get the resources they needed. By the way, the literature showed it’s not that they have lower social skills. Loneliness makes it happen,” Barsade said.

Barsade and Ozcelik also point out that existing research shows that loneliness can be “contagious,” afflicting networks and driving negative changes in employee behaviors and interactions throughout teams and organizations. 

Learning to Value the Personal Side of Your Professional Life

In our next Emotional Intelligence (EI) Friday blog series, we will examine loneliness by considering research on social isolation in the workplace. We will discuss who is affected, the psychological effects of prolonged loneliness, and how you can support yourself or others who may need your help. We hope you enjoy this three-part series.

Being single. Living alone. Moving to a new city. Working remotely. Frequent work travel. Sound familiar? While Millennials and Gen Z are generally thought to be the most socially connected of generations, the truth is more nuanced. Many characteristics of the young professional lifestyle are triggers for loneliness, or “the distressing experience that occurs when one’s social relationships are perceived to be less in quantity, and especially in quality, than desired.”

A 2018 study by Cigna and Ipsos found that while most American adults are lonely, Generation Z and Millennials report higher levels of loneliness than older generations. Similarly, data collected by The Economist and the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that in the U.S., the majority of those between 18 and 49 were classified as lonely (59 percent) compared to less than half of those over 50 (41 percent). And, the negative effects of loneliness have been well-documented. In 2015, UCLA researchers found that social isolation triggers a physiological response causing chronic inflammation, which increases the risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. A 2015 meta-analysis out of Brigham Young University, which included 70 studies, found that lonely people have a 26 percent higher risk of dying, controlling for age and health status. Other studies have linked loneliness to eating disorders, drug abuse, sleep deprivation, depression, alcoholism, and anxiety.

But loneliness isn’t just a personal problem. Sigal Barsade, a Wharton management professor who researches workplace loneliness, says, “People tend to think that if you’re lonely, you’re lonely everywhere. But that’s not true. What research has shown is that you can be lonely in your private life, in your family life, in your romantic life—it depends on the place.” Certainly, you can be lonely in your professional life. And, just as loneliness is harmful to your health, it is also harmful to your career. 

Recent research on the effects of loneliness in the workplace show that loneliness brings detrimental consequences to an individual’s job performance, satisfaction, likelihood of promotion, and engagement and tenure with a company. And, not surprisingly, loneliness is pervasive amongst the youngest members of the workplace. The Work Connectivity study, published by Future Workplace in partnership with Virgin Pulse, surveyed 2,000 managers and employees and found that just over half feel lonely always or very often. At 47 percent, Millennials were the loneliest followed by Generation Z (45 percent). Generation X and Baby Boomers fared better at 36 percent and 29 percent, respectively. While loneliness can affect any demographic group, the survey found that men were more likely than women to report being lonely (57 percent versus 43 percent) and introverts were much more likely than extroverts (63 percent versus 37 percent).

Listening to Connect

We’re excited to introduce “Emotional Intelligence (EI) Fridays” on the blog, where we will hone in on how to develop and implement these softer skills. 

Our first topic of focus will be listening, a critical skill for doctors, lawyers, and (future) CEOs alike. We hope you enjoy this three-part series.

Click here to read Part 1 of this series. 

Click here to read Part 2 of this series. 

Learning to listen, as with any skill, takes practice and time. Julian Treasure in his Ted Talk on Conscious Listening, spoke compellingly on the power of sound to connect us to our world, and to each other. “I believe that every human being needs to listen consciously in order to live fully—connected in space and time to the physical world around us, connected in understanding to each other, not to mention spiritually connected, because every spiritual path I know of has listening and contemplation at its heart,” he said. 

Treasure recommended daily listening exercises, which may help to attune you once again to listening, to hearing the noise in your environment (much of which, you’re likely tuning out) and to promoting your ability to be mindful and connected in a loud and busy world.

1. Sit in three minutes of silence to “reset your ears and to recalibrate.” This will allow you to pay more attention to sounds that you do hear afterwards. Treasure notes that if silence is impossible (for you NYC residents!), quiet is good too. 

2. In a noisy environment with competing sounds, try to differentiate the sounds that you are hearing. Treasure uses the example of a coffee bar. Listen for the “channels” of noise: people having conversations, the grinding of the coffee, the door opening and closing, typing sounds, ringing of cellphones, shoes squeaking on the floor, etc.

3. Listen for and try to take pleasure in everyday sounds that you may routinely tune out. The dryer, birds chirping, kids playing in the park. Instead of filtering out sounds as you go through your day, seek to savor a few. 

4. Each day you use “filters” in your listening to pare down the multitude of sounds in the world to those which you give your attention to. For example, you may opt for passive listening at the beach to take in the many pleasant sounds: the ocean, birds, people laughing, etc. Alternatively, when your partner joins you, you may focus on their voice over the waves crashing. Similarly, when listening to others, we can choose different filters. A friend may garner empathetic listening with your focus on emotion and connection, while a coworker may receive a more critical filter where you seek to assess and validate their ideas. Treasure, who calls this exercise the most important, challenges you to become aware of the filters you use and when, and to proactively adjust them. Filters, he says, “actually create our reality in a way, because they tell us what we're paying attention to right now.” 

Law Professor Creates New Law School Prestige Ranking

A recent study by two law professors, Brian Frye (University of Kentucky) and C.J. Ryan (Indiana University) found that the U.S. News and World Report’s Law School rankings have become increasingly irrelevant for prospective law students. 

The study examined the relationship between changes in a school’s U.S. News ranking and the academic credentials of the next year’s incoming class. An increase in ranking should bring in more highly qualified applicants and lead to a stronger incoming class. However, using a decade’s worth of data, the study found, at best, a weak positive relationship between rankings and student decision-making and, more often, a negative relationship between the two. In other words: the rankings have outlived their usefulness as a driver of applicant behavior. 

Frye hypothesized that prospective students use the rankings predominantly as a gauge of prestige and published a second paper introducing a replacement. He used only one metric to build his law school prestige ranking: mentions in the New York Times. His team calculated the number of mentions each school received in the NYT between May 2023 and 2024. Mentions could be positive or negative (all publicity is good publicity), and he deemed concerns such as regional bias and naming conventions “illusory” because, well, in his words: “prestige is a scarce good, reserved to those who deserve it.” 

In the ranking, Harvard Law captured the top spot followed by Yale and Stanford Law Schools. While the top schools don’t veer far from the U.S. News, there are other, less expected entrants to the T14. Check below for the top schools and you can find the full list of all 196 schools here (although, note that all schools with zero mentions are tied at rank 103). 

NYT Rank (# Mentions) Law School Name US News Rank 

1 (122) Harvard Law School 4 

2 (96) Yale Law School 1 

3 (77) Stanford Law School 1 

4 (50) Columbia Law School 8 

5 (29) New York Law School 127 

6 (22) Univ of Michigan Law School 9 

7 (15) Cardozo School of Law 61 

8 (13) Brooklyn Law School 114 

9 (12) Univ of Minnesota Law School 16 

10 (11) S. Texas College of Law Houston 150 

11 (10) Univ of Chicago Law School 3 

11 (10) UCLA School of Law 13 

11 (10) Georgetown Univ Law Center 14 

14 (9) NYU School of Law 9

Activate Your Listening Skills

We’re excited to introduce “Emotional Intelligence (EI) Fridays” on the blog, where we will hone in on how to develop and implement these softer skills. 

Our first topic of focus will be listening, a critical skill for doctors, lawyers, and (future) CEOs alike. We hope you enjoy this three-part series.

Click here to read Part 1 of this series. 

To become a more effective listener, keep in mind that listening requires engaging on multiple dimensions. Robin Abrahams and Boris Groysberg described the three components of listening in a Harvard Business Review article: Cognitive (taking in and comprehending the information); Emotional (maintaining calm to receive the information and managing emotional reactions to the information or its delivery); and Behavioral (demonstrating interest and picking up verbal and nonverbal cues). Maintaining awareness and control in these three dimensions promotes good listening. 

In the same article, Abrahams and Groysberg provide a “cheat sheet” of nine actions you can do to improve your listening in the short term. 

1. Repeat the speaker’s last few words back to them. The authors note that this practice demonstrates to people that you’re listening, keeps you engaged, and can provide moments to “gather thoughts or recover from an emotional reaction.” 

2. Steer clear of restating or summarizing in your own words what the speaker said— unless you need to. This practice should only be used if you are not sure that you’re understanding. Abrahams and Groysberg suggest that if you do use it, explicitly state that you’re restating to confirm your own comprehension.

3. Offer nonverbal communication if you are comfortable doing so. If it feels natural, use eye contact and nodding to demonstrate that you’re listening. If not, don’t distract yourself with internal reminders to nod or make eye contact. 

4. Look for nonverbal communication from the speaker. Take note of the speaker’s tone of voice, posture, facial expressions, and other body language or unspoken cues. The authors note the nonverbal can provide additional insight into the emotion and/or motivation behind the information.

5. Ask questions—more than you think you need to. Asking questions not only allows the speaker to feel listened to, it ensures that you comprehended the message and are not overlooking aspects of the information. 

6. Be aware of distractions and try to minimize them. In addition to the digital and workplace distractions we all face, when you’re listening, try to focus on the conversation and speaker, rather than allowing your growing to-do list or another conversation to take over your mind. 

7. Acknowledge your shortcomings to the speaker. Let the speaker know where you are coming from. Have you been in too many meetings today? Did you not have time to read the pre-meeting brief? Are you distracted by your roommate or kids in the next room? Let them know what you’re dealing with so you can both do your best to overcome existing obstacles.

8. Don’t rehearse your response while the other person is talking. The authors note that you think faster than others speak, but don’t fall prey to the temptation to prepare your response in advance. Take a few moments after they’ve spoken to compose your thoughts and use any extraneous brainpower to listen fully. 

9. Monitor your emotions. Emotions can make it difficult to listen. Our brains can quickly engage in defensive behavior, pointing out the ways that the speaker is wrong and we’re correct. So, be aware of your emotions, acknowledge that you’re feeling emotional, breathe through it, and try to stay engaged with what the speaker is saying. 

What to Know if You’re a Pre-Law Student Considering Paralegal Work

Only about one-third of first-year law students in the U.S. went directly to law school from undergrad. At Yale, only about 15 percent of the law class of 2025 matriculated immediately after graduation. The majority of law applicants choose to take a gap year, or several, prior to applying. And, every year, we receive a lot of questions about the value of paralegal experience for applicants. Should you pursue it in your gap year? In a word: maybe. Let’s review the pros and cons to see if it might be the right fit for you. 

The Pros:

• If you are interested in a career at a law firm, work as a paralegal will provide an up-close view of your life as an associate. You will see what the hours, work, and intra-firm relationships will look like.

• You’ll build a personal network within the firm, which may benefit you as you go through the recruitment process.

• While your work as an early-career paralegal will be administrative in nature, you will develop skills that will benefit you in law school and beyond including legal research and writing.

• You’ll earn a reasonable salary, and some firms pay for paralegals to attend LSAT test preparation courses. You may even be able to continue working throughout law school if you attend a local university and have time. 

The Cons:

• As mentioned above, your early-career paralegal work will be more administrative than substantive in content.

• Paralegal experience is fairly common among law applicants, so you will want to find additional ways to stand out. Inquire about taking on a challenging long-term research project at your firm or a leadership role in a firm-wide charitable initiative.

• If you need to earn money to pay for law school, jobs in industries that you’re interested in (e.g. tech, finance) may provide meaningful and challenging experiences, while also  paying you a higher salary.  

Let’s Get (Inter)Personal: Hearing and Listening

We’re excited to introduce “Emotional Intelligence (EI) Fridays” on the blog, where we will hone in on how to develop and implement these softer skills. 

Our first topic of focus will be listening, a critical skill for doctors, lawyers, and (future) CEOs alike. We hope you enjoy this three-part series.

In our rushed and noisy daily lives, it has become common to use the words “hear” and “listen” interchangeably. We ask, “Can you hear me?” presuming that if a person can hear us, they’re listening. But, Julian Treasure, author of How to be Heard: Secrets of Powerful Speaking and Listening, provides us with a key point of differentiation between the two in his Ted Talk on Conscious Listening. “My definition of listening is making meaning from sound. All the sound around us. And there are three stages to that process. The first stage is a physical stage: sound waves hit your body. All over. But in particular, they go deep inside your head, and the sound waves touch your eardrums. In the second stage, that physical relationship is translated into neural activity, electrical activity in the brain. In the third part of the process, mental activity takes place and that, I suggest, is when listening really happens,” he said.

This definition is important because it makes clear that listening goes beyond the physical act of hearing. For many, we have so conflated the two that we assume that not only do we know how to listen properly, but that we’re good at it. Yes, we say, I can hear you. But hearing doesn’t mean listening. 

In fact, a good portion of us are not listening much at all, and we don’t even realize it. An Accenture study found that 96 percent of global professionals surveyed believe they are good listeners. But another study, described in Scientific American, found that, directly after listening to a 10-minute talk, about half of adult participants could not describe the talk’s subject matter and after 48 hours that percentage ballooned to 75 percent. In the Harvard Business Review, Tijs Besieux reported that, “Studies show people are distracted, forgetful, or preoccupied 75% of the time when listening.” The magnitude of that 75 percent increases upon consideration of how much of the workday is spent listening. On the Wharton Business Daily podcast, Oscar Trimboli, author of How to Listen: Discover the Hidden Key to Better Communication, said that 55 percent of most people’s workdays are spent listening. And that percentage increases along with seniority. For most managers, listening makes up 63 percent of the day, and for executives, a whooping 83 percent.

Because most people consider listening as a physical sense rather than a skill, it is rare to receive formal training on how to listen. Besieux wrote, “Less than two percent of the worldwide population has received formal education on listening effectively, and research points to a ‘crisis in listening’ as organizations spend 80 percent of their corporate communication resources on speaking.” This lack of instruction becomes more poignant when combined with workplaces that tend to be rife with distractions that make conscious listening difficult—Accenture found that 98 percent of global respondents spend at least part of their day multitasking—and reward decisive action more than mindful listening. 

Regardless of your field, the “crisis in listening” affects you. Dr. Howard Luks, orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist, wrote in his blog, “Most patients are interrupted by their physicians after 18 seconds. Yes, 18 seconds. Poor communication and listening skills are likely at the heart of this emerging high-tech, low-touch method of treating patients these days. Physicians feel rushed because they’re trying to maintain their income as their reimbursements decline and they need to spend more time filling out reams of paperwork to justify many of their requests or actions.” Fiona Martin, Director and Head of Employment Law at Martin Searle Solicitors, highlighted a similar challenge. “Every lawyer knows that understanding client needs is an essential part of the service. Too often, the process is geared to identifying what legal services can be provided. Instead of really listening to what the client is saying, you’re waiting for them to stop talking so that you can get started,” she told Law Firm Ambition. And according to the Accenture study referenced earlier, 64 percent of global respondents felt that the digital workplace has made listening significantly more difficult, and 36 percent said “the many distractions prevent them from doing their best, resulting in a loss of focus, lower-quality work, and diminished team relationships.” 

LSAC and ABA Announce Development of Adversity Metric for Law School Admissions

LSAC and ABA officials, in collaboration with The College Board, recently announced an ongoing effort to develop an adversity metric for law schools. The metric will be available for use in admissions, and will “contextualize” applicants’ experiences. A similar metric, created by The College Board for college-level admissions, provides insight into the quality of an applicant’s neighborhood and high school. 

During the announcement, Council Research Director, Elizabeth Bodamer described the project’s purpose. “There are thousands of law school applicants each year who have journeyed through barriers, and in spite of it all, have made it through,” Bodamer said. “The big question is: How do we capture this context?” 

While the metric will capture environmental factors impacting an applicant, such as the quality of schools attended, Bodamer explains that it is not able, or intended, to capture the totality of an individual’s experiences. However, in the wake of the 2023 Supreme Court decision disallowing the use of race in admissions, many law schools updated their essay prompts to provide applicants the opportunity to share these formative, individual experiences. 

LSAC officials are already using the metric alongside 2023 admissions decisions to analyze its potential impact. One early insight compares admissions into law school from “high-challenge colleges” versus “low-challenge colleges.” Among low-challenge schools, which are those with higher graduation rates and higher per-student spending, almost all applicants gain admission to law school. Meanwhile, significantly fewer applicants, less than two-thirds, from high-challenge schools receive acceptances. 

2024 QS Rankings Names Harvard Best Law School in the World

Earlier this week, QS dropped its 2024 World Law School Rankings. Harvard Law, once again took the top spot. In fact, the top nine remained the same as last year. The University of Melbourne emerged as the only new entrant into the top ten, moving up one slot from the 11th rank last year.

QS bases its law school rankings on an aggregate of four indicators: academic reputation, employer reputation, research citations per paper, and H-indices (a measure of the productivity and impact of a university department’s research). Harvard not only achieved a perfect score on three of the four indicators, but it was the only school to achieve a perfect score on any of the indicators. 

U.S.-based law schools showed well, taking six of the top ten spots, while U.K.-based schools took an additional three. Below, we’ve listed the top ten, as well as the U.S.-based schools ranked in the top 50. Check out the full ranking here. 

Top Ten:

1. Harvard University

2. University of Oxford, United Kingdom

3. University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

4. Yale University

5. Stanford University

6. New York University

7. The London School of Economics and POlitical Science, United Kingdom

8. Columbia University

9. University of California, Berkeley

10. The University of Melbourne, Australia

U.S.-based Schools Ranked in the Top 50:

11. University of Chicago

19. University of California, Los Angeles

23. Georgetown University

29. University of Pennsylvania

30. Duke University

34. Cornell University

36. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

50. University of Virginia

Thinking about Transferring Law Schools? Here’s What You Need to Know.

Transfer spots are hyper-competitive. All of the T14 schools accept transfers, but the acceptance rate for transfer applicants is ten percent or lower, meaning the school receives 10 or more applications for every available spot. Accepted transfers are typically in the top quintile of their 1L class, if not the top 10 percent, and have a strong 1L academic transcript. 

You may not receive funding. While some schools offer scholarship opportunities for transfer students, you shouldn’t count on it. If merit-based scholarships or other funding is important to you, you should speak with the admissions team at your programs of interest to learn the specifics about transfer students’ eligibility for scholarship money. 

Schools have varying policies for transfer students and how credits earned from another school can be utilized. As a transfer student, you will still have many opportunities. You will likely be able to find a place on a law review, obtain a research position with a professor, or earn a spot in the top ten percent of the class. But dig into the details before making your final decision. 

How to apply:

Some schools offer early decision options and/or rolling admission for transfer applicants. Apply as early as you are able to put together a strong application package.

Requested applicant materials for transfer students are similar to those you submitted initially, with some updates necessary to include your 1L year. 

• Transfer application

• Resume: Updated to include 1L experiences

• Personal statement: Updated to include recent growth and meaningful experiences, and a compelling reason for your desired transfer

• Letters of recommendation: Updated to include at least one recommendation from a current law professor 

• Transcripts: Updated to include your 1L academic records 

• GRE or LSAT test score: Generally, for transfer applicants, standardized test scores hold less weight in admissions decisions than 1L transcripts and performance. 

• Letter of good standing from your current law school

Below, we’ve compiled the T14 transfer stats (available on the standard 509), the overall 1L class size, and the final submission deadlines for transfers this year.

  2022-2023 Transfers

Name Out    In     Total 1L (2023)         Transfer Application Date

Stanford University 0 6 174 June 1, 2024

Yale University 0 10 201 June 12, 2024

University of Chicago 3 16 192 June 15, 2024

Duke University 1 0 244 June 1, 2024

Harvard 0 52 563 June 10, 2024

UPenn Carey 3 6 248 June 15, 2024

UVA 3 0 305 June 25, 2024

Columbia 0 59 415 July 1, 2024

NYU 1 47 429 June 15, 2024

Northwestern Pritzker 3 32 241 June 26, 2024

Michigan 2 14 302 July 12, 2024

UC Berkeley 5 18 339 June 15, 2024

UCLA 4 31 315 June 15, 2024

Cornell 7 2 191 August 1, 2024

Georgetown 11 122 604 June 17, 2024

Best Law Schools for Government and Public Interest

Interested in pursuing government or public interest work with your law degree? A new analysis by Reuters, using ABA employment data 10 months post-graduation for the Class of 2023, identified the schools sending the largest percentages of JD graduates into these fields.

Overall, around 20 percent of 2023 law graduates entered into the public interest or government sectors at 9 and 11 percent, respectively. However, at the City University of New York (CUNY) Law School, over 55 percent of 2023 graduates entered the fields. Almost half pursued a job in public interest (43 percent), with another 13 percent entering into the government. At the University of the District of Columbia’s Clarke School of Law, nearly 44 percent entered into public interest and government jobs. 

The top 10 schools and the percentages of graduating students who went into government/public interest are below. 

CUNY Law: 55.34 percent

University of DC Clarke Law: 43.75 percent

Albany Law: 36.36 percent 

Northern Kentucky Law: 34.58 percent

SUNY Buffalo Law: 33.12 percent

Florida A&M Law: 33.04 percent

University of Cincinnati Law: 32.28 percent

University of California, Davis Law: 32.02 percent (tie)

University of Wisconsin Law: 32.02 percent (tie)

Penn State Dickinson Law: 32 percent 

Related:

Best Law Schools for Big Law

Best Law Schools for Practical Training

Survey Shows Almost Half of Junior Law Associates Feel Unprepared for Work at Firms

Nearly half of junior associates at law firms, 45 percent, reported that they do not feel law school prepared them for work, according to recent survey results. Despite this, most expressed satisfaction with their career choices. 

Legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey, and Africa partnered with legal data provider Leopard Solutions to survey 546 junior associates at law firms earlier this year. The survey aimed to understand newly practicing associates’ law firm experiences, career aspirations, and perceptions of how law school prepared them for law firm life. 

Key findings include:

Just under a third of respondents, 31 percent, said that their “law firm experience didn’t meet their expectations coming out of law school.” 

• Almost all respondents felt that law school had focused too much on “theoretical concepts and doctrinal analysis” rather than practical skills. This included the feeling that law schools over-emphasize litigation at the expense of skills necessary for those entering corporate law. One open-ended response said, “[Law school] did not teach me how to write enough; my drafting is poor, and it suffers. I did very well in law school and feel floundering.”

• Similarly, respondents named business development and client relations as overlooked topics in the law school curriculum, but essential to those entering into firms. One respondent wrote, “I was not taught how to be in business. Being a lawyer is more managing than it is interpreting the law. Business students are more prepared to be lawyers than law students.”

83 percent of respondents reported feeling satisfied with their firm choice and said that they would select the same firm if given a “re-do.”

• Over two-thirds of respondents, 67 percent, plan to stay at their current job for three or more years, although 24 percent said they only plan to stay for two years. Just nine percent plan to leave within the year. 

• Over a third of respondents, 36 percent, named “making partner” as their ultimate career goal, while 24 percent expressed a desire to move to an in-house position and 12 percent to a government or NGO role. Just nine percent said that they wished to ultimately leave legal practice.

• Over a third of respondents, 36 percent, acknowledged that their ambitions had changed from law school to starting at a firm. One respondent shared, “I am unsure about whether I would want to become Partner—as associates, we receive almost no information as to what this entails daily or how to get clients.” Another mentioned a fear that working at a firm could interfere with personal goals. The respondent wrote, “I have begun to wonder whether this position and more senior positions at a large law firm may not necessarily be compatible with my family goals in the future.”

Related:

Best Law Schools for Big Law

Best Law Schools for Practical Training

Your 2024-2025 Law School Application Timeline

It’s never too early to create your law school application strategy! Apply Point's ideal schedule looks something like this timeline. 

Never too early 

• If you haven't connected with us yet, do it as soon as you can. We can guide you on your academic choices and advise you on how to land internships or volunteer experiences that will appeal to admissions committees. 

• Investigate the LSAT. The LSAT is typically offered in January, February, April, June, and then monthly from August to November. Taking it in the summer or early fall of your application year gives you some wiggle room if you must retake it. The latest you should retake this test is November 2024 (for Fall 2025 matriculation). 

• Start a journal. You'll raid your journal for details for your Personal Statement, and School-Specific Essays. Make notes on your current experiences as they happen and past ones whenever you have a moment to ponder them. You can keep a paper or digital diary or even record audio and text notes on your phone as they come to you, and organize them into a document later. (You will eventually want all of your experiences in one place.) 

Spring and Summer 2024

• Be all about LSAT preparation. Take a prep course and/or work with a tutor to prepare for the test. 

• Gain meaningful experiences in both academic, internship/volunteer, and extracurricular settings. 

• Visit law schools of interest, if you’re able, and research law programs to understand their offerings and how they align with your goals. 

• Continue keeping a journal. This is repetitive for a reason—never stop doing this. It is so helpful. 

August and September 2024

• Create an LSAC account and register for the Credential Assembly Service (CAS).

• Reach out to your recommenders. We'd like you to get three to four letters of recommendation, with at least two from professors who can speak to your ability to thrive in a challenging academic environment.  

• Take the LSAT. 

• Finalize your school list. You want a hearty list of "I could go here" schools and you’ll ultimately want to apply to between 10 and 15 law schools. 

• Move all of your journaled experiences into a brainstorming document. 

• Request your transcripts—and this includes those from schools abroad. 

October-December 2024

• Finalize your Personal Statement and School-Specific Essays. This is going to take a while. If you blast it all out in one week, you haven't done it right. Give yourself time for writing, revisions, and re-writing. 

• Update your resume to showcase the results you’ve achieved and impact you’ve had. 

• Follow up with your recommenders to ensure that they have submitted their Letters of Recommendation through the CAS. 

January 2025

• Fill out the school applications and Character & Fitness questionnaires available through LSAC. 

• Submit your applications by mid-January, at the latest. Most law schools offer rolling admissions and submitting your application on the earlier side will benefit you.  

• Prepare for and participate in interviews, even if they are optional. Your brainstorming document will continue to be useful here. Interviews are a great way for the admissions committee to get to know you as a person (beyond your application) and for you to learn more about a program’s student experience, experiential learning opportunities, and/or alumni network.

ABA Declines to Grant JD-Next Full Approval

Last week, the ABA declined to grant the JD-Next law school admissions test full approval. This decision maintains the status quo in which schools must request a variance from standard 503—the ABA’s admissions test requirement—to use the test for admissions. Almost 25 percent of ABA-accredited schools have already received this exemption for the upcoming admissions cycle.

The ABA requested additional data in order to confirm the test as a "valid and reliable" predictor of law student grades, on par with the LSAT or GRE. Daniel Thies, Chair of the ABA Standards Committee, provided his reasoning by referencing an ABA-commissioned third party evaluation of the test. Although the report did conclude that the JD-Next was a valid predictor of grades, it came with “multiple cautions and caveats” that pointed to a need for additional data collection and study. 

David Klieger, the Program Director for JD-Next at Aspen Publishing, provided a statement to Reuters that expressed disappointment, but highlighted that "institutions still have the option to incorporate JD-Next through the use of a variance, and potential law students continue to benefit from it."

Related JD-Next: What You Need to Know About this Alternative to the LSAT