Law School Research - Help!
Finding the right law school is a daunting task. This guide is meant to act as a starting point for a soon-to-be law school student who is looking for a place to begin their research. If you follow this guide you will have a handy list of law schools that will be getting applications from you. There are
187 American Bar Association (ABA) accredited law schools. Each of the 187 schools offers a unique experience. With the right tools you can find a school that fits your interests and your career aspirations.
A short list of things you should have ready at this point:
- Desire to attend law school
- Idea of your Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score
- Your undergraduate GPA (uGPA)
- Location preferences
Another list of things that are good to have in mind, but not necessary:
- Areas of law you want to practice
- What you want to do with your degree
Setting Up Your School List
So you want to go to law school, you have taken a few
practice LSATs and you know what parts of the U.S. you wouldn't mind living in for the next three years. Now its time to start unraveling the often complicated law school selection process. Ideally after you have gone through this guide you will have a list of schools that includes a number of "saftey", "target" and "reach" schools.
Saftey School is a law school, statistically speaking you are garunteed admittance.
Target School is a law school, statistically speaking you are likely to be admitted.
Reach School is a law school, statistically speaking you are a unlikely to be admitted.
The suggested number of schools for each category varies from applicant to applicant, but a general rule of thumb is that you should apply to:
- 3 Saftey Schools
- 6 Target Schools
- 3 Reach Schools
Depending on your situation you can move applications between the three categories. Twelve may
seem like a large number of schools to apply to, but there are several reasons that a dozen applications make sense. You want to be sure you get into a law school. You want to have choices in where you attend. When you start getting offers of scholarship you want to be able to "play off" the money offered by each school to, hopefully, increase the total amount.
Playing the Numbers Game
Finding schools to fit into each category is one of the most difficult aspects of law school research. Lucky for you there are many tools online geared towards helping you take 187 schools and pare them down to a managable dozen.
One thing to remember throughout this process is that law school applications are driven very strongly by numbers. There are exceptions to every rule but statistical analysis is one of the most useful tools we have to figure out where you should apply.
Your uGPA and LSAT scores are the two most significant factors in the admissions process, whether or not admission committess (adcomms) at law schools own up to this is another discussion! Your uGPA is calculated by the
Law School Admission Council (LSAC). Transcripts from every undergraduate institution you have attended are sent into LSAC and put through a formula to get your LSAC GPA.
Armed with these numbers you can start the research in earnest and begin to build your list of schools. The best place to begin, and the most valuable "official" resource at your disposal is the
Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools. This tool allows you to interact with a database of officially reported information reported directly by law schools to LSAC. Unlike a few other tools we will discuss, the Official Guide has information who's credibility is not questioned. The Official Guide offers seven different tools to explore the 187 ABA approved law schools.
Populating Your List
The
LSAC Data Search is the best starting point. This tool will help you set up a base list of schools from which you can distill the places you will eventually be applying. Enter your uGPA and your LSAT, if you have not taken the LSAT then enter the average of your practice tests. After entering you data you will see that the [
# of schools] column updates itself automatically. At this point you can start populating your list! Click the check box next to "
[between 60-80% of the applicants with this combination]" and then click on "[List all law schools]". These schools should be the starting point of your Target Schools list.Why use the 60-80% range and not the "riskier" 40-60% range? Because the data in this database is from 2003. Admission standards at schools have been moving in only one direction for many years - upwards! In order to adjust for the more competitive 2004 and 2005 admission standards I would suggest sticking with the more conservative 60-80% range.
There may be many schools in this list, there may only be a few. Whatever the case is copy down all the names of the schoosl. Make sure to mark the heading of the list as
Target Schools.
Repeat the same process that you did for your Target Schools list, but follow these numbers instead for your
Saftey Schools and
Reach Schools list:
- Saftey Schools would be the schools to which [greater than 90% of the applicants with this combination].
- Target Schools would be the schools to which [between 40-60% of the applicants with this combination], feel free to sprinkle your Target Schools list with a few 20-40% schools as well.
At this point you should have a long list of schools, maybe more than a 100! 100 schools is almost half of the 187 which we started with. We are getting closer to the goal of a dozen schools. The next step in transforming this "long list" of schools into a shorter list is to filter the schools out by location. Location is a tricky thing for some and very easy for others. If you have a general idea of where you want to study in law school, great! Even broad ideas such as "west coast" or "south east" help. In the best case you will know the city that you want to study in, or near.
Filtering the List
The Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools has another tool to help shorten our long list nice and quick, the
Geographic Search. This step may take some time but go through your list and start deleting schools off one at a time. That previously long list should be looking a good bit slimmer at this point! You should also consider keeping a few schools on your list that do not fit your uGPA/LSAT and location preferences. These schools will help fill out your schools list and you don't want to wonder "What If" come acceptance letter time!
There are a few more tools you can consult to help massage your list into a more streamlined collection of schools. The
Official Guide has reports for each law school in PDF format. Click on the "All Law Schools" link and click on a school name to see the school's profile page. Here you can find links to the law school's website, adcomm email and the "ABA Law School Data" and "Law School Description" PDF links. Both of these files will help you get an idea of how the law school in question works. The more you read the more you realize that there are small, but important differences between the schools.
Are you interested in smaller class section sizes? Do you have an interest in a particular area of law that some schools support with clinics, special sections and externship opportunities? How much scholarship does the school grant to incoming students? The list of questions extends on and on, and these PDF files offer answers to these questions. After perusing the Law School Data and Law School Description files it would be worthwhile to visit each school's website to see what additional information you can gather from it.
Other Filtering Suggestions
The advice for researching schools at this point becomes less important. Why? Because as you start to dive deeper into the details of law school admissions you will start to determine which things are important to you. What is valuable at this point are some additional tools.
Disclaimer: All of the tools mentioned up to this point have been linked to data supplied directly by law schools to LSAC. The tools mentioned here, while extremely useful, do not have the same link to data that can be held to the same level of authority. These tools are community run and are ran on the donation of information by those in the public.
The list of tools that come under this category include:
- LawSchoolNumbers.com (LSN) This website is an interactive database of law school applicants who provide their admissions information to the site. It is possible to look at more recent data than the LSAC has collected - 2003/2004 and 2004/2005 admissions information are both on the site. Searching on schools for past admissions information will let you see how applicants did with various uGPA/LSAT combinations. Extremely useful tool. Take time to explore the interfaces for searching and graphing, becoming adept at them will help you understand the admissions process from a numbers oriented point of view.
- LawSchoolDiscussion.com (LSD) Unlike the previous research tools mentioned LSD is an active online law school community. Questions about the application process are treated very respectfully and users of the discussion forum are very helpful in demystifying the research and application process. If you have doubts or uncertainties during your research and application process LSD provides a place to seek advice from a helpful community. Everyone is in the same boat on LSD and the topics discussed are a great asset for anyone looking to go to law school.
- Chiashu, the disclaimer above does not apply to this tool, is a GPA/LSAT calculator. Chiashu, or Chaisu as it is often misspelled, offers a precise percentage of admittance where as the LSAC calculator gives ranges. Chiashu is based on the same formula as the LSAC calculator.
What Now?
You have come a long way towards getting your list of law schools down to that essential dozen. The best advice at this point is to read. Consume as much information as you can about law school and law schools. This blog will feature book reviews pertaining to law school in the near future. Be hungry! Visit those school websites until you know them front to back. Go on the tours, attend the open houses. Send emails to professors you think are doing interesting research. Immerse yourself in the research and application process and you will be satisfied with your choices.
Seek out alumni for specific questions you have about details you can't cull from readily available sources. Start up discussion threads on LSD when you are stumped with some information you just found, or if you are looking for advice about a school you know little about. This guide exists as a simple introduction to the world of law school research online. I have kept the application process seperate from the research process because I believe they are two different beasts. Being well prepared is the best way to jump into any large investment - and law school is certainly a large investment. Best of luck!
About the Author
I am a soon-to-be law student who will be matriculating to a school in Chicago. Which one? Give me a few more months and I'll have an answer for you! This guide was born out of the realization that there are no quality plain English guides to researching law schools out there. I have looked and looked and not found any guides I would call satisfying. Having recently finished this whole crazy process I believe that finding the right law school for your interests isn't difficult; it just takes time and hard work like anything else.
I warmly welcome and greatly appreciate feedback. I can be contacted at pointdexterish@gmail.com via email. I also post on LSD as "pointdexterish". This guide will be tweaked and updated as I feel necessary or as I receive feedback.
