I went to law school back in the dark ages, but since I have recently looked more closely at the process of admissions, I thought I would share a few thoughts. Now, as Richard Feynman aptly warned, “I believe that a [professor] looking at non [professor] problems is just as dumb as the next guy.” Indeed. And it is hard to know who has the ‘right’ perspective when it comes to admissions, including because such a thing critically depends upon what is the question. The question might be anything from, ‘What does it take to get into law school X?’ to ‘Will I have a fulfilling life as a lawyer practicing Y after graduating from law school Z?’ So, again, merely a few thoughts…

First, how about U.S. News? Much ink has been spilled, so there is no dearth of easily-Googled opinions. I will merely say, then, that I think anyone would be a fool to ignore those rankings; they have run for decades and have had an outsized influence on law students during that entire period. Indeed, I can vividly remember one of my (dark ages) YLS profs bemoaning their existence precisely because they had transformed (in his view) the composition of students from a cohort that genuinely believed in the legal realist school to a cohort that crassly “chose number one.” Right or wrong, rankings matter, and those in U.S. News have been the most prominent. Besides, they provide a great deal of useful information—for example, looking at the statistics of the ‘top few’ schools, one can immediately see there is one (The University of Chicago) that does not play the yield games that the others do. Does that matter? That’s of course for each applicant to decide; but, sticking with the ‘Chicago school’ for a moment, more information tends to be a good thing, and this is indeed information.

So, as in most of life, you might wonder whether anyone really ought to complain quite so much, and you might really wonder at the source of who is complaining. Is it applicants struggling to make sense of a world of massive information overload? Or is it, say, a law school fearing that it might inevitably (and even rather soon) fall from the coveted number one spot it has held since the beginning, and thus cleverly attempting to ‘jump ship’ before that could ever happen? Or might it be an entire profession staring at a demographic cliff and a massive upsurge in societal dissatisfaction with higher education and its staggering costs, and fretting about the monetary impacts of its ranking position, especially as online education looms? In other words, consider the source.

Still, I’d advise an applicant use the rankings as you would any single metric in life: look at trends over time, not a single year (how terrible will you otherwise feel after enrolling and seeing a drop?), and realize these rankings are merely one datum in a complex calculus. There is no doubt they are wildly silly, as any law prof knows who has ‘helped’ U.S. News compose its list by ranking every single law school in America from 1 to 5. (Yup, seriously; that is “peer reputation.”) But what in this life is not rather wildly silly? And you can bet there tends to be strong correlation at law firms and elsewhere with those much-maligned rankings. So, again, it would be foolish to ignore them. Yet it would be equally foolish to think they will control your destiny—I’ll share a personal anecdote about that in just a bit.

Second, how about the LSAT? There are no longer logic games (a shame, really, as they are eminently gameable), but no matter what the LSAC tests, it’s a standardized test. And the typical advice seems to work: (1) practice a lot (this used to be on Khan Academy and is now moving to LawHub), and (2) if you can afford it, take a prep course that has been doing this for a long, long time, where here I’d nod to Kaplan. It would be wonderful if money didn’t matter in this, but then you could say that about most anything in this life. LSAC only gives away a sample; you get more by paying. As for test-prep companies, they routinely run ‘sales,’ so planning ahead might lower the price somewhat. And, at least if you are generally strong on standardized testing, I would not pay for one-on-one tutoring; if you go with a ‘tried and true’ company like Kaplan, the prepared materials will be ample. If, however, you struggle with standardized testing, then a tutor might help a great deal—but it could be any very good tutor in such testing, as basic testing skills are not at all unique to the LSAT.

It is hard to say too much more that isn’t specific to a single test-prep provider, but one thing seems universal—their modern formats can be overwhelming. (How delightful was a reasonably-sized, old-fashioned book with which you might start on page one and simply proceed?) But, again, at least with a provider ‘tried and true’ like a Kaplan, I would complete the core prepared units and practice—no skipping, and best done in the intended order. The course drafters hopefully considered which questions to include when, so you won’t see annoyingly repeated or incomplete information if you follow their schedule. If you jump around…well, then naturally there is no such guarantee. As for other content, such as “LSAT radio,” I would tend to avoid it as a waste of time. Again, stick to the ‘core,’ and then supplement as needed/desired with additional past LSAT questions. To be intentionally redundant, I have a single piece of strong advice: if possible, pay for ‘tried and true,’ as opposed to settling for ‘newer, cheaper, and gimmicky.’

Third, how about applications? Well, the LSAC Credential Assembly Service “simplifies the law school application process,” of course. Hah! Here is where we really had it good in the old days—application forms were filled in by typewriter, and you can bet they were short and succinct. One simple application and one simple personal statement, and you were done. Today, by contrast, where essay after essay inconveniences nobody but applicants and electrons? Any prospective law school applicant has seen this show before with undergraduate education and its misnamed “Common App.” So, there are schools for which application is a breeze—for example, The University of Chicago. And there are schools which make you retype every item in your resume into a unique format and require much more—here’s looking at you, my alma mater. In short, applications vary tremendously. But there are two core components into which you can invest a lot of time because they are sufficiently universal: a two-page personal statement and a two-page resume. Also, the admissions officers of some schools have produced podcasts, and so anyone particularly interested in such a school should give that a listen. But anybody not so particularly interested can probably skip it, because…

Fourth, how about admissions? Idiosyncratic. And let me just say that again: idiosyncratic. “Holistic” works like that. Some schools largely ‘follow the data’ and get out decisions in a timely manner (once again looking at UChicago). But other schools are swathed in mystery and eventually make decisions (once again looking at my alma mater). My strong sense, however, is that the mysticism is strongly skewed towards ‘the top.’ So, if you are shooting for a ‘top ten’ (or ‘T14’), be prepared to be mystified by the results—‘Why did I get in here and not there?’ Well, because a particular admissions counselor on a particular time on a particular day perceived it how he or she perceived it, in significant part on account of how that day happened to be going. C’est la vie. (Thus, for those shooting into the T14, one thing not worth a listen is where folks imagine you’ll be admitted.) But if you are looking at the mine run of law schools, you can probably predict results quite accurately so long as you know the data and put together a reasonably professional application.

Finally, does it matter? Of course. You will spend three years of your precious life there, and it will stick around on your CV ever after. So it goes. Still…it helps me to remember a student where I taught for a decade, at (lowly to U.S. News) Delaware Law in Wilmington, Delaware. This student ran for SBA president, and I remember this because I let him give a little spiel at the beginning of my class when running for said office, something I tried never to do. His plug began something like this: “I appreciate our school because it was the only one that admitted me.” So it goes. In a later term, I would award him his first (well deserved) ‘straight A’ of law school, I would coach he and his partner to victory in an interscholastic competition, and, dare I say it, we would, over time, become friends. Then he went on to achieve fame in a rather storied career … so he won’t return a text. So it goes. It ultimately doesn’t matter as much where you go to law school; it matters what you make of it when you are there.

And if you make it through the admissions gauntlet and accept a 1L spot, congratulations! Lawyers have always been maligned, but there is perhaps no better measure of a society than its law. I’ll separately post a few thoughts about what you might do to prepare for that first year.