Our mission is to make legal education accessible

Law school is the gateway to the legal profession, and thus it is the gateway to key positions in our society. But those who are unable to hire expensive admissions consultants have been at an unfair disadvantage. Until now.

We want to level the playing field. Top-notch, high-quality admissions advice should be affordable, and we have worked hard to do just that. Our affordable course guides you through the admissions process and writing personal statements, so that you can go to law school and become a lawyer.

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  David Busis

  Partner

  David is a graduate of Yale, where he received a prize for excellence in the English major, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received a teaching fellowship.

  His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic online. His fiction has won two national contests, received notable mention in The Best American Short Stories 2014, and been anthologized by Autumn House Press. He taught English and writing at Phillips Academy Andover, the University of Iowa, and Southern New Hampshire University.

  He was admitted to Harvard and Yale Law School before he joined 7Sage.

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  Selene Steelman

  Consultant

  Selene holds a B.A. with Distinction in English from Swarthmore College and a Juris Doctor from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law where she was Senior Managing Editor of the Cardozo Women’s Law Journal.

  For the last 14 years, she evaluated LL.M. and J.D. applications as a member of the Admissions Committee for Cardozo School of Law. As Director of LL.M. Admissions, she admitted and welcomed 27 new classes of LL.M. students from over 25 countries. Prior to joining Cardozo, she was a structured finance associate at a top-tier Manhattan law firm. Before she decided to pursue a legal education, she worked at a New York City literary agency, editing book proposals, negotiating subsidiary rights in the pre-digital era, and searching for the Great American Novel in the slush pile.

  She resides in northern New Jersey. When she is not helping law school candidates achieve their dreams, she spends her time playing the violin and ballroom dancing.

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  Boris Fishman

  Editor

  Boris Fishman holds a BA in Slavic Literatures and Languages from Princeton University (summa cum laude) and an MFA in fiction from New York University. He is the author of the novels A Replacement Life, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the American Library Association’s Sophie Brody Medal, and Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo, which was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Travel & Leisure, the London Review of Books, New York Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and other publications. In an earlier life, he was on the editorial staff of The New Yorker; co-edited the U. S. Senate Report on Hurricane Katrina -- where he engaged with prose by lawyers for the first time -- and was the recipient of residencies and fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, among others. HarperCollins will publish his next book, Savage Feast, a family memoir told through recipes, in 2019. He teaches in Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and lives in New York City. Please see www.borisfishman.com for more information.

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  Christie Belknap

  Consultant

  Christie holds a BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from Emory Law School, where she served as an editor on the Emory Law Review. She worked at two top-tier law firms in New York City, but after getting her fill of late nights, fancy lunches, and (perhaps most importantly) paying off her student loans, she shifted gears and landed a job in the admissions office at Cardozo Law School. There, she reviewed applications, met and counseled prospective students, spoke on admissions panels, and travelled to such exotic locales as Pittsburgh and Columbus. She returned to practicing law as the real estate counsel for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, where she helped move the Fulton Fish Market from South Street Seaport to a refrigerated, state of the art facility, and got to use the term “fishmonger” on a regular basis. In her latest role as an admissions consultant at 7Sage, she’s happy to draw upon her past experiences as an admissions officer and lawyer to help advise prospective students in the law school application process.

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  Kurt Pitzer

  Consultant

  Author and journalist Kurt Pitzer has written about many of the world’s most turbulent regions, including the Balkans, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a recipient of the Lange-Taylor Prize for his documentary work in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe, The Sunday Times of London, the Los Angeles Times, BBC Radio, People magazine, Pleiades, the Denver Quarterly and Mother Jones, among others.

  In 2003, he helped the former head of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear centrifuge program, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, escape from Iraq to the United States with his family. Their co-written book, The Bomb in My Garden (John Wiley & Sons), was called “never less than riveting” by The New York Times Book Review. Pitzer’s next, Eating with the Enemy (St. Martin’s Press), a “boisterous, improbable book” (The New York Times), is about the unlikely friendship between mobbed-up New Jersey restaurant owner Robert Egan and a North Korean ambassador. He is the producer of the narrative feature film Runoff, which premiered at the Los Angeles, Hamptons International and Woodstock film festivals in 2014.

  Pitzer earned his BA in English at Wesleyan University and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. He teaches Advanced Creative Nonfiction at Harvard’s Extension School.

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  Aaron Thier

  Consultant

  Aaron received a BA in Literature from Yale University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida, where he taught both creative and expository writing. He is the author of three novels: The Ghost Apple (a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize), Mr. Eternity (a finalist for the same award), and The World is a Narrow Bridge. His essays and criticism have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lucky Peach, and other magazines, and in 2016 he received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment from the Arts.

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  Sam Massie

  Data Specialist

  Sam is a graduate student in statistics at Yale University and holds a BA in economics, also from Yale, together with a certificate from the MIT Advanced Study Program. Prior to joining 7Sage, he worked for six years as a business analyst and product manager in Hong Kong, Boston, and Shanghai. He speaks fluent Mandarin, and his writing about China has appeared in the New York Times. Currently, he is based in Boston, where he also consults for companies on data analytics projects.

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  Mark Firmani

  Consultant

  Mark is a doctoral candidate in the University of Pennsylvania English Department and a J.D. student (deferred admission until 2019) at Yale Law School. After graduating as valedictorian from Quinnipiac University with BAs (double summa cum laude) in English and History, he spent a year hiking in his home state of New Hampshire before living as a Fulbright scholar in Amman, Jordan, where he taught as the 7th- and 9th-grade English teacher at a UNRWA school for Palestinian boys.

  While living in Jordan, he decided to take the LSAT and, two years into his doctoral studies, he applied to law schools, receiving acceptances everywhere he applied: Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia (Hamilton scholarship), NYU (Vanderbilt scholarship), Penn (Levy and Toll Public Interest scholarships), and Duke (Mordecai scholarship).

  He currently lives in Philadelphia, PA, where he spends his time reading Arabic-language novels and writing his dissertation. He also teaches Penn undergraduate courses in topics as varied as monstrosity, law and literature, and artificial intelligence, and looks forward to adopting a dog very soon.

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  Amy Bonnaffons

  Consultant

  Amy holds a BA in literature (magna cum laude) from Yale University and an MFA in fiction writing from New York University, where she won the Goldwater Teaching Fellowship and an Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award. She taught in the Expository Writing Program at New York University for four years before deciding to pursue a Ph.D. in English at the University of Georgia. Her story collection THE WRONG HEAVEN will be published in 2018 by Lee Boudreaux Books at Little, Brown, followed by THE REGRETS, a novel about the afterlife. Her writing has appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to Kenyon Review and The Sun, and has won awards and fellowships from Yale University, Open City magazine, and The MacDowell Colony, among others.

  Amy is a founding editor of 7x7, a literary journal promoting collaboration between writers and visual artists, and has served as international editor of Washington Square Review. She has also helped many students hone their personal statements to gain admission to college, law school and business school.

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  Ben Mauk

  Consultant

  Ben Mauk is a freelance writer based in Berlin. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, The Guardian, Granta, London Review of Books, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vice Magazine, The New Yorker online, and many other publications. He has received a Fulbright research fellowship and multiple grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He earned a B.A. in English literature, philosophy, and cognitive studies from Cornell University (Phi Beta Kappa, distinction in all subjects) and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He taught literature and creative writing for several years at the University of Iowa. He is the co-founder and director of the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.

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  Sarika Mathur

  Consultant

  Sarika holds a BA in Philosophy from Fordham University and a JD from Emory Law School, where she won first place at the National Transactional LawMeet. She also holds a MPH with a focus on Health Management from Harvard University.

  Sarika has worked for Emory Law’s admissions office and as a private equity and finance associate at a mid-size law firm. In 2016, she co-founded a medical device startup, which won first place at the Georgia Tech Startup Competition. Her prior work experiences include researching food and hunger issues at a think tank, which monitors UN policymaking, and conducting field work in Tanzania.

  Sarika has a keen interest in social entrepreneurship and innovation, particularly in developing countries.

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  Brian Booker

  Consultant

  Brian received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from NYU, and an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow and, in his third year, a Schulze Fellow. He has been the Grace Paley Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. 

  Brian’s fiction has been published in Conjunctions, One Story, New England Review, Tin House, Vice, and other magazines; his stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the National Magazine Award. His debut short story collection, Are You Here For What I’m Here For?, was published in 2016 by Bellevue Literary Press.

  Brian has ten years of experience teaching expository writing and literature courses at NYU; he has also taught creative writing workshops at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most recently, he has been a Lecturer in the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Chicago, designing and teaching workshops for both undergraduate and graduate students on topics such as Literary Horror. 

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  Chris Schlegel

  Consultant

  Chris Schlegel is a doctoral student in the Harvard English Department. He has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an AB in German from Princeton. His book of poetry, Honest James, was published by The Song Cave in 2015. His poems have appeared in LANA TURNER, The Volta, and at petripress.org. Chris has served as an instructor and teaching assistant at the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the Harvard Extension School, for courses ranging from lyric poetry to post-war US high and low culture to the twentieth-century American novel. He was awarded a Fulbright grant to Berlin for the 2010-11 academic year. He currently resides in Providence, RI, where he is at work on his dissertation and a second manuscript of poems.

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  Maura Roosevelt

  Consultant

  Maura holds an AB from Harvard College, where she studied English and American Literature, as well as Visual and Environmental Studies. After Harvard, Maura attended the MFA program in fiction writing at New York University, where she was a recipient of the Starworks Teaching Fellowship.

  As both a fiction writer and essayist, her work has appeared in The Nation, Joyland, and Vol.1 Brooklyn, among other places. Her novel BABY OF THE FAMILY will be published by Penguin Random House in March of 2019.

  Maura has taught creative and critical writing at NYU, the University of Southern California, and the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles. She was a lecturer in the Expository Writing Department at NYU for four years, winning an Award for Teaching Excellence every year. She currently splits her time between Los Angeles and New York, and is set to begin a doctoral program at Columbia University in 2018.

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  Sarah Cohen

  Consultant

  Sarah holds a BA in English and Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis (Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude), where she was selected as a member of Mortar Board Senior Honor Society and was awarded the Washington University Prize for Undergraduate Fiction. She received an MFA in fiction writing from New York University, where she was awarded the Starworks Fellowship, and instructed undergraduates in the craft of fiction and poetry. She has worked for over four years at a top Manhattan literary agency, editing manuscripts and proposals for award-winning authors, including Russell Shorto, Tara Brach, and Maryanne Wolf. She teaches English and writing enrichment to high school students, and edits manuscripts freelance. She is currently writing a fantasy series for young adults.

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  Rachel Yoder

  Consultant

  Rachel Yoder holds a BA in English literature from Georgetown University and an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona, where she was awarded the Foundation Award in Fiction. She taught creative writing, composition, and rhetoric at Prescott College in northern Arizona before earning a second MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Iowa, where she was awarded an Iowa Arts Fellowship.

  Her writing has won The Missouri Review Editors' Prize in Fiction and has been a finalist for the Nelson Algren Award from The Chicago Tribune. Her stories and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review Online, and The Sun Magazine, and have been anthologized in Best of the Web as well as in multiple books focused on experimental writing.

  Rachel is a founding editor of draft: the journal of process, which publishes first and final drafts of stories and essays along with author interviews about the creative process.

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  Margaret Reges

  Consultant

  Margaret Reges is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her honors include a 2015 “Discovery”/ Boston Review prize from the 92nd Street Y, the 2012 Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets from Michigan Quarterly Review, and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, the MacDowell Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her poems have appeared in The Boston Review, The Iowa Review, jubilat, B O D Y, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere.

  Before making the long drive back to California in early 2017, Margaret was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa, where she taught undergraduate writing courses. Nowadays, when she isn't toiling away as a freelance editor/writer, she travels to India, South America, or Thailand to teach creative writing courses for Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies. She is currently based in Oakland, CA.

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  Daniel Castro

  Consultant

  Daniel has worked as a writing consultant for over a decade. He holds a BA in English from Indiana University-Bloomington, where he worked as a tutor at the campus writing center, and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received a Dean's Graduate Fellowship and taught undergraduate writing. He is a former Fulbright scholar in Spain, and his work has appeared in Tampa Review, Miami Herald, Gambit Weekly, and Salon. He was awarded the Cintas Fellowship in Literature in 2014 and the Faulkner Society's novel prize in 2015. He was a resident at the MacDowell Colony in 2016. He teaches classes and does manuscript consulting for Sackett Street Writers' Workshop in Brooklyn, and is a co-founder of the Berlin Writers' Workshop.

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  Kristen Gleason

  Consultant

  Kristen holds a BA in English with Honors from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a Regents’ and Chancellor’s scholar, and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Montana. She studied linguistics in Tromsø, Norway on a High North Fellowship. She is currently a doctoral student in English at the University of Georgia.

  Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, Fence, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She was selected as an A Public Space Emerging Writers Fellow and was the winner of BOMB's Biannual Fiction Contest and the North American White Review Short Story Prize in 2017. Recently, she was awarded a Fulbright grant to Norway for the 2018-2019 academic year.

  She has taught creative writing and composition at the University of Montana, Montana Tech, and the University of Georgia, where she received an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. She was the managing editor of the University of Montana’s literary journal, CutBank. She has also worked in the Oakland, California public school system, edited for an academic publisher, instructed students in GRE and SAT test prep, and tutored in the University of Georgia’s Writing Center.

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  Conor Ahern

  Consultant

  Conor works as a civil rights attorney for the City of New York, and has been moonlighting as an LSAT tutor for two years. Immediately following law school, he worked as a Ford Fellow at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. He enjoys reading fiction and making bad puns. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and of Harvard Law School.

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  J.Y. Ping

  Founder

  J.Y. is an educator figuring out ways to bring down the cost of education while improving its quality and accessibility. “This is how we liberate and democratize education!” he likes to say to himself. He says a lot of things to himself. Not all of it makes sense.

  J.Y. graduated from Columbia University where he studied Economics, Political Science, and Philosophy and holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Before finding his calling in education, J.Y. pretended to be a lawyer at Paul, Weiss in Hong Kong and at Davis Polk in NYC.

  J.Y. is also a founder at PreProBono, a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to helping poor and minority students get into law school and promoting public interest law.

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  Alan Cheuk

  Founder

  Alan is from Canada, where he received a BSc with a joint major in Computing Science, and Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Simon Fraser University. He graduated first in his class, in Computing Science. He also received a JD from Harvard Law School.

  Alan taught International Negotiation at Jindal Global Law School and was a Sumner Redstone Fellow in New Delhi for a year after law school. He was justifiably appalled by the lack of good ramen restaurants in New Delhi.

  Alan's interests and work experience have focused on access to justice and information. He has worked for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in India, the Justice and Peace Commission in Liberia, and the Berkman Center.