Hi guys, I am currently filling out applications for law school, but I find myself stuck on the resume portion. For context, I am approximately a year out from college and have not worked since graduation. I was having a very tough time coping with the idea of the LSAT and making large enough improvements on the actual exam so I decided to focus my energy on the exam and deal with work experience later. Before covid hit, I was planning to take the LSAT and then apply to some legal internships or volunteer opportunities after... but obviously now, it is super hard to find a job let alone a legal internship. Do you guys think this large gap in work experience would look bad on my resume? Additionally, should I write an addendum explaining this gap? I heard on a law school podcast that due to the pandemic, there will be tons of people who can't find legal work opportunities so it should be fine to skip the addendum.. but any and all thoughts on that are greatly appreciated. I am mainly worried because I am not a traditional law school candidate by any means. I started out college thinking I would apply to medical school and that dragged on for most of my college experience ( I had a very difficult time letting go of medicine and went back and forth on that idea for 3-3.5 years) so I never considered law until the end of my junior year of college. That being the case, I have 0 work experience in the legal field. I know that work experience is not required for law school, but I am sure it helps with admissions.. All I have on my resume are some odd ball medical volunteer experiences, working in a lab for a summer, pharmacy internship, and working at a doctor's office for a period of time. Needless to say, I did a lot of exploring to figure out what I wanted to pursue as a career, but I am not sure how that looks to law school admissions lol I am mainly entering law school with the hope of going into healthcare law or something in law that is related to science or medicine specifically. Also interested in IP/ patent law. Do you guys think my lack of legal experience would hurt my chances for admissions?

P.S. Is there a specific format for the resume I should follow? I have one, but I need to revise it for law school. I found some templates online, but is that enough?

I am filling out the application for Berkeley - it asks the following,

Do you currently hold any binding commitment, such as a binding deferment or binding early decision commitment, at any other law school? If you answer yes to this question you must email our office immediately to explain the circumstances.

If I applied ED somewhere else, that requires me to say yes to that question right?

I am applying to a Canadian school (not sure if its the same in the states) and you need to submit 2 verifiers of your PS along with the 2 references. I was just wondering who would be the best people to use? Can it just be friends who have known you for a long time?

thx

Hello -

I've been out of college for five years and I'm struggling to decide what to include in my resume. I'm planning on having sections for 1) my work experience (won't be super long because I've only held two different jobs since graduating) 2) my education and 3) some during college and post college activities.

Mostly what I'm struggling with is that because I've had full time jobs, some long communtes, etc. I haven't had the time to be involved like I was in college. In college I was VP of very large service fraternity, president of another club, etc. The only post-college activity I can think of that may be of interest is starting a book club.

Thoughts on how much (if any) of my college activities to keep? They do strongly correlate to the kind of law I want to do (public interest).

Have any of you applied early decision? If so, why? Do you think it is true that applying early decision can increase your chances of admission if your LSAT is below a school's median?

Hi!

I'm a reapplicant and I'm thinking of sending in my apps this month.

I was just wondering if I would have to rewrite my why x essays as a reapplicant.

I've wrote a completely new PS but I'm not sure if I can write a new why essay without sounding too forced and generic.

Any opinion would be appreciated.

Thank you!

Does anyone know whether it's possible to assign an additional letter of recommendation to a school after I've already sent in the application and my file is complete? For context, the additional recommender already had uploaded his letter to LSAC, but I decided later to assign his letter to the particular school. I know LSAC's website says that they'll send an updated CAS report if they receive a letter for a recommender that you've already assigned, so I'm unclear as to whether I can actually assign a recommender after the fact...

I'd love to hear thoughts from anyone who has experience with this!

I was wondering what fellow 7 Sagers think regarding law schools having online teachings for next year. Are schools going to continue to teach classes online? If so, could one apply to more schools with the potential of not having to move as the instruction would be online? When the school then goes back to in person learning, could one transfer back to a school in their home area?

What are your thoughts?

Thank you and have a great day!

I plan on submitting my applications this month and was just wondering if anyone knew when I could expect to get decisions back?

Because of technical difficulties and a terrible ProctorU experience on the November Flex, I decided to accept a voucher from LSAC and retake in January. This means that my score has been canceled and the cancelation will be visible to law schools. Any idea on how schools view a situation like this? Will my situation require an addendum?

Im sorry if this is a dumb question but I am working on my applications for schools and I wanted to write a Why X essay for a school I am interested in; however, I am not sure where I would submit this essay...would I send it to the school through email or attach it somewhere on the application?

Hey,

I was wondering if anyone had any insight as to how law school admissions view GPA's as they approach the schools median. For example, if a schools median is a 3.8 and I have a 3.75, am I placed in the same "below-median" category as the student with 3.5? To what extent does the marginal .05 GPA matter?

Thanks

Hi all,

Lots of schools offer public interest scholarships. I would like to do public interest work after law school, but I don't have a lot of a lot of experience in anything that falls under the vague umbrella of public interest. Could someone elaborate on how they added more public interest experience to their resume if they were in a similar position? Any and all advice is appreciated!

So far there are only 5 I am really interested in but I feel like I should apply to more to give myself a better chance. Is there anyone who knows of a 'magic' number? Would also love to hear how many you all are applying to.

I have a question for Canadian Applicants. I applied to 4 Ontario schools, I just wrote the LSAT this month and I know I didn’t do well. I am already registered for the January exam, does anyone know what would happen to my application if I cancel my score and just use whatever score I get in January?

Too late to take the January LSAT & apply for Fall 21 Admission in Feb? Higher score later > Lower score earlier?

Anyone else in the same situation?

Hey y'all. I am starting to work on applications in addition to studying to retake my test in Jan. I'm a non-traditional student, working 50+ hrs a week so time is not on my side. But I also don't have anyone to go to for questions/advice in the application process. Are there any resources you'd recommend to get through the application process without having a mental breakdown :)

That's all. I think I blew it with RC yesterday and won't get the score I need to offset my mediocre GPA

I'm looking into two schools but one of them I'm not entirely sure I will get into (I have yet to break 150 on a PT, I've only gotten a 150 in BR and I take exam in JAN, fml). Anyway, there's one school that I'm not entirely sold on because it's a T4 (Widener Law) but I sense that I can get manage to get into it (MAYBEEEEEE) but, I'd love to go to Drexel Law. Assuming I get into Widener and not Drexel, what are you thoughts on transferring after 1L? I've been wanting to go to law school since 2018 and here I am, REALLY TRYING STILL...thoughts?

Hi everybody! I have really been stressing out lately. I've been really harping down on myself about my current situation and I'm really frustrated. I know that there are some discussions similar to this, but I just really need some advice in real-time. So I had a bit of an existential crisis over the summer about what I wanted to do with my life and decided in July that I was going to apply to law school and take the LSAT. This left me with only two months to study, and while I studied about seven hours a day, it still was nowhere near the amount of time needed to study for the October LSAT. I got my score back and it's a 150, which I was SUPER disappointed with because of my UG-GPA. I attended two four-year universities and one community college. My performance at my first college was really abysmal primarily because of extenuating circumstances, a really shoddy mental health situation, and undiagnosed ADHD (which I recently got put on meds for). Realistically, I need to raise my score by A LOT to make up for my GPA. I am mostly wondering, based on what I have said, should I wait to apply until the next Admissions Cycle or not? I plan on taking the January and February test to improve my score and I've read that it might be a little late to apply to schools by the time that I get the results back. Let me know what your thoughts are! If you answer the poll please give me a reason why!

I graduated in 2019 and have worked for the past year in Finance. I was able to get a letter from my current work manager. I understand having an academic letter is important. Over the past month, I have emailed ~10 professors whose classes I have done well in, as well as a few career and pre-law advisors. I have only received 1 response and they said they were too busy and now was not a good time. What should I do? I was hoping to apply before Thanksgiving, but that is looking less likely. I can get another letter from a previous internship supervisor, but that would leave me with 0 academic letters. Should I apply with 2 professional letters and apply earlier, or delay applying and hold out (hopefully) for an academic letter?

Hey all,

I'm kinda having a crisis: I'm applying to Iowa, which is a really dream school for me, and it hits a lot of my desires/requirements as far as the school goes. I'm really interested in PI/gov't work, particularly prosecution, complex litigation, and moving into investigating white collar/environmental crime, ideally as a DA/AUSA. Iowa has a lot of cool academics who work in these fields, and it seems to have some great practical programs to this effect as well. And it punches a bit above its weight as far as things like clerkships are concerned.

But I'm worried that a) Iowa might be too regional outside of the midwest though i wouldn't mind living there (especially Chicago/KC), and that b) it might be too low ranked for these positions that I fear might be a bit unicorn-ish. Would going to Iowa and doing extremely well mitigate that possibility, or do I need to go somewhere in the t14 to have a fighting chance of working in these fields?

Really curious if anyone has an answer to this: I am applying to my alma mater for law school. I was wondering if they refer to my undergrad application by any chance. Only asking because there is some overlap with how one of the essays were written back in my college essay as it was a significant experience for me.

Does anyone know if adcomms have access to undergrad essays?

Hi all,

I am currently struggling with whether or not to submit an addendum with my LS application materials explaining 2 low LSAT scores. For background, I scored a 162 in May and a 153 in August. I have been averaging low to mid 170s on practice tests the past several months, and I think the November test went really well. I am anticipating I scored around a 170 (or maybe slightly over). As a result, I will have something like a 162-153-170ish score spread (yikes!)

For the 162, I took the May LSAT-flex after studying for just 2 months because I anticipated entering the fall 2020 class late in the game. However, when I realized it was smarter to wait until 2021, I signed up for the August LSAT-flex. I have struggled with Generalized Anxiety Disorder for years, which often manifests itself in panic attacks. For the August test, I had a 10-minute long panic attack that resulted in me bombing the logic games section (and my score of 153). The panic attack itself was related to a lot of technological failures (my computer not connecting to the internet, the campus-wide internet going down several times that week) and the fact that I couldn't get to my testing location until 10 minutes before my test (I was testing on a university campus and the COVID screening process didn't open until right before my test time). As a result, my anxiety was at an all-time high by the time I actually got into the test.

For the November LSAT-flex, I talked with my doctor and was prescribed medication that decreased my situational anxiety going into the test so that I could avoid a panic attack altogether. I also wired into the internet with an ethernet cable to avoid anxiety related to technological failures. Overall, I feel that I was able to overcome the previous hurdles I experienced on the August flex.

I am leaning towards writing a no-BS addendum briefly explaining that I have an anxiety disorder that manifests itself in panic attacks. However, I have heard advice from different admissions officers that you should never use "nervousness" as an excuse on your addendum. I am also worried that sharing info about a psychological disorder is a bit of an "overshare" on an LS app. I am also curious if I should even include info about the technological failures/screening process because I don't want the addendum to seem like a laundry list of excuses. I want to be straight to the point, conveying only the facts. Any advice? Of course this will all bank on my November score coming back higher, as I've predicted.

Thank you 7sage-rs!!!

Does it take a while after a recommender uploads a letter for it to show up as received on LSAC? I'm getting worried because my recommenders said they would upload them weeks ago but it still says "requested but not acknowledged by recommender" and 0 letters received