Five Questions to Ask Yourself When Applying to Law School

Since elementary school, maybe people have told you that you would make a great lawyer. Or maybe you are in your senior year of college and are considering a career in law for the first time. No matter when you started thinking about going to law school, now is the time for some critical self-reflection.

Although applying to law school can be stressful, remaining focused on your goals can help demystify the experience. It is important to remember the reasons you decided to apply in the first place. To that end, ask yourself the following five questions to help reflect upon your path to law school and shape the components of your application. (In addition, check out these other articles from Stratus on writing a strong law school personal statement and avoiding clichés.)

1. Do I really want to be a lawyer?

This is a threshold question when applying to law school. A personal statement that doesn’t reveal a clear intention to become a practicing attorney will not be well received by admissions committees. More importantly, taking three years out of your life, plus potentially incurring tens of thousands of dollars in debt, warrants deep consideration. 

If you don’t already have some legal experience, whether professional or personal, get in touch with some lawyers who are at different stages of their careers and who practice in different sectors (e.g., law firms, government, in house, public interest). If you are particularly interested in an area of the law, seek out a lawyer practicing in that area. Ask them what they love about practicing law and what they find challenging. Find out what they do each day, and then assess whether or not you find those tasks appealing. Your university’s career services office can often connect you with alumni who have become lawyers. You can also reach out to your local bar association or find connections to the organization on social media.

With some experience and introspection, you can make an informed decision about your choice to pursue a legal education. Additionally, your personal statement will present a clear and specific desire to work as a lawyer, even if you are pursuing a joint degree or have other academic and professional interests outside the law.

2. Why does the world need a lawyer like me?

Make sure your application isn’t overly focused on what a law career can do for you without articulating why the legal profession would benefit from your work. For example,

• You may speak a foreign language and want to provide legal services to under-represented people who also speak that language.
• Perhaps you trained as an engineer or a scientist and you think the profession could benefit from having more lawyers with a quantitative, data-driven approach to the law.

Highlight whatever is unique and special about your skills and upbringing that you would bring to the table as a lawyer. Having a nuanced understanding of the profession and the extraordinary way you might contribute to it will help distinguish you from other applicants. Keep this in mind as you craft all the components of your application, including your personal and diversity statements.

3. Where do I want to live and practice law?

Considering whether you have a geographic preference for law schools and your life after graduation can help you narrow your school options. Think about not only where you want to live while attending law school, but also where you want to practice eventually. Take advantage of the information available from law school career services offices that share where their alumni end up practicing law. These details are useful to help you decide whether a law degree from a particular school will help you get where you would like to go.

4. Where do I have a realistic chance of getting in?

This question weighs most heavily on students’ minds. The general advice is to aim for an LSAT score and a GPA in the top 25% of students who were admitted to a particular school in the prior year.

• Students with grades and scores in this range have a solid chance of acceptance and even getting merit-based aid—as long as their essays are as strong as their academic record.
• Applicants whose GPAs and LSAT scores put them in the median 50% range of their top choices will heavily depend on letters of recommendation and essays to stand out from other applicants.
• Students with an LSAT score and grades that are split or with scores in the bottom 25% should still apply to “reach” schools. However, these applicants should also realistically identify and apply to schools with stronger admission prospects while still working on a “moon shot” personal statement and written addenda. This will help the admissions committee see an applicant as an exceptional candidate who is more than just the sum of their numbers.

5. How am I going to pay for this?

The good news is that financial aid programs can often be very generous to students from low-income families or those who have been financially independent from their parents for some time.

• Pay attention to deadlines. FAFSA and other scholarship deadlines tend to be quite early in the application cycle. Most schools offer merit-based scholarships for students with high GPAs and LSAT scores based on their law school applications alone. Others offer scholarship programs for students who want to pursue careers in public interest, such as the Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholarship at NYU Law and the  Blume Public Interest Scholars Program at Georgetown Law .
• If merit scholarships and income-based grants are not available to you, educate yourself about private and public loan options as well as their various repayment programs. Many schools now offer debt forgiveness and low-income protection programs for students who choose jobs in the public sector after graduation.
• Contact law schools’ financial aid offices for more information on available scholarships and loan options.

Once you have strong answers to these questions, not only will you feel more confident in your decision to apply to law school, but the answers will help inform your applications. Most importantly, your responses will enable you to put your best application package together and convey a clear sense of why law schools should admit you.