What do you need to get into law school? That is, what does a great application for a T14 or T20 law school look like? In the words of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: “I know it when I see it.”
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. That said, even though great law school applicants come in all shapes and sizes, we can immediately tell you a few basic facts about getting into a top law school:
Although there’s no secret formula, we can explain how to approach the application process and the actions you can take at each stage to maximize your odds.
This guide is for people who already know they want to attend law school and are seeking to maximize their chances. Beyond the obvious, we’ll look at the “soft” steps (like networking and visiting schools) and at how you can build your law school profile in the years before you apply.
The first question to consider is at what point in your career you should go to law school. This of course depends on your own life circumstances, but it’s also a strategic consideration.
You can go to law school straight out of college or with several years of work experience. Both are viable options, but it’s important to know that the majority of students entering top law schools today have a year or more of work experience.
Only something like 20% of the class at most top programs applied directly from college, with the remainder having at least one year—sometimes several—of postcollege experience.
| School | 1+ years’ postcollege experience* |
| Columbia | 74% (source) |
| Duke | 71% (source) |
| Harvard | 79% (source) |
| Northwestern | 85% (source) |
| NYU | 72% (source) |
| Stanford | 80% (source) |
| UMich | 79% (source) |
| UPenn | 73% (source) |
| UVA | 77% (source) |
| Yale | 89% (source) |
| Average | 78% |
Does this mean you need that experience? Not necessarily—one-fifth of the class still got in without it. But work experience will allow you to fill out your profile and provide a lot more information and context to the admissions officers, boosting your chances.
Ultimately, though, the best time for you to apply is always when you’re ready.
If you plan ahead, you can apply directly from college, although, as discussed above, this is no longer the norm (as it was in the past).
This could be the right choice for you if you’re already certain you want to attend law school and you have performed well academically. Be aware that your profile might seem “thinner” than those of candidates applying with several years of work experience, and you need to be that much more impressive to compensate.
In order to be successful at this stage, it’s best to have clear career goals and clear motivations backing them up—law school is a big commitment in terms of time and money. And the schools know that right out of college, you might not be so sure about your career path.
The fuller the commitment you show to pursuing law, the stronger your application will be. Some things that will help:
If you know you want to pursue the legal profession from very early on, we strongly recommend joining your university’s prelaw club, where you can find advice about the above points and build up a network of other aspiring lawyers.
If you have excellent grades and clear goals, you might be able to start the process even earlier. Some universities offer accelerated JD programs, also known as 3+3 programs.
These programs allow you to earn both a BA and a JD with six years of study, rather than the usual seven. You secure your admission to law school ahead of time and actually attend after a set deferral period, usually taking two years out in between to gain some work experience.
As such, you follow a clear path right from the start. Some of these programs even allow you to skip the LSAT.
The catch is that you have to attend a law school within the same university where you did your undergraduate degree, or in some cases one that has a partnership with your institution. If you want to study for your JD somewhere other than your alma mater, you’ll likely rule out this option.
If you’re getting some work experience before applying to law school (or have decided while working to transition to law school), you might still wonder just how long you should work before making your applications.
At most programs, anywhere from two to five years of experience is ideal. This is enough time to professionalize yourself, gain experience and achievements that will beef up your resume, and develop soft skills that will be invaluable at law school: teamwork, leadership, time management, and public speaking.
All things considered, each year of work experience is an opportunity for you to bolster your profile—outperform others, get a stronger job, add more community service.
Generally speaking, the stronger your employer and the more prestigious your job, the less experience you’ll realistically need before transitioning to law school:
Once you know you want to apply to law school in a particular year, it’s time to consider your timeline for putting together the actual application. The first thing to look at is deadlines.
If you don’t already know the typical deadlines for JD applications, you can begin by reviewing the application deadlines for top US law schools. Generally speaking, applications open on September 1, and most law schools have rolling deadlines that are open until mid-February or even March. Deadlines remain similar from year to year, allowing you to prepare ahead of time.
However, because law schools admit applicants on a rolling basis, earlier applications are generally more likely to succeed. As time goes on, you’re competing for a more and more limited number of places. We recommend submitting your application by mid-November to maximize your chances.
With that goal in mind, aim to follow this law school application timeline:
Now, let’s dig into the specifics of the process.
Once you know that you want to attend law school, you can get an edge by preparing early.
It’s no secret that JD programs prefer to admit students with great academic and professional backgrounds, extracurriculars like athletics and volunteering, prelaw experiences like work in law or politics, and relationships with the school’s students and alumni—but developing these parts of your profile takes time.
If you’re a year or more away from making your JD applications, you have time not only to think about how to present yourself, but to develop and improve your law school profile. Which is a great advantage!
Look into extracurricular activities you can get involved in now and which would positively impact your application. This could include joining the moot court team or starting an undergraduate law review, but it could also mean volunteer work with no explicit relevance to law. Anything that shows initiative is likely to look good on your resume.
If you’re still in college and haven’t yet chosen a major, you can also consider a relevant subject like political science, history, philosophy, economics, or English.
The first reason to visit your potential target schools is obvious: to make sure you actually want to attend them!
Consider the enormous cost of studying at a top law school. Between the tuition, living costs, extras (you do want to join a few clubs and an international trek, right?), and lost income, you can end up paying over $700,000. Do you really want to spend this much money and three years of your life to attend a school you’ve never even seen?
You may be tempted to choose a school based solely on its ranking, but we recommend against this approach. You should attend a school where you’re likely to thrive.
One of the dirty secrets of JD programs is that a lot of students drop out after the first year (this is much lower at T14 schools like Harvard, where rates are around 1–2%, but can be much higher at regional law schools, which see dropout rates as high as 40%). Other students stay enrolled but struggle with academics, recruiting, or socializing with their classmates.
These are the outcomes law schools want to avoid. They’re trying to build a community! They want you to get on with your classmates, achieve career success, and, later, promote the program to other potential students. They’d love you to donate money, give guest lectures, recruit from among the school’s graduates, and so on.
Admitting candidates who are a good fit both academically and culturally makes all of this more likely.
But how can you demonstrate your fit with a particular program when the top schools are similar in so many ways? After all, they all cover the basics in 1L; offer specializations in 2L and 3L; and offer clinics, moot court, and pro bono work, among other activities.
Despite these superficial similarities, applicants who actually visit specific schools come back with clear ideas about how the programs differ, how they could contribute to those programs, and why one might be a better fit than another.
If you can make campus visits, you should. And if you really can’t … at the very least, attend online events and try to network with current students, alumni, or professors.
Your standardized test scores are important for law school admissions for several reasons.
First, the school wants to ensure you can handle the coursework. This is particularly important for law school; there’s a direct correlation between LSAT scores and success as a first-year law student (“1L”); and also between LSAT scores and ability to pass the bar exam. Bar passage rate is one of the most important statistics for law schools; they want every one of their alumni to pass.
Second, schools are managing their rankings in influential publications, which typically use average scores on standardized tests as part of the formula—the higher the better. For instance, in the oft-cited U.S. News law school ranking, “median LSAT and GRE scores” account for 5% of a school’s ranking, with LSAT and GRE percentile scales “weighted by the proportions of test-takers submitting each exam.” (For schools where very few incoming students took the GRE, only LSAT scores influence the ranking.)
Although it’s true that the law school application process is holistic, and there are many other considerations beyond your test score, a good LSAT or GRE score is an important threshold to pass to make your application competitive.
The exact score you’ll need depends on your target schools and how competitive other elements of your profile are. We help our clients to find the sweet spot—maximizing their advantages without turning LSAT study into a hobby.
If you’re considering whether to take the LSAT or the GRE, we always recommend that you start with the LSAT, since it is tailored to law school programs and still very much the norm.
Once you’ve built your profile, met the schools, and decided where and when you want to apply, it’s time to put together your application. The formal requirements for applying to JD programs are simple. Typically, law schools require applicants to submit
Thankfully, all these elements are managed through a single portal run by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC, the maker of the LSAT), so the very first thing you will want to do is create an LSAC account.
Note that you’ll have to produce different versions of some materials when applying to different schools—don’t just send the same personal statement to everyone.
The most successful application materials are personal, articulate, self-aware—but also calculated to show how you will do something meaningful on your law school journey.
You don’t want to bore the committee a lot of information about your ambitions but little about your personal story. You have a fine line to tread: giving them a sense of who you are via your most interesting and unique personal stories, and linking this to your goals.
With that in mind, yes, be authentic! But not to the exclusion of strategic considerations. After all, this isn’t a personal essay contest but a sort of job application. You are not Joan Didion (although if you can write like her, it will come in handy!). Remember to keep your eyes on the prize (a law degree!) when brainstorming topics for personal statements and other materials, and during writing.
Once you’ve submitted all the necessary materials (and potentially waited awhile), you’ll be given a decision: accepted, denied, or waitlisted.
Let’s go through the key materials you need to submit.
A law school resume is notably different from the kind of resume you’d submit for a job application.
This document is usually the first thing that the admissions committee picks up in order to get acquainted with you and your application. It’s their overview of your life and who you are as a person. Therefore, it’s well worth the time and effort to develop your resume specifically for law school.
Most schools are looking for a one-page resume. This should be enough for most candidates, although some schools explicitly say that they are happy to take a two-page resume; this might be worthwhile if you have extensive experience and qualifications that are difficult to fit on one page.
You can read more about how to write a great law school resume here.
Although it’s important to write clearly and to make your points within the space allotted by the schools, the real hard part of creating a law school personal statement is the thinking that goes into it.
The personal statement is the “be-all and end-all” document that should tell the law schools who you are as a person, what your goals are, and what you are passionate about, as well as highlighting the very strongest parts of your profile.
Many schools will have other smaller essays to complement that—for example, a diversity statement, a “Why our school?” essay, various addenda, a “Character and fitness” statement, or supplemental scholarship essays.
For example, Columbia Law gives you the option of writing up to five optional essays: one each about viewpoint diversity; overcoming adversity; leadership; volunteering; and career goals.
Don’t have great writing skills? Do you hate the idea of sitting in front of a blank page and writing the first draft of your personal statement? Well, since the practice of law is primarily reading and writing, you need to get used to it!
You can find countless templates and example essays online. Be wary of them. Would it make sense if you could win admission to such a valuable degree program by following a template available for free online?
You may be tempted to use ChatGPT or the like to polish up your writing—or do it for you. Don’t. AI output is long-winded, stuffy, cliché, and unconvincing, making any emotional statements come across as saccharine or insincere. These tools erase the idiosyncrasies of your voice, which are exactly what might stand out and endear you to the AdComs.
Great essays can’t be reduced to any simple formula. Depending on who you are, the key to success may be contained in your personal background, your career, your extracurriculars, or even your family history.
Your best application will take the best of your stories, and every person’s experience is unique, so the best application you can make might be very different from other successful applications. You should also consider how your materials can complement—or compensate for—other aspects of your profile.
You can read about the personal statement in much more detail here.
Interviews—whether prerecorded, on a call, or in person—can be a nerve-racking step in the law school admissions process. As with writing, though, presenting your case verbally is something you’ll have to get used to at some point if you plan to enter the legal profession.
Be aware, though, that an interview won’t necessarily be part of the process. Among the T20 schools, policies vary widely:
A summary of the interview policy of each T20 law school is shown in the following table.
| School | Interview? | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| Columbia | Required for admission | “Incorporating interviews into the admissions process is one [way] we hope to meet [your] needs.” (Source) |
| Cornell | Required for admission | “We invite those applicants whom we are strongly considering for admission to conduct a Kira Online Assessment [where you submit video and written responses].” (Source) |
| Duke | Discretionary | “When the admissions committee determines that additional information would be helpful … applicants may be invited to visit campus for an interview. These interviews are optional.” (Source) |
| Georgetown | Required for admission | “We have two interview programs, Alumni Interviews and Group Interviews. Both programs are invitation only.” (Source) |
| Georgia | No | “We do not have formal interviews.” (Source: An email message we received from the admissions department after inquiring) |
| Harvard | Required for admission | “An interview with the J.D. Admissions Office is a required component to admission. … All applicants who are eventually admitted … must complete an interview.” (Source) |
| Minnesota Twin Cities | Optional | “Applicants are strongly encouraged to participate in our pre-recorded interview process … Priority consideration will be given to candidates who participate.” (Source) |
| Northwestern | Optional | “Because the interview is optional, completing this process is a good way to demonstrate your interest.” (Source) |
| NYU | No | “Interviews … are not granted at any point during the regular application process.” (Source) |
| Stanford | No | “[The school] does not grant interviews as part of the admissions process.” (Source) |
| UChicago | Required for admission | “[We] include an interviewing program as a component of our application process. … Interviews will be by invitation only.” (Source) |
| UMich | No | “We do not … perform evaluative interviews.” (Source) |
| UPenn | Discretionary | “[The school] doesn’t offer evaluative interviews. … However, the Admissions Committee may request to interview an applicant during the evaluation process.” (Source) |
| UC Berkeley | No | “The large number of applicants we receive each year precludes our conducting personal interviews.” (Source) |
| UCLA | Discretionary | “[The school] does not offer interviews as part of the admissions process. However, [we] may request an interview on a case-by-case basis.” (Source) |
| UT Austin | Required for admission | “[We] will invite you to complete a virtual interview as part of your evaluation.” (Source) |
| UVA | Discretionary | “Select applicants will be invited to interview. … Applicants may not request an interview.” (Source) |
| U Washington | Discretionary | “Applicants may be invited to complete an interview. … [We decide] who will be interviewed based on factors in the application.” (Source) |
| Vanderbilt | Optional | “We encourage applicants to participate in an admission interview with [an] alum.” (Source) |
| Yale | Required for admission | “[We] will select some applicants to interview as part of the evaluation process. … We interview applicants we are seriously considering for admission.” (Source) |
There’s an element of luck in any application, but of course you want to have some idea of your chances of getting into different schools. Are you being unrealistically ambitious, or could you aim higher?
If all you need is a quick and dirty estimate of how you stack up at a given school, then compare yourself to the school’s averages on the basic factors: LSAT score, GPA, and the prestige of your undergraduate institution and your employer.
It’s just a matter of supply and demand. If you’re around or above the averages, you could probably be a good candidate, and if you’re significantly below the averages, admission is less likely unless you have outstanding achievements in other areas.
That said, if you’re in an overrepresented category of applicants, it’s wise to assume that the school will hold you to a slightly higher standard.
As an aspiring lawyer, you’re probably aware of the Supreme Court ruling about race-based affirmative action in college admissions: Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023).
Although the court ruled that such programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, schools aim to keep up diversity in their classes by other means, such as implicitly asking about your background in essay prompts.
Probably the single most common request we get, and the most common request on forums like Reddit’s r/lawschooladmissions, is some version of “Chance me!”—in other words, tell me my chances of getting into a particular school.
A number of companies offer services where you can fill in details like your LSAT score, GPA, years of work experience, and region of residence and get an estimate of your chances at different JD programs.
The results of such calculators should always be taken with a grain of salt, but they can be a starting point if you have no idea where you stand. At the very least, you’ll see a list of factors that can influence the decision, some of which you might not have thought about.
Short of actually applying to your target schools and finding out once and for all whether they’ll accept you, the way to most accurately assess your chances at a given school is to use our human-powered JD admissions calculator.
Give us a resume, a list of target schools, some information about your career goals, and any other information that you consider relevant to your law school applications, and we can analyze your background to provide an educated opinion on your chances of acceptance at each school.
We can’t claim to predict the future; there’s always an element of chance involved—a candidate who seems like a sure thing can be rejected, and one who seems to have very poor odds can succeed. But we’re pretty good at handicapping and know the factors that could make you much more likely to be admitted at one school than at another similarly ranked school.
Uninformed applicants may over- or underestimate their chances. A poor understanding of your profile can lead to one of two bad outcomes: You overshoot and don’t get in anywhere, or you undershoot and end up at a worse school than you should.
That’s why it’s important to speak to an expert and get a clear sense of where to apply, evaluating your chances based on objective criteria and extensive experience with the “fuzzier” aspects of the admissions process.
Of course, besides telling you your odds, we can also provide personalized advice on how to improve them. Which brings us to the next question:
Should you hire a law school admissions consultant?
We see applying for your JD as one of the most important turning points in your career, because top JD programs offer you access to the best jobs. Today, big law salaries are among the highest in the United States and across the globe, averaging around $250,000 a year.
Think of it something like a Logical Reasoning question on the LSAT—if you accept the following premises:
… then it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that you should hire an admissions consultant.
The hard payoffs of hiring a consultant are fairly obvious: admission to a better program; a larger scholarship; in some cases, acceptance instead of rejection across the board.
But there are additional qualitative benefits to coaching—soft payoffs such as
“My friend got into Harvard Law School and she didn’t use a consultant!”
Yes, it’s true. Do-it-yourself applicants are admitted to top schools every year. But rational applicants know that admissions is a game of probabilities, and they seek to maximize their odds of acceptance. Does the premise that you could go it alone adequately support the conclusion that you should?
We sometimes compare the process of applying to top law schools to defending yourself in a court of law. The stakes are high, and although you could appeal (i.e., reapply), it’s basically a one-shot process. You have several options:
As a prospective lawyer, you probably have a good idea which option will be most likely to get you the verdict you want.
As the old saying goes, “a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.”
It’s not that you couldn’t learn the details of the admissions process. But is this really the best use of your time? At Menlo Coaching, our team has spent years evaluating applications, speaking to students and alumni, and conducting research. We’ve also built special tools and a platform to make it easier for our clients to manage their application process.
If you do all of this work to become an expert, you might find that your colleagues are coming to you for law school admissions advice. The next thing you know, you’re in the admissions consulting business yourself. If this is your real goal, check out our careers page! But I doubt it—jobs in big law pay more, anyway.
Wouldn’t your limited time be better spent on advancing your career and building your profile?
Even if you have the time to research law schools, you’ll be competing against applicants who get a huge head start on you by using admissions consultants and can jump in directly to building their profile and writing great applications—starting out hundreds of hours ahead of the applicants who go it alone.
In law school, additionally, thoughtful, complex, and precise writing is a massive differentiator, much more so than in business or STEM programs. Writing is at the core of everything you’ll do as a lawyer. But maybe you’re not there yet—in-depth feedback on your written materials at this stage can also teach you a lot about writing for the future.
Uninformed candidates often submit materials that don’t meet their full potential. Your application is probably pretty good, but remember that your competition is pretty good too! We often see a lot of untapped potential, especially in personal statements. Some common issues:
These errors can result from a lack of time or motivation, but also from ignorance of what works. Working with a coach gives you access to an expert assessment of your profile and chances, as well as a comprehensive understanding of what law schools are looking for.
Who can truly take an outside view on their own strengths and weaknesses? Even at Menlo Coaching, we hire coaches for ourselves—in communications, curriculum design and business strategy—because we know that objective specialist feedback helps us to better serve you.
When we work with you, we will give you brutally honest law school admissions advice. We won’t entice you to sign up for our service with false praise about the strength of your profile, but rather help you create a realistic law school admissions plan to maximize your chances and put you on the right track for the future.
Getting into a top law school can be life-changing. You will build new hard and soft skills, engage with a group of successful young professionals, gain access to the school’s alumni network, receive a credential that is recognized worldwide, and get the chance to recruit for the most exciting roles in law—whether you’re looking to go into big, small, corporate, or public law.
Not only will the right JD help you to get a great job now, it can help you become the kind of leader who can advance to better and better positions as your career advances.
By partnering with our law school admissions consulting service, you can smoothly navigate the complex process of getting into a top law school. Opting for LSAT prep classes can also be a strategic move for those aiming to simplify their JD application journey.
Yaron Dahan
Expert Consultant & Director, BD
Education: BA, MA
Since 2006, Yaron has been using his narrative knowhow—honed through his work as a screenwriter and formal training at the Sorbonne—to pull out the most compelling details from an applicant’s background. He’s helped applicants win admission (often against the odds) to top law schools including Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and UC Berkeley.
Speak with a law school admissions expert for an in-depth profile review.
