Applying to law school is an elaborate, time-consuming process with many moving pieces. You have to take your LSAT; conduct school research; attend online webinars; network; strategize your stories; come up with a career pitch; write a personal statement, adapting it to each school’s unique prompt; create a law school resume; write optional essays, addenda, and scholarship essays; solicit one to four letters of recommendation; order transcripts; and prepare for interviews!
That’s a lot of tasks to manage, all with different deadlines, meaning that applying to law school can test your project management skills.
Of course, you could just squeeze everything in at the last minute, but it’s a bad idea. Think of it like a marathon: The more time you give yourself ahead of the actual race day, the easier it will be to hit your target time. Begin training three months, six months, or even nine months ahead of the race, and you’ll perform far better than if you started later.
Although everyone is different in terms of testing ability, writing skills, and so on, we can lay out a standard timeline that gives the average applicant enough time to refine every piece of their law school application to perfection, ensuring that all their materials maximize their potential.
Below, we’ll trace out an ideal timeline for any candidate working or studying full time.
But first, consider some factors that might make you set aside extra time for certain phases of the process:
These are all considerations that might lead you to give yourself extra time for certain tasks. Make sure you have time for everything!
But let’s just take an average applicant—working or studying full-time, a decent test-taker and solid writer. How long do you need to actually prepare everything for your JD application? When should you start each task? And what order should you tackle things in?
The most obvious factor determining your application timeline is deadlines. Law school application deadlines are the same every year, which should allow you to schedule everything on an annual timeline far in advance.
The final deadlines for most law schools are usually in February or March the year in which you intend to start law school, and binding early decision (ED) or scholarship deadlines are usually around mid-November the year before.
Keep in mind, though, that these are rolling deadlines. This means that the admissions committee will review applications throughout the entire application period, sending out invites and rejections.
Although you could, in theory, apply anytime from September 1 to March 1, the later you get in the application cycle, the fewer spots are left, and the more difficult it will be to gain admittance. So we recommend applying earlier in the cycle.
In an ideal situation, mid-November should be your target, as setting a mid-November personal deadline will allow you not only to apply at a comfortable moment in the overall timeline, but also to hit pretty much all scholarship and ED deadlines as well.
You are, of course, always welcome to submit earlier if you’re ready! Law school applications can be made from September 1 onwards.
But don’t rush to be first to apply! You should only submit your application once you’ve had time to make it as good as it can possibly be. In fact, it’s better to apply a little late with a perfected personal statement and essays than sooner with materials that are only 80% ready.
The law school admissions timeline below is based on the goal of hitting this mid-November deadline.
In the first phase of the application process, you’ll be doing your test prep (if you don’t already have a score) alongside various preliminary “strategy and preparation” tasks. The second phase is about writing and submitting your application materials. The third phase involves interviews and that final wait for decisions.
In this first phase of preparing your law school applications (running roughly from the start of February to the end of July), you will either have your LSAT score in hand, or you will do the strategy and preparation for your application simultaneously with your test prep. The tasks in this phase are therefore those that can be easily managed alongside your test prep.
In this phase, you don’t need to do any serious writing, but you will want to tackle all of the tasks which have a long runway to ensure that when you get to the writing phase (in August), you’ll be ready to launch.
At this stage, you’ll have a wide variety of preliminary tasks to work on. You’ll want to research schools and decide on where you’ll apply, in the process attending webinars for potential target and safety schools, visiting their campuses if possible, and networking with students, alumni, and faculty. By the end of this phase, you want to have figured out where to apply and gained some experience with those schools.
This is also the time to think about whom you’ll select to write your letter(s) of recommendation. You don’t need to have the letters of recommendation in hand yet, but in Phase 1 you should decide who is best placed to recommend you—and ask your recommenders if they are able to do so (keeping some backups in mind in case they can’t). We’ll discuss this further in the section below.
Additionally, start to think about your story at this stage. Again, you don’t need to start writing your personal statements yet, but you can begin brainstorming: What are my goals, values, and good qualities? What are some stories I could potentially use to communicate them? How do I fit in at different schools, and how do they serve my ambitions?
Start with the preparation of your personal and career story and how they are connected. This can be done via brainstorming or doing some prewriting. Get your core stories locked down and think about what is important for you to convey to the law school admissions committees. Writing the materials themselves is a task for Phase 2.
Finally, now’s the time to get some admin out of the way: order your transcripts, create your Law School Admission Council (LSAC)/Credential Assembly Service (CAS) account, and open your applications.
Although there are many tasks, you will have a good amount of time and can easily divide them up over the six months. Many of these tasks are not immensely time-consuming, but they can have a long runway because they’re dependent on other people or waiting times.
Because there are so many things to do, you can be greatly helped by working with a coach who will motivate you and push you to accomplish all of these items and to divide up your tasks into attainable and achievable milestones. A good law school admissions coach will be able to motivate you (or crack the whip!) when necessary.
In addition, there is incredible benefit to having an interactive relationship with an admissions coach who has worked with many successful candidates before. This provides accountability, helps you get organized, and gives you someone to bounce all of your ideas off.
In the sections below, we’ll discuss this phase’s most time-sensitive tasks in more detail.
A major moving piece of your application is getting great recommendation letters.
To get great recommendation letters, choose great recommenders! For most law schools, you will have to submit at least one recommendation, and at most four. Most law school candidates will submit two letters of recommendation, both academic. But this is flexible and dependent on your profile. If you’ve been working a few years, it’s reasonable for one of your recommenders to be from a professional context.
Keep in mind, though, that a major requirement of the recommendation is to vouch for your academic and intellectual capacity, because this is a major part of succeeding in law school and passing the bar.
If you are a current college student or have no work experience, both of your recommenders will of course be academic—so make sure to build good relationships with your professors!
As for whether you should have a third and fourth recommender submit, this depends on how much value each additional recommender will add.
Most law school admissions committees don’t want to read extra materials that are irrelevant or repetitive. If you’re adding more recommenders without any clear rationale, it’s better not to. But in cases where additional recommenders would provide the law schools with a new perspective on you, they are worthwhile—for instance, recommenders from unique contexts such as professional sports, volunteer work, or church service.
The most important consideration in selecting your recommenders is that whoever you choose should be excited to help.
If you don’t yet have an LSAT score you’re satisfied with, you should still have enough time to accomplish all of the above along this timeline.
We usually recommend that people in this boat focus about 80% of their energies on test prep, 20% on application preparation and strategy. This allows you to complete the main preliminary tasks while leaving you plenty of time and brainpower to focus on the LSAT itself.
The first step for most people is to tackle the LSAT. Without an LSAT score, it will be hard to evaluate your chances and build out a school list to apply to. Until you have an idea of your LSAT range, it can be difficult to build out a strategy, and this can add unnecessary stress to the process.
Best-case scenario: You’ve known for a long time that you wanted to go to law school, you already did the LSAT years in advance of your application, got a score you’re happy with, and don’t have to worry about it now. This is quite rare, but if it applies to you, congratulations—skip this part!
If not, we recommend that you lock in your LSAT score by the end of July at the latest. The rationale for this is, once again, deadlines.
Most people will need a minimum of three months to prepare their application, so if you are targeting mid-November (as we recommend), we think you should get the LSAT out of the way by the end of July. That’s the moment to ideally have your final LSAT score.
Keep in mind that this date should be the target for your final score, not your first attempt. Some applicants need to take the LSAT multiple times in order to get a score they’re happy with. Adjust the timeline for this phase based on a realistic evaluation of your own test-prep skills.
The most efficient and economical method of preparing for the LSAT for most candidates is to
Most people will need three months of self-study at something like an hour a day on weekdays and two to three hours on weekends to get a baseline of knowledge, and to get in enough reps to be effective when it comes time to take the actual LSAT. It could be fewer or more hours, depending on whether you’re a great or poor standardized test taker.
Usually, then, most law school candidates will want to take some sort of LSAT group course—because the interactive format of a group course in which you can ask questions, get feedback, and also learn test-taking methods and tactics will give you benefits above and beyond self-study. A group course may generally speaking be less efficient than one-on-one tutoring, but it is more economical, and therefore a good compromise for most people.
As a third step, many law school applicants will want to get some hours of tutoring to reach their highest score possible.
It may not be necessary to get tutored if you’re a fantastic test-taker, but we find that in most cases, private LSAT tutoring is a great way to boost your score to its maximum potential. Tutoring has several advantages over self-study and group study:
Whichever method you use to study for either test, there’s one thing we strongly recommend: only study using official questions. Many so-called “LSAT” study materials are not actual test questions, and although they are superficially similar, relying on third-party materials introduces errors into your approach.
Since you’ll want to leave not only enough time to study for the test, but also a “buffer zone” in which you can take an official test two or three times before your deadline, you should ideally have a minimum of six months for your test prep.
So, counting backwards from your final deadline:
Now, if it’s later than February and you haven’t yet started test prep—don’t panic!
It may still be a good idea for you to apply this cycle. There are many personal factors to consider, such as how much free time you have, how well you test, how well you write, and how personally important it is for you to apply this year.
If you aren’t sure either how to schedule your time or whether you should apply this cycle or next, feel free to reach out, and one of our coaches will be able to talk through your own personal circumstances and goals to find the right solution.
The single biggest mistake you can make is to put off the LSAT beyond this phase and try to do your test prep alongside the actual writing of your applications. In that scenario, you’re forced to juggle LSAT study, application writing, and studying or working full-time.
Is it possible to study for the LSAT and write your law school applications simultaneously?
Yes, it’s possible. We have clients who do it every year. It is not, however, advisable. Here is why:
Aim to finish the LSAT alongside these easier preliminary tasks, and then move on to Phase 2 below.
If the preliminary tasks in Phase 1 can be worked through gradually, Phase 2 requires you to work more intensively to make all your deadlines on time. You should be working on the tasks in this phase roughly from the start of August till mid-November, when you should aim to submit.
Here are the major tasks you have to complete in this phase:
This is a lot of writing, and you shouldn’t underestimate how much time and effort it will take. Shortcuts aren’t recommended: Repurposing the same personal statement for every school with a few minor changes will not get you the best results.
Superficially, personal statement prompts from different schools look much the same, but there are important differences, and you need to carefully weigh up what different prompts are asking for in order to maximize your chances.
Writing your personal statement, resume, and optional essays is probably the most significant task you will face in preparing your applications.
In separate articles, we provide in-depth looks at how to tackle your law school personal statement and how to write a great law school resume.
Phase 2 is the part of the process with the heaviest workload. The expectation is that you will be working at least an hour a day and at least two or three hours on weekends, writing and rewriting your personal statement and other essays to ensure that you’re submitting the best possible materials three months later.
The best way to get good feedback is to speak to your coach about which stories you should use, how you should link them together, and how best to express them. Even with a coach’s advice, your authentic voice and vision remains the core driver of the personal statement and other essays (and please don’t use ChatGPT or any other LLM when you get stuck—the one thing it entirely lacks is voice!).
The personal statement itself is the most important piece of your application, because it’s the main place where the admissions committee gets to see you as a living, breathing, feeling, thinking person. This is your opportunity to jump off the page and come alive as somebody they’ll want in their class.
Probably the most difficult moment in the application process is writing that first personal statement. Writing the personal statement for the first school is a real struggle with the blank page. The first draft is so difficult because you have to balance creativity with strategy—to not only write but also think. And to think, you have to take some time. Generally speaking, the first draft of the first personal statement is the most arduous task, the one that will take you longer than any other.
However, since it’s the single most important document you’ll submit, it’s entirely worth it to give your all to making this first draft an excellent one.
Once you have that first draft, everything becomes easier. The process of writing becomes iterative; you’ll get comments for each version from your coach and then refine the text based on those comments—improving the structure, the drama of the stories, the composition and linkage of the narrative; and finally zooming in to perfect your text paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word.
For some applicants, this can be done in five edits, while for others it will take 25. The length of time it will take you to write your first personal statement for law school depends on your writing ability, your level of creativity, and, crucially, a degree of maturity and self-awareness.
Needless to say, a great law school admissions coach can help you do this in a quick and efficient manner while also helping you achieve results you couldn’t have managed alone.
For most law school applicants, the first personal statement takes four or five weeks to bring to perfection. Once you have the first statement locked down, you can then adapt that perfected text for each of your target schools, which will have unique requirements and prompts. As you go from school to school and statement to statement, each rewrite should become easier.
After you complete your personal statement, you’ll apply the same method to preparing all the other materials. The optional or extra essays and the addenda tend to be the next-most difficult personal writing tasks. And the principle of writing and rewriting is similarly applied here.
All the stories you write, whether in the personal statement, optional essays, or addenda, should flow out from an overall strategy designed to increase your chances. That strategy will be based on your narrative.
Each essay will tell one or several of your best stories, so that you can provide the admissions officers with a picture of who you really are, why you would make a great candidate for their school, and why your future as an attorney is so promising.
For each essay or addendum, follow the same process you did for the personal statement: first brainstorm, then write a first draft, and then iterate. As you go from school to school, you will be able to reuse some materials, so it should become easier with each subsequent school.
You should have already confirmed your recommenders are available during Phase 1. Now it’s time to work with each recommender to produce the letter itself.
Guide your recommenders to ensure each submits a recommendation that enhances your profile—bolstering the overall narrative you present in your other application materials. They won’t necessarily know what makes a good letter of recommendation for law school, and they won’t know what points you want to emphasize in your profile unless you discuss this with them.
Finally, touch base with them to ensure that they know when you need the letters by and that they submit everything on time!
All this runs parallel to your writing of the other elements of the application.
If you were organized and disciplined—and/or had help to manage the application process—then come November, you should be ready to submit.
You’ll want to take the time to review all your written materials before submitting, especially those you may not have looked at for a while—in the process of writing, you’ve probably learned new things about yourself that could be incorporated into materials you prepared earlier.
You’ll also want to ensure everything undergoes a final proofread—and this is a task for which a second pair of eyes is truly invaluable. Even for a professional writer, it’s tough to look objectively at something you’ve been working on for months—your eye will tend to overlook errors and oddities. So get your resume, statement, and other essays proofread, ideally by a coach or a professional, before you submit.
Make sure your recommenders have submitted their letters of recommendation and that all your other materials are ready to go, and click submit!
We said above that writing your first personal statement was the hardest moment in the application process. But some of our clients might disagree. For them, the hardest moment, psychologically speaking, is waiting to hear back after submitting your application. It’s hard because, after all that work, there’s really nothing you can do now to influence the outcome. You’re just … waiting.
Remember that this is a rolling admissions process that spans the whole period, and there’s no hard rule about how long you’ll be waiting for a (hopefully positive!) decision or interview invite from the schools you’ve applied to. It could be anywhere from a few days to several months.
Different schools have different timelines, and other factors can have an influence. For example, consider the difference between an applicant who submits early and one who waits for the last minute, or between an application that’s an easy admit (or easy deny!) and one that demands careful consideration.
One productive thing you can do is prepare for any online or in-person interviews you might be invited for. Interviews can be nerve-racking in their own right. We strongly suggest doing at least two or three mock interviews with some preparation to ensure that you’re ready to present yourself in the best possible way.
Of course, this may not be relevant in some cases, since not all law schools require interviews.
Many don’t: As the table below shows, a lot of T20 schools either don’t conduct interviews at all or use them only on a discretionary basis (i.e., you may be admitted without an interview). Some have an “optional” interview you can participate in as part of the application; it goes without saying that you should do so when given the option!
| 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) |
If you have no interviews to prepare for, just sit back and (try to) relax!
Do I have to follow this timeline? What if I’m behind schedule?
People often ask questions like these—can they skip certain steps in the process, or do things in a different order? Citing their personal circumstances, they say that for one reason or another, this timeline just doesn’t work for them.
This leads to two common mistakes.
It may be that, like many applicants, you decided to apply to law school rather late in the cycle. Depending on your personal circumstances, you may want to delay until next year to give yourself time to improve your profile and ensure you’re applying with the best possible materials.
As mentioned above, you’ll (hopefully!) only apply to law school once in your life, and given the high cost of a law degree—and the lucrative career the qualification allows you to access subsequently—it’s important to dedicate all your energies to putting together the perfect application. This way, you’ll know you gave yourself the best possible chance to study at your dream law school. Don’t rush it!
The temptation is strong for many applicants to skip the “soft” steps in the process (i.e., the preparatory tasks in Phase 1) or to put them off until later. For example, some start on their personal statement right away, without the kind of research and consideration that should inform the writing process.
Some applicants will skip attending law school webinars, or networking, or doing in-depth research about each school. Because, let’s be honest, these are not “hard” requirements, and skipping them is tempting.
However, if you do follow the process and do your due diligence, not only will you be better informed—your applications are guaranteed to be stronger.
The right application timeline can mean the difference between acceptance and rejection; between getting a scholarship and paying your own tuition; between attending a T14 school and getting your degree from a much less prestigious institution.
A great law school admissions coach is like a great sports coach, a fantastic writer, and a project manager rolled into one.
Like a sports coach, a great law school admissions coach can push you to perform far beyond what you could do alone. A coach can give you structure and accountability, while also motivating you to accomplish all your tasks. Also, having led many “athletes” to success before, a great coach can diagnose your own profile, helping you understand how to use your strength to your advantage and compensate for your weaknesses. At the same time, they offer a realistic, experienced perspective on how to improve your profile.
Since storytelling and writing are at the core of preparing your law school application, any good admissions coach must be a talented and creative writer. It’s not enough to write a grammatically correct essay; a great coach will also have a good “nose” for story (“like a truffle pig,” as our cofounder Alice van Harten likes to say) and be able to draw the best out of you and your personal narrative.
Finally, the process of applying to law school is long and arduous, with multiple tasks you need to juggle in each phase. Working with a coach helps you approach everything in an organized way. Managing your tasks and your time is a fundamental part of the process, ensuring that you leave no stone unturned in maximizing the potential of your application.
A good law school admissions coach will help you juggle tasks, manage multiple work streams, deal with difficulties (such as getting roped into intense school or work projects in the middle of the application process), and overall ensure that you are preparing yourself in a measured and targeted manner and not getting overwhelmed.
Clear and structured support in your law school applications can mean the difference between admission and rejection. So reach out, let us know your goals, and we can discuss how to help you make the strongest possible applications.
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.
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