I am currently the Interim Executive Director of Career Services. I'm also the Pre-Law and Pre-Graduate School Advisor in our office. I'm here today with Mia Ferraina, who is also with Cornell Career Services and is responsible for setting up this summer chat series and for helping me stay on track during the during today's workshop. I really appreciate everybody attending today and I'm really glad to be able to talk about the law school application process sort of mid summer. I realized that there are people attending who are probably at various stages of their process. And actually, before we get started or while hours, while we're going here, if you wouldn't mind, maybe type into the chat. Basically, you know, what year you are and how far out you might be from applying to law school. That would be helpful as we go along. And certainly, if you're just here because you're curious about applying to law school, that is also totally fine. You don't have to be any number of years out from that from applying in order to hopefully get something from  our discussion today. Let me go ahead and begin by advancing the slide and introduce myself. I'll tell you a little bit about my background to see you sort of know where I'm coming from. Prior to arriving at Cornell about four years ago, I practiced law for about 25 years in the public and private sectors. I was a public defender doing a lot of criminal defense work obviously, for several years early in my career, and then I was part of a private firm and continued doing some criminal defense work, some civil rights work on behalf of plaintiffs, people who were who are harmed, and also medical malpractice, work on behalf of individuals who might have been injured by a doctors or other medical professionals. So that meant, I did a lot of trial work. I also was the later of a managing partner in a in a sports promotion firm called FC Tuscan. In that role, I worked as general counsel too, so I was kinda in-house lawyer for our company. So that's a little bit about me and I see all kinds of things in the chat here. So I'm gonna kinda scroll through and just see where we are in terms of what people are, what stage they're in. And as I suspected, a good number of people who were thinking pretty seriously about applying to law school or maybe applying soon. And definitely some other people who were a couple of years out. And that is fantastic. So i'll, I'll say this throughout the, the workshop today. I would love it if we could be little conversational. So there's no bad question. No matter what question you have. There's almost certainly someone else in this talk who has the same question. So please don't hesitate to ask questions. I'm happy if you want to type them into the chat. Mia will certainly monitor that. While we're going until she'll she'll ask them on your behalf. If you just think you know what, I want to ask this question to the group myself. You can certainly feel free to unmute and ask that question. Don't hesitate to do that. I also love to answer questions as we're going, although I'm also happy to answer them at the end. So if the question occurs to you, please ask it. If you want to wait till the end, consider asking that too. If you want to ask it anonymously, you can direct message Mia through the chat and and she can ask it on your behalf. So bottom line is, please ask questions. Alright. What are we going to talk about today? We're going to try to cover these basic topics. Timing of your application to law school, components of a law school application. So that means we'll go through them. But the law school admission test, the LSAT, your GPA. Essays, and letters of recommendation, will also talk about how you might develop a list of law schools that you're going to apply to. So this is sort of the big picture topics we'll hit. Before we get there. We always like to talk about more when advisors in Cornell Career Services give a presentation or do a workshop, we'd like to talk about our, our Career Development Cycle. And we think this applies to pretty much everything, every kind of career development, inquiry or effort the might make while you're at Cornell. So we like to put that front and center. Basically we think that career development kinda has three stages or three at three phases that you will rotate through many times throughout the course of your career, kinda sequentially. So the first stage, we believe is Understanding Yourself. What are your interests, your values, strengths, your goals, and making the effort to try to, to understand the answers to those questions. Once you go through that process, the next step is often exploring your options. Given who I am and what I think I'm interested in, what's out there for me. And in exploring your options, you're going to take advantage of everything from online resources to networking, to activities here at Cornell, or internships off-campus. And finally, once you feel like you understand yourself. Done that good research, you've Explored Your Options. The final phase is Taking Action. And taking action really just means applying for something. And so today, since we're talking about law school applications, I guess you could say that we're really in the Take Action phase. But I'm going to kind of move back and forth between Understanding Yourself and Explore Your Options as we talk about this. Because really to take action in a, in a meaningful and positive way, you do need to keep in mind those other aspects of the Career Development Cycle. We actually already have a question Greg, so I will hop in to, to clarify. Basically, people are wondering, is there a difference between law school processes in the U.S. versus other countries? And I guess to what ends will this presentation cover those variations? Oh boy, that's a great question. And the short answer is, there's definitely a difference between applying to law school for an American based law school and applying to law school for schools outside of the United States. And the second part of that is, unfortunately I'm not I'm not up to speed on all of the different application processes for all of the different law schools across the world in the various markets we might be interested in. However, I know that's not an entirely satisfactory answer, especially for international students or people who are thinking about the legal career, maybe overseas. That is something that is sort of a more individual basis through advising that, that were very happy to explore with you and try to help you identify those resources. And also to kinda work through the question of where should I be going to law school. Here's where I imagine myself working or practicing? Which law school experience really bests, supports that kind of work that I wanted to do. So today's presentation, Today's discussion will be based on applying to law schools in the United States. But I don't want you to feel like that's sort of where this ends. I would just encourage you to reach out and schedule an advising appointment to start exploring overseas opportunities and, and hopefully we can, we can be helpful there too.  Other question is about GPA and just graduate school in general before law school. What, what impact does that have? All right. I love that there are already questions before we even identify the topic. Yeah, this is great. So let's talk about GPA. When it comes to applying to law school. Law schools are mostly focused on your undergraduate GPA. However, law school's review your application holistically. And what that means is they're going to look at your GPA and they're going to look at your LSAT. They're going to look at your personal background and experience, which is expressed through the essays you write and the letters of recommendation that you get. And they're going to balance all those things. Now often one way to think about this is when your application arrives at, at a law school, they sort of look at it and they say, and I'm going to make up some numbers here. These numbers don't mean anything, they're just numbers that I can use for an example. They're going to say, okay, this applicant has a 3.4 GPA and they took the LSAT and they got a 162. We have 200 applicants with roughly a 3.4 GPA and a 162 on the LSAT- we can take 50 of them. How do we distinguish that 50 that we can take from the a 150 that we can't take. And that's where they turn to your personal background and experience. And that's going to be everything from why you want to be going to law school. What experiences have you had at Cornell or over the summers? Did you go to graduate school? And what did you study anatomy perform there. So they may not look technically at your graduate school GPA, but they might be very interested in your actual graduate studies. I hope that addresses that question. And Mia, I can't remember the second half of the question. I think that covered it.  Your good, go ahead. Okay, great. Um, so that people already have questions. So I'm going to try to fit in a slide now, but for more questions come. One other thing we like to point out to students and alumni is a relatively new resource that we have that really sort of encapsulates our best thinking on a number of career development topics. And it's a Canvas module that we call the Career Development Toolkit. This is available to students and alumni. And it hasn't. There are a number of topics in the Toolkit regarding many areas of career development. You can see a list of many of those topics on the screen. Today, since we're talking about pre-law, I will just highlight that there is a pre-law module. What I've been saying to people that I speak with about this is, usually a sort of at the outset of your process, whether you're thinking about law school, you're thinking about applying the law school. Take a look at the pre-law module. Just read it through once. It'll probably take you 20 to 25 minutes, just see you know, what's there. But you'll probably end up using it as, as a reference tool. You probably keep going back to it because there's going to be everything and information there from every topic. Ranging from, "Should I go to law school?" to "What's the best way to write a personal statement?" So the very broad to the very specific. It's not a substitute for advising. We're still here and hope to provide a robust advising services and to each of you. But it might help kind of set the table a little bit. And it might be a nice reference point after the advising appointment to say, well wait a minute. I think I heard this. What did they mean? And boom, there, there it is in Canvas. So when you have a minute, check that out, you can access it as you can see here. This is just a screen grab of a page on our website. You can access it based on what you're seeing here on the, on the screen. And when you get to the website, you can, you can use are hotlinks to it to get to to the Toolkit. Alright. We're here talking about law school applications. What are the components? I alluded to this earlier? Basically it's going to be undergraduate GPA, your LSAT score, or potentially your GRE score. And we can talk about that a little bit. You'll be using something called the Credential Assembly Service to pull all the components of your application together. And to send them off to the law schools that you want to apply to. So we'll talk about that. You'll also be submitting letters of recommendation and a personal statement. So we'll talk about those as well. Some, many law schools have optional essays or invite you to draft what we call a addenda. Sort of an extra essay that they haven't specifically asked for. Those are topics that we won't cover in a lot of depth today. We'll be talking about how you can learn more about those. Alright. First, I think it's good to know to sort of think through the timing of your application. Each law school has a somewhat different deadline, but most of them open their application process on September 1 of the year before you want to attend. So if you are a rising senior right now and you want to go straight through the law school, you'll probably be your applications that you'll be working on will be opened by the law schools on September 1. You will have there are differing deadlines for law schools in terms of the last day you can submit that application. Many law schools say February 1 or February 15. Some have a date somewhat later than that. And once you know which law schools you're interested in, it's a very good idea to check their deadlines and track them in some way. And maybe in a little spreadsheet you create. But just always kinda have your eye on that. I don't think it's a good idea to wait to the last second to apply. There are some advantages to applying early. And that there's also the opportunity to apply, to apply early decision, which is different from applying early. So let's talk a little bit just a minute about why there are advantages to applying early. First, what do I mean by early? Let's say you are that person who wants to apply in this cycle. The cycle, it starts September 1st, because you want to go to law school a year from now. Applying early, you know, different people might have different opinions about what it means to be early. I think basically early is some time, the second week of November or earlier. Now, you know, why is there an advantage to applying early? And, and how big is an advantage? Well, let's sort of talk about how this all works. So before the application cycle even begins, law school admissions professionals, at a law school, and that includes the Dean of the Law School, could include law professors, and other admissions professionals. They'll sit down and they'll say, okay, what is our mission for our next incoming class? Now how do we want to fill this class? And there might be certain factors they want to work on. And they might say, gosh, last year our, our, our LSAT median, the median LSAT of our incoming class was a little lower than we wanted. That's pressuring our ranking. They might say the same thing about their GPA median. There might be certain diversity factors that they're just not hitting, that they feel that they should be hitting. There might be geographic factors like, hey, last year, you just didn't have enough people from the southeastern region in the United States. Let's work on that. So they'll come up with a mission for their class. And then the goal of that application cycle is to meet that mission. So early on in the process, right when they open up that application, September, October, early November, most of the seats for that class are still available. And most of the money they have to give in financial aid is not yet committed. And so if when you apply early, your application hits at a time when they don't know how they're going to do on filling those seeds. And they have all the money they're going to have to spend on financial aid. Later you get in the application cycle, a couple of things can happen. Either the law school, thanks, hey, we're doing great. We're going to meet our mission. We're fine. We filled so many seats. We have an overspent. And they can get a little more selective than - later in the cycle. Not great for the applicant. Nice for the law school. Another law school might say, We're not, we're not meeting our mission. We're short on filling seats with the types of applicants that we were hoping for. We've had to spend more money than we expected. Or maybe we haven't spent enough yet because we can't even attract the students. And that law school will be having a very different experience. And they might need to become a little less selective and think more broadly about who they'll admit to their class. As an applicant, you'll never know which law school is having which experience. And so part of the reason we talked about applying to a range of schools is to kind of cover, cover the waterfront enough. So the you're, at least applying to some schools that might be looking to be a little less selective. In case you're also bumping up against schools that are becoming more selective in the middle of the application cycle. So long story, short. Not a bad idea, if you can, to submit your application prior to the end of the second week of November. However, it's far more important that your application is the best it can be. So if you get to that point and you were hoping you'd be able to submit it on time, but maybe your essays just aren't quite right. Maybe you've just recently discovered a law school that you're interested in, but you don't know if you want to commit to applying to it. Maybe you're a little uncomfortable with your LSAT score and you're toying with the idea of taking it one more time before applying. All those things are important. And if you need more time, I would not worry about applying after that middle of November deadline. Just make sure your application is as strong as it can be. There are plenty of seats still out there. And it's more important to apply well, then just to apply early. Alright. That was kinda monologuing. Mia, were there any questions that came up during that slide? There are some that I think you'll answer eventually. I'll hold them in case you need them. Alright. Sounds good. Okay, so let's talk about some specific aspects of the application. So I talk about the LSAT first. Because, you know, unfortunately, or how we feel about it. Most law schools really put a lot of stock and the LSAT score. And that is not necessarily a good thing. I think there, there are a lots of accessibility issues with that. I think that there are questions about gee since, you can make such a big difference by practicing on this test. Is that fair to applicants that, that maybe need to work when they're studying for the test.  Or have other demands on their time and and in ways that can make this test seem uneven and not not entirely fair in and I feel that. But I also know that this is a system that we have right now. And me, we need to move forward knowing that. So understand that the LSAT should be a priority when you're when you're applying to law school. I guess the good news is that you can make a big difference by preparing well for the LSAT. And so the first thing you kinda wanna do is say, okay, when do I need to apply? And given that time-frame for when I need to apply. What are the tests dates that are that are open? That will get me a score in time for that application cycle. And then you want to look at when you'll be able to study. So what timeframe is going to be a little bit more open for you to be able to really dedicate time and energy to preparing for the LSAT. So preparing for the LSAT can take, I often say maybe 2.5 to 3 months of relatively intense work. There are people who will put in a number of hours on it. They'll say, well, it takes a 180 hours or 210 or I've heard as high as 250 hours of preparation to to really nail the LSAT. So if you think about that and you spread those hours or maybe a three month period, you kinda get a sense for how much of your time this is going to take. So that's a good thing to think about ahead of time. It's also important to know that may end up taking the test more than once. Nobody wants to. I wouldn't be my goal. But it happens and it happens frequently. Maybe that first score just isn't what you, what you think is your potential. Maybe something interfered with your, your preparation for the LSAT the first time. Maybe something bad happened on test day. I actually had a student I was working with last year who I was taking a test overseas and and the Wi-Fi for the city they were in went down in the middle of the LSAT and nothing you can do about that. That's going to require a retake. So when you're planning your date, I think it's a good idea to plan a date and then plan a backup date. And that backup date, Probably, you know, it should be early enough that the score will count for your application cycle. And, and I think it's a good idea to have it be relatively close to the time you take the first test so that the gains you had in preparing for the first test don't dissipate, aren't lost. So when you're planning your dates, good idea that keep those things in mind. Now, what if you have multiple scores when you apply? Law schools see all of your LSAT scores. Some law schools will say that they average the scores. I think most law schools are really focused on your high score. And that's for a couple of different reasons. But it has to do with what they had to report to rankings agencies, which is your high score. And I also think that you can have a bad day on the LSAT and score lower than what your  actually capable of. But it's hard to have a day that's better than what you're capable of. So that I think, contend to mean that the higher LSAT score is is closer to what your actual LSAT capability is. One last thing about the LSAT, the format has changed again. So it used to be a live test where you go into a classroom and a person would be present there proctoring it and you'd use hard copy paper and pencil and fill out your answers. That shifted right before the pandemic to a digital format where basically there will be test centers around the country. And believe it or not, the law school admission council would mail laptops to this test centers that then when had to get charged and set out in a in a room at the test center. And it would be proctored again in person. Then the pandemic happens. They actually change the format of the test to something called an LSAT Flex. There's a little bit abbreviated compared to the normal format. And a startup proctoring those tests remotely, meaning that there would be proctor not in the room with test-takers. A test-takers, we're not in a single room either. They were in their own private space. And the proctor could have been hundreds of miles away, probably was. Now that we're coming out of COVID, the LSAT flex format has gone away and a return to a 4 section test. And you can see here on the side. Includes reading comprehension, analytical reasoning, and logical reasoning. And then there's a fourth section that could be any one of those. It's underscored and it's used to to test out new questions to see if they're appropriate. It will remain remote, proctored. So you'll be taking it in probably a private space and there will be a proctor at a distance. So that's that's as of August. That's the new format. Okay. Preparing for the LSAT. Lots of different ways to do that. I would check out the Law School Admission Council page that I've that I've listed here. There's a nice compilation of test prep books and vendors. There's also an opportunity to take a practice test to kinda see what your starting point is. And you can ask yourself the question, do I want to use commercial course? Commercial materials? There are pluses and minuses. At commercial course can provide structure and some helpful tips for your preparation. They can also be expensive and that's something that needs to be taken into account. And also the format matters. And we need to think a little bit about how do I learn best? Do I prefer an on-demand setting. Do I want it to be self-paced? Do I like it live? You know, what works best for me? Would I prefer a tutor and is at affordable? So those are all questions that are going to come up when you're thinking about how to prepare for the test. A tip here would be, at the outset, might want to try the the Khan Academy free program that you can find that the LSAC website. I'm not necessarily saying just go for that as your test prep program. Maybe look, have a look at it, maybe try their diagnostic tests. It's free. And that can be a reasonable entry point for figuring out how you want to prepare for the test. Alright. Can I interject with a couple LSAT related question. Absolutely. I was wondering if that was happening. Yeah. So. There's a question here about LSAT versus LSAT Flex. And we'll applicants who took the LSAT before the flex be at a disadvantage. Since score has tended to be higher on the LSAT Flex. Okay, let me make sure I understand the question. So a person took the LSAT, but for the LSAT flex format existed. And is there a disadvantage? Yeah. That's a great question. What I would say is that one thing to keep in mind throughout this entire process is all of the law school admissions professionals are sort of fully aware of the landscape and what you as an applicant are dealing with. They're going to also need to be aware of what the rankings agencies are, are measuring. And so the LSAT is going to remain important to them because they're remains important to the rankings agents. They also are going to understand that they're, there was for whatever reason. A tendency for higher scores during the LSAT Flex, then for the LSAT. So they're going to know the situation that you're in. How can you sort of highlight that? You could choose to write a quick addendum, just drawing their attention to the fact that you took the LSAT before there was an LSAT flex. That'll help them, you know, just remember that that happened. But short of like taking the LSAT again, which I'm  not recommending. Unless I know more about your situation. You really can't change that. You sort of in a way had to have some faith that the law school admissions professionals understand what was going on in both instances and take that into account. And if you really feel like you need to draw that their attention, it is okay to do that in an addendum. We can talk about how to, maybe how to, what kind of language in the addendum might be best. So you're addressing that in a positive way. It's a good question. There's no simple answer. And a little individualized advising might, might help in that instance. One other test-related question. Which is about the  GRE. Should you take it? What role does it play? Should you not bother and just  focus your energy on LSAT? Wow, yeah, That's such an important question. I have a tendency to always want to talk about background with these questions. I apologize if it seems like I'm pulling the lens way back, but I think it can help. So the GRE was introduced a little while ago, a few years ago, several years ago now, by some schools, it's certainly becoming more prevalent in the application process. There are a significant number of schools that consider it At, at differing levels. Some schools say, look, doesn't matter it to us. Take the LSAT, take the GRE, either test scores going to going to really put you in, in, in the same situation as far as how your application will be considered. Other, schools are still kind of piloting it. So they might say, Hey, we've set aside 25 seats that where we're going to admit GRE only students. And so it's a little bit more limited. Knowing which schools are treating the GRE in which way is kind of important. So that's some research that you should do before making the choice to take the GRE. Generally, let's see... making the GRE work as an admissions test has been an exercise in trying to improve accessibility for students. For some students their not sure. Should I go to graduate school? Should I go to law school? And they don't have the time to take too or the resources to take two different emissions tests. So it can certainly be more inclusive application process if the GRE counts just as much as the LSAT. So it can be a good solution there. I think that the continuing challenge for people who only take the GRE, and it's one that it's getting better, but I don't think it's, it's, it's quite there yet. Is that again, law schools are very sensitive about their rankings. And the LSAT plays kind of an outsized role in the rankings formula. The GRE is not yet, does not yet play that role. And so when it comes to admissions decisions and financial aid decisions, I don't quite know how the GRE is evaluated. I do know how the LSAT is evaluated. And so if it were me, if I was if I was going to choose one or the other, I knew I was going to law school. I would take the LSAT. So if you are in a different situation and you're not sure about graduate school versus law school, then the GRE is certainly an option. And I think that, again, a little individualized advising might help, help you make a decision between the two tests. Okay. Alright, and that's a super important question and I'm really glad that is was. asked. Alright, Credential Assembly Service, I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this because I I'm I'm worried we're going a little bit behind. You're going to be using this service is provided by the Law School Admission Council. Basically, this is the way that your application will get to the law schools. So essentially you're going to be submitting your transcripts, your letters of recommendation are going to be submitted. Your essays are going to be submitted to the Credential Assembly Service. The Law School Admission Council will then bundled them and send them to the law schools. You ask them to send them to the law schools that you're going to apply it to? Basically the Law School Admission Council, I'm in gonna call them LSAC, for short. Combines those documents with your LSAT score and sends a report to the law schools you're applying. Most ABA approved law schools require that you use this system. The system as a cost. It's about a $195. There is an opportunity for a waiver of that cost and you can apply for a waiver through LSAC. They set the bar a little bit high, so you're going to have to make a somewhat strong case for the waiver. But if you can make that case for the waiver, that case also might help you get some fee waivers for applications. And so it might be worth the effort to build that case early on and then continue to use it as you asked for and fee waivers from the various law schools where you're going to be applying. Alright. Basically what I'm going to do here to sort of take a shortcut is when you're getting close to the application cycle that you're going to apply in. I will go to LSAC and familiarize yourself with the CAS system. This is a system you're going to be able to figure out relatively easily. But it does take a little bit effort, a little bit of time to learn how to use it. So when you have a little bit time. I would just recommend going over LSAC. Reading through their process and making sure you understand it before you begin the application process. If you're getting hung up with it, that's definitely a question that that advisors are happy to help you with. But I would start by, by going to LSAC, LSAC's website and reading that over. Alright, I'm getting to a topic that maybe is a little more, a little more interesting. When you get to the point where you're developing a list of law schools, I think it's important to invest a good amount of time in researching those law schools. And really thinking about what matters to you. And you know, what are the factors you care about. And once you know what the factors are, use that kind of as a lens for how you think about each of the law schools that are out there that you're considering. So some of the factors that can be important and can be location, cost of the law school, the quality of the faculty. Diversity at the law school, both in there, in amongst your potential classmates, but also for the faculty and the staff that you'll be working with. What your career goals actually are. Not all of these law schools are the same for every kind of career goal. And it's good to know how that law school performs in terms of people who want to graduate and take on a particular type of career, the reputation of the law school does matter. Their ranking does matter. But it's not everything. It's something, but it's not everything. And it's kind of for me. One of the later stage things that you look into, not the primary and I know that that that might go against what what others might say. But, but I would urge you to think about what matters to you first and then double-check those schools you think you really like with their rankings. And then finally, I would also be looking at what sort of experiential learning opportunities does the law school provide? And how does it help you find those those experiences? So those are kinda the basic factors. Any questions coming up as we kinda get into this? Not yet. Not yet. Alright, good. Here are some resources that I think can help you with your research into law schools. They're not the only resources. This is just kind of a sampling. I'm broke them down into sort of four topic areas. So, you know, what kind of jobs do graduates from those law schools tend to get? How likely it is you'll be admitted given your background and your grades and your test score. Where can you find general information about every law school? And then kinda dive in and, and drill down deeper about each law school. And then finally, how do you kind of keep track of what matters to you? So in terms of employment prospects for graduates. So you can see that the websites I've listed here, each one of these gives you kind of an entry point to be in your research about where their graduates are getting jobs. And I would definitely encourage you to take a look at them. Likelihood of admission that's always in the forefront of an applicant's mind. These are a couple of resources here that I've listed, even though that Boston College Law School locator is dated, and unfortunately it hasn't been updated for awhile. But it's still is an interesting thing to look at because it gives us a sense of how the law school's group GPAs and LSAT scores when they're looking at admissions. It maybe not totally relevant to today, but it may give you a sense for how law schools think about it. And then the final item I've listed under likelihood of admission is something called the Law School Action Report. And that's something that resides in our office. And basically what this is is a report about where everybody who applied to law school, every Cornellian who applied to law school a year ago. What was the result - for every law school they applied to? And it breaks it down, both based on LSAT and GPA and has other factors that you can look at as well. Importantly, it is. And things are listed sequentially from highest to lowest LSAT score for each school. So it gives you a little bit of a sense for what the law schools are looking at. That's a report, when you're in person, you can walk into our office and I can give you that report to look at in our office for as long as you want. And if you are remote. And not able to come into the office. One way that I work with applicants on this is they may be submit ten schools that they're interested in. And then I review the report and give them some feedback about okay, at your LSAT score and GPA. Here's what happened to Cornellians who applied at these law schools last year. And that can be pretty helpful information. One thing I will say about this is this last cycle was pretty unusual. There was a really high number of applicants. I'm not so sure that that number of applicants will persist into this next cycle and then later. So I'm also kind of saying, hey, maybe take a look at the Law School Action Report from two years ago as well. To some extent that might be closer to what you'll experience in, in upcoming cycles. Alright. Mia I see you showing up. Is there a question? Yeah. People want to know where they can find. They report to me, have it physically in our office and it is in our office. It is in this blue binder. And again, if you come to the office, I will just give you this binder to look through at your leisure. If you're not able to come in unfortunately, I can't email this out. It's considered confidential, but I can be responsive to requests, reasonable request. If you say to me, hey, I got a 165 and a 35, tell me, I will do it every law school in the country. I cannot be responsive to that. It says too many. But if you said, Hey, I'm really interested in these 8 to 10 schools. Then, I can give you some some pretty good data from the report. Any other questions? Yeah, There is a question and you can save this for later and it would be relevant, but there's some people asking about a JD/MBA combo. Potentially some companies sponsoring that, things like that. Any recommendations or resources or support that you can provide about those MBA programs? Yeah. Those are also good questions those joint degree questions. If it's okay, I'd like to withhold them to the end of the presentation because I'm a little concerned that I can get through the presentation, but I can definitely hang on afterward and talk about that. Sounds good. Yep. Go ahead then. Alright. Okay. So let's kinda keep moving through here. A few other things to think about, as you're wondering about your, your list of schools. Definitely pay attention the cost. The website that I've listed here, Big Law Investor actually sets out the cost of attendance for each law school in the country. It's a great tool to look through. Also think about how much it will cost to pay off any debt that you incur. And this NerdWallet site has some really nice tools for understanding how much it will cost to pay it off and how long it will take. That is, I think an important part of choosing your law schools. Talk to people in your community. Try to talk to lawyers, try and talk to law students, you know, to learn about their law school experience and their practice experience or their work experience that can help you help inform your opinions about law schools. Lot of people know some lawyers and law students. A good tool we have at Cornell for meeting and chatting with lawyers and other law students. Is CUelinks. Not going to go into too much depth about that today, but that's a great platform you can sign up for and get access to Cornell alums, who are lawyers and law students and would love to talk to you about their experience. I recommend CUelinks for that. I've got a couple of dates in here that please sort of disregard a little bit. I will encourage you to attend Graduate and Professional School Day. It's going to be virtual one more time this year. That'll be on September 28. I apologize. I left the law student panel in there. I'm not sure whether we're doing that this year. Yeah. We're still looking into our individual workshops so for now, just disregard that. But do plan on attending Graduate and Professional School Day, September 28. We'll be sharing a lot of information over the next two months about that event and how to attend. Also, know that there are pre-law advisors all over campus. So I'm very happy to talk with you. But I would also be happy if you if you are in CALS, if you wanted to talk with Jennifer De Rosa; Arts and Sciences, Diane Miller; ILR, Rebecca Schimenti; Human Ecology, Deanne Maxwell. And if you're affiliated with the office of Academic Diversity Initiatives, OADI, Gabby Smith does pre-law advising there as well. Feel free to talk to one or more of us. We often refer back and forth to each other, so don't hesitate to contact any of us. Alright, let's try to squeeze in personal statements and letters of recommendation before you run out of time. And, and so personal statements, you're going to be writing essays for law schools. Every law school is going to ask you for a personal statement. Law schools ask for different kinds of supplemental essays, but let's talk about personal statements because you know, you're gonna, you're gonna do one. What is the goal here? This is where you're going to provide background information about yourself and your experience. The goal is to positively... to introduce yourself to the law school and to positively distinguish yourself from other applicants. We want to be talking about yourself and personal statements. That is how you will distinguish yourself from other applicants. Things that you personally observed, things that you have lived experience with, are great topics for personal statements. Ultimately we want to be talking about what is unique about you and what distinguishes you from other applicants who might have similar objective factors, GPA or LSAT. Some schools, provide guidelines, prompts for their personal statement. You know, certain things they'd appreciate it if you talk about. If a law school provides a prompt, I would follow that prompt. If they don't, then typically submitting a statement that's about two pages, double-spaced and is going to be appropriate. Now, where do you come up with ideas to talk about in your personal statement? There are lots of different resources for that. Again, Canvas, we've set out some, some resources. One thing I like in general though, is journaling. So giving yourself the time and space before you sit down to write a personal statement, sort of generate a list of ideas about that you think that you would want it convey to a law school. So maybe, you know, you're going to apply in this cycle. You know, you'll be writing a personal statement some time, maybe 45 days, 60 days from now. Give yourself the time and space to, to, to make a list of ideas. Ideas as you know, as they come to you. Keep that list, but curate it also, if an idea comes to you on a Monday and on Friday, it seems like no longer a good idea, it's not resonating anymore, strike it from the list. And hopefully what happens is that you start to distill that list of ideas down. Do a core set of ideas that you think you want to convey to law schools. And then hopefully what you're able to do is build some vignettes and short stories around those ideas. And hopefully from that a theme will emerge. So that is a way typically to really personalize and document your writing. And maybe help you avoid writer's block, which can happen when you sort of say, okay, today, I'm writing my personal statement and you haven't done that at work yet. And that's certainly something I'm happy to talk through in an advising setting. And just know that all of the pre-law advisors that I, that I listed in the previous slide are very happy to talk with you about your personal statement. Review drafts, make some recommendations and kinda help you get that into the position you want it to be in. I will also be doing a workshop in the fall about personal statements. Last year I involved the Director of Admissions at Cornell Law School. I'll probably back in contact with that person to see if they're willing to to partner with me on that again and that was a  really valuable session. So keep an eye on that. I will be communicating through Handshake about upcoming workshops. Alright, letters of recommendation. What is a letter of recommendation? Why do you even have to submit this thing? Basically, to kinda use lawyer language. A letter of recommendation is like an expert witness opinion about whether you will thrive in a particular law school's academic environment. So sort of breaking that down. The people who are going to read this, some of them are going to be law professors. So that means her sort of both lawyers and professors, the lawyer part of them. We'll look at that letter recommendation and they'll say, How does this author know what they claim to know about this applicant? And they'll really sort of look into the credibility and the letter writer. So that can maybe inform your decision about who you ask to write a letter for you. Some people say that the gold standard is for letter writers is other professors. And the reason they say that it is kind of that what I was just talking about. A professor will understand the academic environment. So they are a credible source for an opinion. If they know you, they know your work well, great. You've got somebody who understands the academic environment and somebody who understands you. The person reading that letter is going to view that letter writer is very credible. Now, professors might be the gold standard, but they aren't the only people who can write letters. And particularly for people who are might do might be a couple of years past graduation and they're out there. The working world just doing great things. And maybe they have a supervisor who is willing to write a letter of recommendation. That person can be great too, but you might need to prepare them for success. And so typically what I like to view, and you can see that tip here at the bottom. I ask applicants to, for any recommender, give them kind of a cover sheet, something that that, you know, maybe it's a cover sheet for your sending them your transcripts. So they have access, your grades, your resume, so they know a bit about your background, draft of your personal statement if you have one yet. So they can kinda see the approach you're taking to applying to law school. Work product, so if you took a class with them, send them the best work you did in that class. So we'll refresh your recollection. If they're a supervisor at work, maybe you wrote a great memo for them, send it to them, so they have that in front of them. And that refreshes a recollection about your work. But I also think it's not a bad idea to give either of them a professor or a non professor. A couple of bullet points about what your research into the law schools you're applying to has revealed to you. And that could be, Hey, look here, the skills I think these law schools think are important. For example, written communication skills, research skills, analytical skills. That, that can serve as a guide post for your letter writer so they know, okay, maybe I should address these things in my letter and maybe that's what law schools care about. Again, these are things that I'm very happy that cover in advising appointments in more detail and are also covered in our Canvas module in more detail. So I apologize, I'm kinda moving quickly through this. But hopefully you'll be able to follow up with me or with other advisors and also follow up with our, our Canvas module. Alright, I talked a little bit about Graduate and Professional School Day, highly recommended for anybody thinking about law school. This is an opportunity to meet law school representatives. Sometimes the Dean of Admission is the person you'll be talking to. Sometimes it's other admissions professionals. This is a time for you to do discovery. You know, ask the questions that you have. Find out what they say about them. Get an impression from them of what that law school might be like. Also, it's an opportunity for you to make a positive impression, on, on.... legal, sort of the law school, admissions professional from that school. Now they're not gonna be able to offer you admission on the spot. That's on how this works. But it might make some notes about you to bring back with them when they're done. And you'll be able to reference the conversation. You had a Graduate and Professional School Day with that law school, admissions professional, somewhere in your application or in your follow up with the law schools. So that's really kind of a unique opportunity where the law schools are coming to you. We'll definitely get information out to you about registration. I have on here September 14th. It's a bit of a place holder. We will we will broadcast widely when registration actually begins. Alright. Here's a summary, the tips. We have a couple of minutes left, but also I'm happy to stick around for any questions that people might have. So I don't know Mia, whether you've gathered anymore questions or anybody would like to to to ask any right now. If you have time to cover this, I don't know how in depth of a question this is, um how much our real life experiences and internships considered in application. Great question. I mentioned before the applications are considered a holistically Think law schools mean that. What they mean is, let's look at this person's background. So they might start with a threshold. Okay. Does this person's objective factors, their GPA and their LSAT score or GRE score, suggests that they, that they are somebody we should consider for our class. So there's sort of a threshold question there. But as soon as they sort of meet that threshold, okay, they're in the ballpark. They're going to take a hard look at your background and your experience. So what you did for your internships could matter. What you studied, could matter. Life experiences could matter. And what really I think is helpful is to, when you're applying to sort of identify those things that you think are important and tell a good story about them. Bring them to the attention of the law school. Explain why the, these experiences positively differentiate you from other applicants. And sort of do that. Understanding that this is different from medical school. So applying to medical school is kind of a prescribed path. Everybody needs to have a certain amount of clinical hours and research hours. And you sorta of know that going into applying to medical school. Law school is really different. People are going... People from a wide variety of backgrounds will be applying to law school. And law schools are interested in that. There's sort of no exact profile of a student that law schools are looking for. And that's important because as a lawyer, we, the law touches everything every aspect of our lives. So if every, every lawyer had the same background and the same experience, we all be in a lot of trouble because they wouldn't be able to represent the the wildly varying interests of people and, and, and entities that are out there. So whatever your story is, a story that will matter to a law school and try to tell it as well as you can. And they will look at that and that will be a very important part of their consideration. Kinda linked with that,  somebody following up. Is there a benefit to either applying immediately after undergrad or waiting to get some industry experience? And so glad that questions come up, I should have probably covered this already. What I will say is that this is down to what, you know, what's right for you. the trend over the last number of years is for people to not go straight through about two thirds of Cornellians to apply to law school or at least a year out of law school. About a year ago or two years ago now it is. When Harvard came to Cornell and spoke to potential applicants. I think they said 74% of their incoming class was more than a year... was at least a year out of undergraduate studies. When Yale spoke to Cornell applicants they said that the average age of their incoming class, the most recent year was 25. Those are not rules, but those are things to keep in mind that, that law schools are matriculating a lot of students who are, who are not coming straight out of undergraduate. That doesn't mean that you can't come straight out of undergraduate and go to law school. You obviously, you definitely can. But if you're feeling like a couple, a couple of things could be factors. Maybe you're, you're a rising senior, you think you're interested in law school, but you're not positive and you want to be exposed to the law with that more, great, don't apply straight through. Go and work as a paralegal or work as an investigator in some kind of city or state agency, In a setting where you're going to be learning about how lawyers work in and what goes into it, into their practice. That's a great thing to you. Or maybe you think there are some things I wanted to do before I launched my legal career. This is a great time to do them because once you start law school there, they're kind of is some pressure to go straight from law school into the practice. It might be career development pressure, it could be financial pressure. You've got loans you got  to start paying those off. So you can use that time to to sort of do some things that you want to do. Or maybe you want to get some experiences, nothing to do with law school, but may help you in your career later. Maybe I'll just pull an example out. Maybe you're thinking about patent law and maybe you've got a STEM background and you want to go and work in the field for a year or two to really, really hone that, that understanding before you enter law school. Lots of valid reasons to do that. No one right answer. And again, that can be a great topic for advising. If you're, you're kind of on the fence about that. Yeah. two probably quick  type questions and then maybe we can let folks head out and you can hang with the MBA student. And I think they're easy hopefully. Do I need to send transcripts from dual credit courses that I took in high school from accredited colleges. And the other one's about resumes. The other ones about what? The other ones about resumes. So, you can answer them. Okay. We'll do the first one first. What I like to do here is kind of defer to the Law School Admissions Council website for a question like that. My sense is that if it appears on your college transcript, that's what's gotta go to the Law School Admissions Council. But before relying on that, I would definitely double-check with that website. If you do. And the answer is ambiguous, they're very good about responding to that kind of a question. If they respond and it's still ambiguous, then that's a great topic for advising and I can kind of help you run down a more detailed answer. And the resume question is, Do resumes for law school applications need to be longer than a page? Oh, need to be longer than a page? The short answer is no. I think that the sort of typical guidance that applies to drafting a good resume also applies to drafting a good resume for law school. I would nudge you towards the Career Development Toolkit and the resume section that we have there. It's excellent. And then also following up with either myself or advisors in our office or other career development offices across campus. About resumes specifically. I think that it's a good idea to have some other sets of eyes on your resume. One thing I will say is targeting matters. So first, I will be doing good research into law schools I was applying too. Make sure I understand them well. Hopefully, you'll develop a sense for what they're looking for. And I kinda gave you a shortcut answer. I want you to look further. But the shortcut answer is, they care about written communication skills, research skills, analytical skills. Secondarily, but also importantly, they care about leadership skills and collaborative skills. As writing my resume for law school, I'd want to be pretty overt about experiences I have that illustrate those skills. So that's sort of the targeting that, that I would start with. There are probably another four or five questions but, I don't think it would be appropriate to keep people that far over. So I think maybe what we'll do is have maybe like a brief bulleted response or something that will include in the email with the slides. About there's a couple of questions about deferring... our preference, If you apply to Cornell Law School... things like that. So we'll try to cover those in a follow-up email. I want to thank everyone for coming. I'm going be placing  a link to give us some feedback in the chat other than so much information and not enough time. And those of you who are interested in the JD MBA combo, it sounded like maybe Greg can hang out for a few more minutes to talk about that briefly, though. I will put that link in the chat and thank you all so much for coming. All right. Thank you. And as I said, please don't hesitate to contact me or other advisors to sort of pick up where we left off. And I agree, way too much information in a way to shorter period of time. So I guess to refresh you on what people were asking about the MBA piece was. Is there any additional support from Cornell to apply for that was like, Do you work with Johnsnon school or anything like that? And if a corporation sponsors the MBA, would that be recommended in conjunction with law school? Okay. All right. So let me let me try to begin with the first question in saying that. So my role at Cornell has both pre-law advisor and graduate school advisor. Which means I do advising on many of the different graduate and professional schools, not medical school. That's a specialized area that we have advising for. So I would be very happy to talk with you about dual degree programs and sort of how, how best to approach. Do you need a dual degree? If so, what are the programs out there that are good fits and how you would apply for them. In terms of a scenario where maybe an employer's saying, Hey, we'll pay for your MBA. That that's a potential amazing resource. I think some thought about do you want the, you know, the MBA, how does the MBA serve your, your future career goals? How does the law degrees serve your future career goals? There's a good discussion to be had there to maybe pinpoint how to approach a dual degree. In general, dual degrees that involve law degrees, I think do require a good amount of thought because it's, I think, helpful to understand what kind of work setting and what kind of career you have in mind and whether that second degree is helpful or necessary in some cases, it's definitely necessary in other cases. It's helpful. In some cases, your your law degree plus your work experience is really what gets you to that place. And I think there are some tools that we can, that we can apply that to help you reach an understanding about that. I know that was a little bit vague. I don't know if there's a follow-up that's a question that clarifies that a little bit. And this is not entirely related. Bat somebody was asking about the timeline for applying to those types of programs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What drives the timeline? Really good question. Many times that's specific to the program that you're applying to. So you might be applying to a joint JD MBA. Some law schools are going to are going to have sort of a package program that gets you both degrees and ties you into the business school. Other law schools are going to say, well, apply to our law school, and you'll apply to the business school and we'll figure it out from there. It kinda depends on which law schools you're applying to. And ultimately what you end up having to do is follow the requirements of those schools. And so it's, it's a little hard to answer that generally without knowing what the specific schools are going to require. But that's something we can, that we can work on. Doe anybody else have more specific questions about the dual degrees? I'm trying to interpreting combine a few different people until one, so if I missed anything feel free to chime in. Hi, go ahead, feel free to unmute. Hi, I just have a quick question. In terms of the JD MBA, is there a particular way that we should integrate it? Is there a particular pathway that certain students go about? It? Is it after you've gained more work experience that you shouldn't look into it or is there something that it should be premeditated ahead of time? Yeah. I mean, it's such a great question. And I think with any decision to attend graduate school, it's good to know sort of why are you doing it.  You know, what, what career path does this support, does, does graduates school support? So the more information you can gather about the kind of work you want to do. That better decision you make about whether you need the MBA. I mean, yeah, I guess I'm sort of looking at it from the standpoint of you've decided you want a law degree. And the question is whether to add the MBA to it. I could be wrong about that. But for example, I think it's a really good idea to think about the kind of work you might want to do and talk to people who are doing that kind of work. See what their path has been. Did they get there because they had a JD MBA? They have gotten there just with the JD. What is the role of the MBA in that kind of a work setting? And sometimes it's clear, Hey, I should get both these degrees. I'm going to need them. Other times with lawyers, you sort of gain that understanding that you need to be a good lawyer in that particular practice area by just doing good lawyering and bringing in experts on an as-needed basis. So it's a little... is there a particular career path that you have in mind? Yeah. Okay. In terms of private equity and investment banking, but most of them typically after a big gain, significant amount of work, they typically go MBA than they get JD or vice versa. So typically that's kind of the end to mark of their kind their career. So I'm trying to, I'm trying to... if I should, at the current moment I am an undergraduate, If I should plan it out well structured. Or if I should focus on the MBA first, then to the JD, or is it the JD that comes first, then the MBA? Or if I should do both of them. But I'm trying to get a more comprehensive understanding. It's great that you're thinking ahead about this. When I would say at this point is that That's a nuanced answer and I'd love to learn more about your, your goals and your background. And then I'll be some kind of customized guidance. I think, that wraps up most of the questions that people had. Like I said, Well, I'm e-mail out some of the answers to the few that weren't lingering. But thank you all so much for coming. And hope to see you again soon.