Making Your Law School List: Advice & Resources for Deciding Where to Apply

Status Check with Spivey

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Spivey Consulting President Anna Hicks-Jaco has a conversation with three Spivey Consultants and former law school admissions officers—Sam Kwak (Stanford Law, Northwestern Law, Indiana University Law), Paula Gluzman (UCLA Law, UW Law), and Joe Pollak (Michigan Law)—a group that has collectively spent over 20 years advising law school applicants one-on-one as consultants. In that time, they have assisted hundreds of law school applicants in creating strategic school lists, the topic of today's episode.

How do you estimate your chances of admission to determine reach, target, and "safety" schools? How many schools should you apply to? How many schools do most applicants apply to (and how is the oft-cited average number of applications per applicant somewhat misleading here)? Where can you find the best and most up-to-date information about law schools when doing your research? We cover all of the above and more.

This episode is a companion to our recent blog post on this topic, How to Create Your Law School List. Here are a few other resources we mentioned in this episode:

• Law School Application Fee Waivers blog post series from Joe Pollak: Part 1 (Unsolicited Fee Waivers), Part 2 (Soliciting Fee Waivers), and Part 3 (Need-Based Fee Waivers)
• Podcast: "Safety Schools" and Making a Law School Backup Plan (with Danielle Early, former Harvard Law admissions officer)
• 2024 Medians Spreadsheet (Spivey Consulting)
• Official Guide to ABA-Approved JD Programs (LSAC)
• ABA-Required Disclosures (including admissions and employment data for all ABA-accredited law schools)
• How I Lawyer Podcast with Jonah Perlin (also check out our Status Check episode with Jonah here and Jonah's episode interviewing Mike Spivey here)
• My Rank by Spivey (custom law school rankings according to your priorities and preferences)

You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠.

You can read a full transcript of this episode here.