Podcast Highlight:

This week’s podcast discusses the writing sample section of the LSAT. Our guests are Eva Lana, President and CEO of Binary Solution Test Preparation, and Andrew Brody, National Content Director for LSAT programs at The Princeton Review.

Our first guest, Eva Lana, says the writing sample of the LSAT, though not scored, is important because it is sent to the schools to which you are applying. She also suggests that some schools may use the sample as part of the admission process. Lana goes on to say that, when preparing for the section, reading samples and writing practice essays can be beneficial, and suggests that students develop a strategy of how they will answer the writing sample prompt questions in order to understand how to best organize their approach.

Andrew Brody suggests that students shouldn’t worry too much about this section because they will likely obtain or hone the skills needed for the writing sample during the course of their LSAT preparation. He also says that when students are developing their argument for the writing sample, they should strive to be fair-minded and consider both sides of the argument. Along with these suggestions, Brody underlines the importance of not letting a sample stand out for the wrong reasons (and tells us what those reasons are), and talks about how students should strive come into the LSAT understanding the basic structure of how they will approach the sample.

Guests:

Andrew Brody – National Content Director for LSAT Programs at The Princeton Review
Eva Lana – President and CEO of Binary Solution Test Preparation

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Podcast Highlight:

This week’s podcast discusses the meaning of your LSAT score. On the program we have Andrew Brody, National Content Director for LSAT Programs at The Princeton Review; Jeff Thomas, Assistant Director of Pre-Law Programs for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions; and Elie Mystal, an editor at Above the Law, a legal tabloid.

A student’s LSAT score is one of the many attributes that law school admissions look at when accepting incoming 1L students. The score can be determining factor for admission to or rejection from a law program. Our guests today discuss how what an LSAT score means, and attempt to debunk the myth of the LSAT as an IQ test and a measure of overall intelligence.

Our first guest, Jeff Thomas, Assistant Director of Pre-Law Programs at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, explains the history of the LSAT and discusses why potential law school students need to take the exam. Thomas also suggests that, more than anything, the LSAT is the start to your legal education and should be seen as that.

Andrew Brody, National Content Director for LSAT Programs at The Princeton Review, says that the LSAT score can mean a variety of things-but it all depends on the student. He also suggests that the score’s main purpose is to get students accepted into law school, although it is also used by schools to gauge how a student might do in law school.

Our final guest, Elie Mystal, an editor at legal tabloid Above the Law, discusses how excelling on the LSAT may show superb knowledge in one specific area of the test, but doesn’t indicate someone’s overall intelligence. Mystal believes, like Brody, that an LSAT score really only determines where a student will be able to attend law school, and not much else.

Guests:

Andrew Brody – National Content Director for LSAT Programs at The Princeton Review
Jeff Thomas – Assistant Director of Pre-Law Programs for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions
Elie Mystal – Editor at legal tabloid Above the Law

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Podcast Highlight:

This week’s podcast discusses law school application résumés. Our guests are Anna Ivey, founder and President of Ivey Consulting; Ann Levine, author of The Law School Admission Game; and Vanessa Vidal, owner and senior writer for ESQ Resume.

Our first guest, Anna Ivey, advises that students include all the basic information in their law school applicant resume: Contact information, education, experience, activities, and any other personal information the student deems relevant. Ivey says that it is fine to include things from before your college years but says one thing to definitely avoid including is expected statuses or things you have turned down; for example, if you were accepted to Harvard but didn’t go, don’t include it on your résumé. When designing your résumé, Ivey suggests that the formatting needs to be conventional and “very easy on the eyes.” She also says that admission officers care a lot about academic and extracurricular activities so make sure to include everything you have been involved with.

Ann Levine starts her advice by suggesting that students not include high school achievements on their law school application résumé. She proposes that, instead, students focus on including anything that will make their experience unique and diverse. Levine emphasizes that both education and employment information be included in the résumé, and stresses the importance of consistency and careful proofing to avoid careless errors.

Our final guest, Vanessa Vidal, states that law school application résumés and legal résumés are very different. Vidal suggests including personal contact information, work experience, education and bar admissions on your legal résumé. She also suggests that applicants not include computer skills unless the job specifically asks for a detailed listing. Finally, she talks about the importance of ensuring the résumé has a clear objective, only includes relevant information, and is carefully proofread.

Guests:

Anna Ivey – President of Ivey Consulting
Ann Levine – Author of The Law School Admission Game
Vanessa Vidal – Owner and Senior Writer for ESQ Resume

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Podcast Highlight:

This week’s podcast takes a look at the practice of real estate law. We’ll hear from professors at two U.S. ABA-approved law schools: University of Montana School of Law Associate Professor Kristen Juras, and University of Wisconsin Law School Associate Professor Thomas Mitchell.

Professor Juras starts by presenting us with a broad definition of real estate law, describing it as the “legal rights and obligations of owners of real property.” However, she says that there is much more to real estate law than meets the eye, and talks about its relationship to land use planning, real estate development, finance, landlord/tenant relationships, and easements, as well as its intersections with many other legal practices: Contract Law, Family Law, Estate Law, and Bankruptcy Law, among others. Professor Juras makes a point to talk about the nature of real estate law as primarily a state-based practice (although there are some federal elements to it, mostly notably in environmental law)—this is why, she underscores, students interested in real estate law must give thought to where they want to practice, since that can affect the knowledge they will need. She recommends that students looking to learn more about or practice real estate law not only take “basic” real estate law courses, but also take property-related courses—such as transactional, finance, and tax law—and also try to get practice experience by going to hearings, County Recorders Offices, and reading real estate law blogs.

Professor Mitchell, like Professor Juras, tells students that there is much more to learning real estate law than the basic courses—in fact, he spends considerable time talking about the importance of budding real estate attorneys gaining considerable experience in transactional and business law, and encourages students to look at the practice holistically, rather than just as a single pigeonhole. He also advises students looking to go into Public Interest Law (who he says often don’t feel the need to know much about real estate law) to become familiar with the topic, since non-profits often assist in affordable housing, which directly involves real estate law. He also encourages students to get as much practical experience as possible, and talks about the benefits of clinical opportunities and finding related summer employment (even in a volunteer capacity) to beef up their knowledge and experience. He ends by emphasizing the importance of a strong business and financial knowledge base for anyone thinking of going into real estate law, and also encourages students to look into real estate law-specific programs at the JD and LLM levels.

Guests:

Associate Professor Kristen Juras, University of Montana School of Law
Associate Professor Thomas Mitchell, University of Wisconsin Law School

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Today’s featured law school is the University of Washington and Lee School of Law. During the program you will hear from the school’s Director of Admissions, Brett Twitty, and a student in the 2011 graduating class, Rachel Vargo.

The U.S. News & World Report ranks W&L Law 30th in its most recent law school rankings. Tuition during the 2010-2011 school year was around $40,000 for both in and out-of-state students. The school, during the most recent admission cycle, demonstrated an acceptance rate of 21%. For the incoming class of 2013, the median LSAT score was 164 and the median GPA was 3.65.

Director Twitty praises the school’s intimate size, and emphasizes the care that’s put into the learning environment at W&L, offering individual programs that help students learn different aspects of the law profession each year they are in school. He encourages students to consider the law school application process as the beginning of their legal career and not just the start of their legal education.

Our University of Washington and Lee Law student perspective comes from a student in the 2011 graduating class, Rachel Vargo. Vargo’s loved the school’s close-knit community, and the student body’s high involvement in extra-curricular activities. She emphasizes the large amount of academic and extracurricular opportunities available at W&L Law, and states that, at Washington and Lee, you are never just a number—you are an important member of the community.

Podcast Highlight:

This week’s podcast discusses the logical reasoning section of the LSAT. Our guests are Eva Lana, President and CEO of Binary Solution, a test preparation company; Nikki Siclunov, Managing Director of PowerScore Test Preparation’s New York City operations and co-author of the PowerScore’s new LSAT Logical Reasoning Bible Workbook; and Andrew Brody, National Content Director of LSAT Programs for The Princeton Review.

Our first guest, Eva Lana, offers information about the logical reasoning section of the LSAT. She discusses the differences between the logical reasoning and logic games sections, and says that the wording of the sections are the biggest difference among them. She also offers example words and phrases that can be helpful to students when concluding answers in logical reasoning questions: like, for example, however, rather, because, result in, if, only, less.

Nikki Siclunov, our second guest, defines the logical reasoning section by breaking down its composition and timing. Like Lana, Siclunov believes the games and logical reasoning sections to be very different; major aspect of that difference is the number of questions offered in each individual section. The fifty questions in the reasoning section, compared to the four questions in the games section, says Siclunov, show the importance the reasoning section has on a student’s score. He also explains how important it is for students to understand the differences between arguments and conclusions when preparing for this section, and stresses the importance of slowing down and approaching the logical reasoning questions carefully.

Our final guest, Andrew Brody, suggests that the logical reasoning section is the most important section on the test because it offers the most number of points. He talks about how important it is to practice for this section in order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of how to best answer the questions. He also says that applying the process of elimination when choosing between questions is one of the soundest strategies students can have when preparing for the logical reasoning section.

Guests:

Nikki Siclunov – Managing Director of PowerScore Test Preparation’s New York City operations and co-author of the PowerScore‘s new LSAT Logical Reasoning Bible Workbook
Andrew Brody – National Content Director of LSAT Programs for The Princeton Review
Eva Lana – President and CEO of Binary Solution

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Podcast Highlight:

This week’s podcast discusses the LSAT scoring scale. We’ll hear from experts Dave Killoran, CEO of PowerScore Test Preparation; Andrew Brody, Vice President of Content Development at The Princeton Review; and Glen Stohr, Senior Manager of Product Development for the LSAT with Kaplan Test Prep & Admissions .

Dave Killoran begins by delineating the differences between an LSAT “raw score” and “percentile score,” noting that the former is based purely on the number of actual questions a student got correct on a single test, while the latter pits a student’s raw score against the last three years of LSAT scores as archived by LSAC. Killoran also discusses the LSAT scale conversion chart, which provides test takers with the score they are most familiar with—a number from 120 to 180. Killoran closes by putting to rest a common LSAT misconception: Students often think that their score is based off their performance as compared to other students in their testing center—however, says Killoran, this is simply not true. No matter how your testing neighbor does on the LSAT, he explains, your score will be based on how many questions you got correct on your own test, and not how many questions you got correct as compared to those in your testing center.

Our second guest, Andrew Brody, also discusses the scaled score, and talks about what students can do to obtain that covered 180. He goes a step further in his explanation of scaled scores, and discusses LSAT score bands, and how they can affect a student’s (and law school’s) perception of an LSAT score. Brody, like Killoran, emphasizes the importance of the scaled conversion chart, and encourages students to become familiarized with how it works and how it produces scores–by doing so, he says, students will known more about their scoring capabilities and how to harness them.

Our final guest, Glen Stohr, echoes our first two guests’, definitions of the raw, scaled and percentile scores and numbers. He then proceeds to explain the difference between “tough” and “easy” LSATs. Stohr also answers a question that many prospective law applicants posit by explaining that that the majority of law schools use the highest overall LSAT score, rather than an average of all a student’s LSAT scores, for admission purposes. In closing, Stohr underscores the importance of studying for, and striving to do the best possible, on the LSAT—the score will have an impact not only on where a student attends law school, but can also affect how much financial aid (if any) they are awarded.

Guests:

Dave Killoran – CEO and President of PowerScore
Andrew Brody – Vice President of Content Development with the Princeton Review
Glen Stohr – Senior Manager of Product Development for the LSAT with Kaplan Test Prep & Admissions

Podcast Highlight:

This week’s podcast discusses the “what ifs” of law school applications and decisions. We look into why denials, waitlist and deferrals happen and the correct way to react to admissions decisions. We also take a look at other common “what ifs” in the application process.

In this podcast you get the perspective of two different admission consultants (one of whom is a former Dean of University of Chicago Law School), and a current Director of Admissions at a law school. Their perspectives truly give you the inside scoop on ways to handle the what ifs: how to view them, how to handle them, and how to react to them in the best possible way.

Chaconas mentions the idea of full disclosure for both good and bad aspects of your application so your admission decision can be made with 100% honesty. Ivey mentions the concept of interviews – both required and self-requested – and how they can help your application file but could also do the complete opposite if you aren’t prepared. Finally, Nance mentions a variety of ways to make your application the best it can be and how to have the best application in a variety of instances.

Guests:

Anna Ivey – President of Ivey Consulting and Former Dean of Chicago Law School
Jacqlene Nance – Director of Admissions and Scholarships – University of Kansas School of Law
Anne Chaconas – Director of Admissions Counseling – PowerScore

Podcast Highlight:

This week’s podcast discusses the differences between choosing a law school due to scholarship monies or a high ranking. Our guests on the program are Anne Chaconas, Director of Admission Counseling at PowerScore Test Preparation and author of the upcoming book, The PowerScore Guide to the Top U.S. Law Schools; Deborah Schneider, co-author of Should You Really Be a Lawyer; Ian Graham, attorney and author of Unbillable Hours; and Gary Young, attorney and author of Law School Ninja.

Our experts today discuss deciding between a law school for scholarship purposes or due to its U.S. News and World Report rank.

Our first guest, Anne Chaconas, Director of Admission Counseling at PowerScore and author of the upcoming book, The PowerScore Guide to the Top U.S. Law Schools, says students should evaluate many things when choosing a law school (everything from the current economic status to their intended field of work), and suggests that looking at the big picture and not getting too hung up on one specific factor is important. Chaconas also suggests that, while rankings should play a part in the decision-making process, they shouldn’t be the only or deciding factor.

Deborah Schneider, author of Should You Really Be a Lawyer, says that asking yourself what aspects of law school are most important to you can help with your decision between scholarship and rankings. She suggests that your career goals can be an indication of what law school is best for you, and believes that starting the law school application and research process early can help when it comes time to decide which options are best for you.

Ian Graham, attorney and author of Unbillable Hours, says that, although choosing a law school can be stressful, you must look at it as an investment. He also suggests that where you attend law school will have a direct affect on where you are able to obtain employment, and echoes Chaconas’ sentiment that considering your intended field of work is an essential part of the process.

Our final guest, Gary Young, attorney and author of Law School Ninja, thoroughly agrees with our other guests and strongly encourages students to make their law school choice based on the job they ultimately hope to have.

Guests:

Anne Chaconas – Director of Admission Counseling at PowerScore Test Preparation and author of the upcoming book, The PowerScore Guide to the Top U.S. Law Schools
Deborah Schneider – Co-author of Should You Really Be a Lawyer
Ian Graham – Attorney and author of Unbillable Hours
Gary Young – Attorney and author of Law School Ninja

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Today’s featured law school is the University of North Carolina School of Law. During the program you will hear from the Assistant Dean for Admissions, Michael States, and a student in the 2012 graduating class, Christine Deaver.

The U.S. News & World Report ranks UNC Law 28th in its most recent law school rankings. The school currently has a full-time enrollment of 735 students. Tuition during the 2010-2011 school year for in-state residents was around $16,000 and a little over $28,000 for out-of-state students. In 2010, UNC Law received over 2,900 applications and had an acceptance rate of 14%. For the incoming class of 2013, the median LSAT score was 162 and the median GPA was 3.58.

Assistant Dean States starts his comments by explaining, although most law schools exhibit the same characteristics, his school tries to accomplish things that make it school unique, and says that UNC Law aims to be the best public law school possible. For those seeking admission to the school, he encourages students to read closely and ensure they are following directions very closely on their application; UNC Law’s application asks for very specific things, and Dean States says it is obvious when students simply copy from other applications. He finishes his comments by advising potential law school students to make a list of all the things they want in a law school—and then strive to find the school that satisfies as much of that list as possible.

Our UNC Law student perspective comes from 3L Christina Deaver. Deaver says the “Carolina family” is her favorite aspect of UNC Law, and goes on to say that a large aspect of why UNC Law is a great place to attend law school is the ample amount of opportunities for students to be involved on campus. She says there is something for everyone on campus–pro bono projects, of which there are plenty, are her personal favorites. Deaver finishes her comments by underscoring the importance of visiting the schools you are interested, and encouraging potential applicants to come by and check out UNC Law.

Podcast Highlight:

This week’s podcast looks into Hollywood’s misconceptions of lawyers. We spoke with Michelle King, Creator and Executive Producer of “The Good Wife” on CBS; Elie Mystal, Editor of abovethelaw.com; and Michael Asimow, Professor of Law Emeritus at UCLA and author of Lawyers in your Living Room and Reel Justice.

This podcast gives us insight from three different experts into film portrayal of lawyers. Michelle King creates the portrayals, Michael Asimow researches, writes, and teaches on this subject, and Elie Mystal uses his website to provide critiques of Hollywood portrayals of attorneys.

King believes timeline issues are the biggest inaccuracy Hollywood portrays, and mentions that no one should use Hollywood as their key source of information for the profession.

Asimow discusses the difference between how television and movies portray attorneys, and the evolution of this portrayal since the beginning of the sound era in the 1930s.

Finally, Mystal talks about the reality of law school and being a lawyer compared to how American students perceive Hollywood’s version. He also suggests a variety of ways to get a better idea of what being an attorney entails, rather than relying on “Law and Order” and other popular law programs on television.

Guests:

Michelle King – Co-Creator and Executive Producer of The Good Wife on CBS
Elie Mystal - Editor – AboveTheLaw.Com
Michael Asimow – Professor Emeritus – UCLA School of Law

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Podcast Highlight:

This week’s podcast discusses international law degrees and their transferability into the United States legal system, i.e., whether students who obtained their legal degrees outside of the U.S. can practice law in America. Our experts today are John Riccardi, assistant dean for Graduate and International Programs and director of the Office of Graduate and International Programs at Boston University School of Law, and Herbert Larson, professor at Tulane University Law School.

John Riccardi explains that, when it comes to international law degrees, whether or not international students can practice in the United States depends on the state that they would like to practice in. Each state, he says, has its own requirements when it comes to internationally-educated law graduates and will have different bar requisites. In order to make the transition in the U.S. legal system easier and more seamless, Dean Riccardi suggests that internationally-educated students consider applying to and undertaking an LL.M. program, which will allow them to not only become familiar with the U.S. legal system, but also obtain a student visa (which they can then transfer to a work visa upon graduation). He encourages students considering an LL.M. program to seek one which integrates J.D. classes into its curriculum—in this way, the student’s U.S. law knowledge base will increase while also making it easier for him or her to find legal employment post-graduation.

Our other guest, Professor Herbert Larson, agrees with Dean Riccardi and reiterates that practicing in the United States for an international law student is mostly up to the regulations and requirements of the individual states. He also emphasizes that most states don’t recognize foreign law degrees and, like Dean Riccardi, recommends that internationally-educated law graduates work towards receiving an LL.M. degree from a U.S. law school and then sit for the bar in that same state in order to maximize their chances of finding gainful legal employment.

Guests:

John Riccardi – Assistant Dean for Graduate and International Programs and Director of the Office of Graduate and International Programs at Boston University School of Law

Herbert Larson – Professor at Tulane University Law School

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