Law degree

One of the most important steps to getting a high LSAT score happens before you ever open a book to begin studying. The test date you choose can have a significant impact on how high you score. To understand the importance, you should know that all LSAT scores are sent to the law schools to which you are applying. This means that law schools will see every LSAT score you have taken, your best, your worst, and everything in between. Due to this score reporting, it is advisable you only take the LSAT once, and make your one score count. The best time to take the LSAT is the June before your senior year. Taking the test in June means that you are far along enough in your studies, yet you still have plenty of time to apply, and you get the advantage of taking the test during the summer, when you are on a break from school. While the October test date is still early enough to apply for law school, it also falls around the time of midterms, and you could find yourself stressed and ill-prepared to take the LSAT in the middle of the school semester when so many exams and papers are taking up your time.

Take your first practice test long before you take the LSAT. Three to six months before June, schedule a saturday where you will wake up early, sit down at your desk, and take a practice test under the exact same conditions as the real LSAT. Buy a small, cheap, kitchen timer from the store and set each section’s time exactly. Only allow yourself the allotted time, and don’t stop or get distracted. You can easily download practice test online, or buy books with multiple tests. This first practice test will help you see what score you would make with no studying, and thereby tell you how hard you need to study to get the score you want. Most importantly, this test will tell you which section you need the most work on. More than likely you will not have an infinite amount of time to study for the LSAT, so you need to use your time effectively and spend the most time on the sections you score the lowest on. The national average LSAT score is 150, so you want to strive for over 150.

Use the data from your first practice test and take more practice tests. If your worst score was in Analytical Reasoning, take that section of practice tests many times. As you complete each practice test you will learn how the questions are structured so that you can answer them faster. You will also start to understand how the tests are scored, so you will learn which answers are correct. Additionally, you will become familiar with the test so that on test day, you are confident and calm. Continue taking individual sections as practice tests until you are happy with the score. Remember that the LSAT is not about memorizing facts. Therefore, you don’t need to study books or notes. The LSAT tests your thinking skills. The best way to improve these skills is with practice.

The final step in achieving the LSAT score of your dreams is in understanding the scoring of the test. Each test has approximately 101 questions. Your score is based on the number of questions you answer correctly. This means you are not penalized for guessing. You should answer every question, even if you don’t know the answer. Always make an educated guess if you don’t know the answer. This also means every question is given the same weight. If one question has you stumped, circle it and move on. When you are done, go back to the questions you have circled and try to answer the questions that will require the least amount of time first.

Kelli runs the LSAT Test Preparation Center where you can find all the information you need to get a high LSAT score. Start your studying with an official LSAT practice test.

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Whether you’re submitting a personal statement, a statement of purpose, or a diversity essay, make sure to follow these rules:

Rule #1: Edit and Proofread, Then Proofread Again Your grammar, spelling, and punctuation must be flawless. When in doubt, pullout those old standbys The Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk & White. If grammar, spelling, and punctuation aren’t your strong points, enlist a friend to help (and give you a tutorial, while you’re at it). There’s no excuse for a college graduate to mess this up. And beware the spell-check trap — it won’t catch “right” when you should have written “write,” and it won’t catch your “commitment to pubic service.” (You laugh, but I saw that typo as a law review editor.) Always have a second pair of eyes proofread your essays before you send them off.

Rule #2: Nothing Cutesy Anything cutesy or gimmicky will make admissions officers groan. Stay away from the following:

Essays in the form of poetry
Essays in the form of a legal brief (”For all the reasons cited above, the admissions committee should admit Petitioner to Slamdunk Law School.”)
Essays in the form of an obituary (”Tracy Johnson died the most respected jurist of her time.”)
Essays in the form of an interview
Crayons, construction paper, perfume, or illustrated essays, no matter how sophisticated

Rule #3: No Legalisms You’re not a lawyer yet, so your use of legal concepts or terminology will most likely demonstrate that you have no idea what you’re talking about, not to mention the fact that legal writing is considered god-awful by the rest of the world, including admissions officers. Many applicants, for example, refer to a company or a person violating someone’s right to free speech, when, in fact, the First Amendment applies only to government restrictions on speech. And by all means, steer clear of anything in Latin.

Rule #4: Show, Don’t Tell Back up any general statements with examples and anecdotes. If you write, “The student presidency taught me that leadership means more than delegating,” tell us how you learned that lesson. What were the conflicts and problems you faced? If you write, “I have excellent time-management skills,” back up that statement by pointing out that you graduated in the top 10 percent of an engineering program that 40 percent of engineering freshmen drop.

Rule #5: Respect Page Limits and Other Minutiae If a school gives you a page or word limit, abide by it. And follow the spirit of the rule as well as the letter — don’t get too sneaky with fonts, margins, and line spacing. Admissions officers won’t cut you any slack if your essay comes in under the page limit but makes them go cross-eyed because the font or line spacing is so small. If a school doesn’t specify a length, a good rule of thumb is two to three pages, double-spaced, in eleven-point Times New Roman, with one-inch margins all around. When in doubt, shorter is better than longer. As an admissions officer buddy of mine likes to say: “The vast, vast, vast majority of just-out-of-college applicants (almost all applicants, really) are not interesting enough to fill six pages. Show me that you understand my time is valuable, and show me that you understand how to pick out what’s really important.”

Make sure to put your name and Social Security number in a header and page numbers in a footer, just in case your file goes splat and has to be reassembled. Also, identify in the header what essay question you’re answering, if you’re given more than one option or are submitting more than one essay (”Personal Statement,” “Optional Essay #3,” etc.). By the way, you don’t need to give your essay a title like “Morris 405″ or “Jorge.” I added those titles in the appendix essays so that I could refer to them easily in this chapter.

Don’t submit pages that are crumpled, stained, or smell like pot smoke — most admissions officers really aren’t looking for that contact high. Really, your essay shouldn’t smell like any kind of smoke.

And finally, if you’re getting too close to your material and think you’re losing perspective, turn to the sample essays in the appendix to keep your big-picture objective in mind. Can you see how much more engaging and revealing the good ones are?

Copyright © 2006 Anna Ivey

Excerpt
An excerpt from the book The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions
by Anna Ivey
Published by Harcourt; April 2005;$14.00US; 0-15-602979-0
Copyright © 2006 Anna Ivey

Anna Ivey, JD, served as dean of admissions at the University of Chicago Law School. She now runs Anna Ivey Admissions Counseling, a counseling firm for college, business school, and law school applicants. She divides her time between Boston and Orlando. Please visit her website at http://www.annaivey.com.

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Do you think you have what it takes to pursue a legal education and practice the noble profession of law? Perhaps a closer look at this area of learning can provide you with some clues.

In a nutshell, a legal education is simply the education of individuals who intend to become attorneys and judges or some other legal professional. It is also pursued by those who intend to use a law degree towards some end, such as a career in politics or the academe, or another end which has no relation to law, such as business entrepreneurship..

A legal education covers both academic and vocational studies. A main requirement is for students to acquire an academic grounding in the legal system of their jurisdiction before they can obtain a law degree. For many, this is the hardest part of pursuing law as it entails endless hours of study and analysis, which is not a natural inclination of many students.

Before they can practice as lawyers, law students are required to demonstrate that they have learned professional skills such as advocacy and analysis. For instance, in many countries, law is an undergraduate degree and graduates of such a program can only become lawyers by passing the country’s equivalent of a bar exam. There are post-graduate programs available to help students specialize in a particular area of law.

In contrast, law is a graduate degree in the United States which students can only undertake after completing an undergraduate degree is some other field, whether related to law or not. Most American lawyers hold bachelor’s degrees in the humanities and social sciences. In many cases, law schools are an autonomous entity within a larger university.

Meanwhile, in Canada and other Commonwealth countries as well as in many other places around the world, a law school is referred to as a faculty of law, which is distinguished from a law school in the sense that a faculty is a subdivision of a university and is on the same rank with other faculties.. Also, in other countries, the final stages of a vocational legal education required to qualify to practice law are carried out outside the university system.

Jonathon Hardcastle writes articles on many topics including Education, Science, and Employment

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