How important is your resume towards getting into law school?

February 23, 2009 4:23 PM

How important is the resume of an '08 college grad when it comes to getting into a good law school to attend in fall '10?

My girlfriend and I want to move to Austin in a couple of months, but
she's pretty concerned about the importance of her resume for her law
school applications that she'll be completing next winter, and worries
our move could really hurt hers. She graduated from a great college in
May '08 with a 3.5 GPA but didn't get a job until November because she
delayed her move to the other side of the state to be able to live
with people she knows. Now she wants to quit her job after only a few
months and move to Austin and risk another sizable bout of
unemployment. Or take a job that won't look good at all on her resume,
but would be easy to get. Is job history really as important to law
schools as she worries it is?

posted by haveanicesummer to education (14 comments total)

Two things are important to law school applications: (1) GPA and (2) LSAT score. Anything outside of those two numbers -- like job history -- will make such little difference that it's not worth planning your life around it.
posted by lockestockbarrel at 4:31 PM on February 23 [1 favorite has favorites]

Job history per se isn't important, but long gaps of unemployment or underemployment certainly don't look good - they suggest lack of direction/ambition, whether or not it's true. At the same time, GPA and LSAT are by far the most important aspects of the application at most schools (Northwestern has a peculiar emphasis on work experience).
posted by sinfony at 4:39 PM on February 23

Uh yea, I'm gonna disagree here. Law schools do not simply list an LSAT/GPA cutoff, admit all those folks who make that cut and eliminate everyone else. I mean there are literally hundreds of applicants with high GPAs and LSATs. There has to be other criteria.

Admissions reps certainly consider a job history to a degree. It matters most for folks who were nontraditional students like myself. I had a decade-long career under my belt before applying to law school. It will matter less for someone like your girlfriend but I certainly wouldn't poo-poo the idea. I would say my class was pretty evenly divided between career-changers, those with graduate degrees, and those right out of school with maybe a year or less at a particular job but strong grades and lots of volunteer work.

That being said, a strong GPA and LSAT, along with a nicely written personal statement and strong recommendations will do more to help your girlfriend at this point in the game than trying to find "the" job right now. If she can somehow show how she gained from whatever little job experience she has, that should be just fine.
posted by notjustfoxybrown at 4:43 PM on February 23

lockestockbarrel is right: law school admissions is much, much more numbers-driven than undergraduate or other graduate school admissions. It helps to tell a good story about why you took the job you did, but work experience is a couple orders of magnitude less important than it is for, say, business school or medical school. It pretty much will only matter if you're borderline for a particular school.For what it's worth, if you want a good guide to the law school admissions game, the best one I've seen is Montauk's How To Get Into The Top Law Schools.(My credentials for answering: attorney; graduated from Chicago; predicted every school he got into and didn't, down to getting wait-listed at Harvard; has read a lot about the law school admissions process.
posted by raf at 4:53 PM on February 23

law schools don't list an LSAT/GPA cutoff, but if you look at the 25th/75th percentile numbers in US News, it tells you with a high degree of probability what your realistic options are. (at least if you're a recent college grad -- if you're coming back to school after 4,5,6+ years out, I'd imagine work history becomes more relevant.) speaking anecdotally, I got into every school I applied where my GPA and test scores hit that sweet spot, and nothing higher.

put another way, those GPA and LSAT numbers are necessary, but not sufficient, for getting into a really competitive school. everything else only figures in on the margins.

job history, I suspect (but can't prove) figures in predominantly through the recommendation letters: it's par for the course to include a rec from an employer if you're applying after some time off from school. that said, I think a glowing rec from a manager who knows you well at a small company is worth far more than a pro forma one from somebody random at a prestigious gig.

I lean pretty strongly to the position that job prestige won't be particularly important -- so long as there is some employment history there. the gap would probably more of a minus (though admittedly, a low magnitude one) than the prestige (which, again, has low magnitude.)
posted by theoddball at 4:53 PM on February 23

Agreeing with lockestockbarrel, sinfony, raf, and theoddball. Unless your girlfriend's resume involves winning an Olympic medal, winning a Nobel prize, or curing cancer/AIDS, any effects it may have on her chances is very minimal compared to her GPA and LSAT score.
posted by gyc at 4:59 PM on February 23

Mainly it is GPA/LSAT scores. I was a lot older and other stuff played into it. But for the younger ones I would not be overly concerned.
posted by Ironmouth at 5:08 PM on February 23

GPA and LSAT are goign to be the drivers. I say this as someone who sat on (one of a numbers of) committtee that reviewed applcations. If there are close cases -- two applicants who have the same or close total of LSAT plus 10xGPA, the index -- then the applications, essays, letters, etc. matter. But until then, GPA is too easy (cheap and fast) an objective a measure.

Agree with Ironmouth that if you are a non-tradtional student, they take other factors into more effect. But a two year break does not qualify for that. Calculate your index and hope for the best.
posted by mr_felix_t_cat at 5:38 PM on February 23

If you were going to be 20 years out of school resume would be much more important. Two years, not so much.
posted by alms at 5:47 PM on February 23

1) It all depends on the schools you're applying to. Some care, some don't. A little online research will do the trick here. Generally speaking however, if your girlfriend finds herself in that fringe group that could just barely make it in, it might make a difference.

2) The fact that she's only been out of school for one year diminishes the importance of work experience. Lots of people take a year off and unless you've been out of school for a few years, schools really don't care that much.

3) It's all about spin. Even if at face value your girlfriend feels like her experience isn't resume-worthy, she should remember that one of the most wonderful things you learn in law school is how to make something out of nothing.

Finally, LSAT and GPA will undoubtedly be the most important thing on that application. I'd be much more concerned about studying for the LSAT - it can seriously make or break your potential law school career.

Good luck!
posted by Grimble at 6:11 PM on February 23

LawSchoolNumbers provides a truthful, if brutal, look at the numbers game. You can pull up graphs for each school, with applicants plotted out; their LSAT on the X axis, and their GPA on the Y. Law schools always like to say that "it's not about the numbers", but when you let the numbers speak for themselves, the results are pretty stark.

Your girlfriend with a 3.5 from a great college needs to to score around a 170 in order to have a solid shot at a top ten school, or in the mid- to high- 160's in order to get into a top twenty five school.

What she needs to do is study, study, study for her LSAT and not worry about the perfect job. No matter what anyone says, the LSAT is no fun, and the main way to get a better score is to study regularly and diligently in the months leading up to the test. I highly recommend taking an LSAT course. I went with Kaplan, but many of my friends swear by Testmasters. Neither may do you wrong; they both may be hella expensive, but just consider it an investment in the future.
posted by HabeasCorpus at 6:14 PM on February 23

Yeah, I just graduated from law school -- my best advice is not to go! Take it from an unemployed lawyer who is now applying for food stamps.

But if she must go, she needs to do well on her LSAT. Her undergrad GPA is good but not spectacular and she'll be competing with people with 3.8's and 3.9's.

Cards on the table: I went to Georgetown. I had a 3.62 in undergrad and a 170 on the LSAT. Of course, I was applying in 2004. Now the game is harder because LSAT scores and GPAs tend to rise over time and because there are more people applying, so I'm not sure if someone applying with my stats today would necessarily get in. I got into Georgetown, but didn't get into NYU until the first waiting list round, probably because of my GPA. I didn't really apply anywhere else.

If your girlfriend doesn't score in the 170's, she probably won't get into a T10 school. But trust me, that is not such a terrible thing. My totaly unsolicited advice is for her to think about attending a slightly lower-ranked school that is willing to give her a big scholarship. Graduating with no debt -- particularly if you know in advance that you're not interestd in the big firm game and won't make 160k out of school -- can be a giant blessing.
posted by meglo91 at 9:22 PM on February 23

I'm a third-year law student at a T25. Numbers matter a whole lot; just tell her to study really hard for the LSAT; take a practice exam a week for 6 months or so. It's that big of a deal. I agree that work history can be a fringe factor that matters for a very few applicants, but it's nothing worth structuring your life around. I think it's worth mentioning that a work history gap at this point in the nation's history is very, very explainable. If ever asked about it, she can say that she moved for personal reasons and had trouble finding work in the new city. Nobody is going to question the validity of her decision or her circumstances. She'll be fine.
posted by craven_morhead at 7:03 AM on February 24

Together, LSAT and GPA explain 75% or more of the variation in law school admissions.

Everything else -- including race and luck -- is squeezed into a tiny bit of the spread.
posted by grobstein at 8:31 AM on March 2