Where do I start if I want to study Law in the US?

By Cassius Joseph

As a student looking to pursue U.S. law, I often receive puzzled glances when explaining how the system stateside actually functions. Rather than an undergraduate LLB degree or the alternative ‘conversion course’ route, the U.S. system requires all students to complete an undergraduate degree in any field before applying to law school. Therefore, any undergrads looking at their next steps would be fully eligible to apply to U.S. law schools. The question thus arises: what will determine the success of my application? There are four main features: LSAT scores, GPA, ‘softs’, and the personal statement.  

The LSAT is a 2.5-hour reading comprehension and logical reasoning test. Test takers choose from one of five options to answer the two types of questions. There is also an (unmarked) writing section intended to demonstrate the three fundamental tools of lawyers: the ability to assimilate information, deconstruct arguments, and write new arguments to answer questions.  

Paired with your LSAT score is your GPA. As international undergrads, we are in a slightly different boat in comparison to the average applicant. Rather than your final U.K. score or designation (1st, 2:1, etc.), you will upload your transcript to the LSAC application portal, where you are given a designation roughly correlating to your score. Now, there is a level of conjecture surrounding the topic. Still, anecdotally, because you will not factor into a school’s GPA quartiles, it is presumed that your undergraduate grades weigh less than they would for an American undergrad applicant. What this means is that your LSAT becomes exponentially more relevant. Another crucial thing to note, however, is that law schools are perceived as not placing importance on your course or its relative difficulty.  

Next are activities and experiences: these will factor into your application and are colloquially known as your ‘softs.’ There are different tiers of softs which you can read about online (most of them, like military service or being a professional athlete, will be inapplicable). Nevertheless, the general suggestion for improving your softs is to demonstrate a genuine and authentic connection to a field of law or an ability to work productively. This means acquiring general legal experience, leadership positions, and potentially publishing an academic paper are all good targets.  

The last major component of your application is the personal statement. My favorite story about personal statements is about somebody a few years into their career who, when applying to law school, based his personal statement purely on his enthusiasm for mergers and acquisitions. He wrote about how they fascinate him, relate to his experience, and how he hoped to use his law degree to return to his field and work in mergers and acquisitions. He ended up being accepted by his first choice. The moral of the story here is simple: you should not try to write about your love for public service and environmental protection law when you intern for Enron, but instead show what connection you have to law, why you are motivated to study the law, and give the admissions office some idea of who you are.  

Now, let’s hone in on the aspect you are most probably worried about: the LSAT. How should you get started? What is the best platform to use? How many hours do I need to study? These are all good questions, so let me break them down. Firstly, you should go to the official LSAC website and look at their information about the question types. Once you’re familiar with the question types, I recommend you go to app.lawhub.org, make an account, and try out their free practice resources. Take a full “PrepTest” under timed conditions. This result is unimportant beyond giving you a good idea of where exactly you stand, how complicated the questions can be, as well as the pacing and structure of the test. Now, here’s where you might have to bite the bullet. If you apply to law school, it is highly recommended that you, at a bare minimum, purchase LawHub Advantage for $120 a year. With LawHub Advantage, you get full access to all of the released official LSAT prep material, thousands of prep questions, and take your test in the same interface that you will on test day. Even if you later choose an LSAT prep service, they will require that you link your account with them to your LawHub account to access the questions from past papers.  

At this point, you can focus on the slow, maddening, and rewarding practice of the LSAT. Every individual’s progress is different – some people recommend 100 hours of study, others 350 – but my most important advice is that when you answer a question incorrectly, you interrogate why it was wrong and simultaneously try to understand why your correct answers were right. By understanding the test's logic, you will improve much more quickly than if you rush to complete a practice test every day. I’ll be back again soon to demonstrate and break down some questions myself.  

Edit by Artyom Timofeev

Image source: https://www.lawclerk.legal/blog/can-you-work-while-in-law-school/