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by Charlton D. Rose
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Hearing from the Law Schools

Hearing From The Schools

When will I hear?

The length of time you may have to wait to hear from a particular school will depend on when you completed your application and the strength of your file. If you apply before December 1, your application may be complete in a week or two; after February 1, it may take up to six weeks. During this time you may be notified by the law schools several times. The most thorough schools let you know your application was received, whether there are any missing papers, and that your application is complete.

Once your file is complete, the time you must wait depends on the strength of your file. Presumptive admits and denies will hear relatively quickly: two to four more weeks, depending on the point in the application year. Discretionary applicants (including virtually all minority or disadvantaged applicants) will usually wait an additional two to eight weeks.  

In general, then, an applicant who is a presumptive admit or deny who applies before December 1 may hear in as little as four weeks. An applicant who is in the discretionary pool and who applies within a month of the school's deadline may not hear for twelve weeks. And what you are told after this wait may not be a final disposition of your file. You may be placed in a hold category, or wait listed.

Tracking Your Application

There are two ways to track your application:  through LSAC, and through the law school.  

The LSAC website only tells you when the LSAC thinks they sent materials out, which may be an entirely different matter from when the law school sees them in your file. To use the LSAC tracking, you logon, go to the account status tab, and click reports and letters.  You can see the date your report was "sent" to each law school.  "Sent" may not be literal, however; this is more likely the date the information was queued to be printed; the actual batch of reports is probably sent once a week.  Then the reports have to filed.  It's likely that your file will be complete a week or two after the "sent" date.  

Law schools help you track your file in several ways.   They may send you post cards or letters, email you, or tell you how to track your application on their web page.  Hastings, for example, sends you a password and login in the email confirming the receipt of your application. You can then track your application by clicking on the prospective students tab on the homepage. Scroll down to resources and click application status. Then just follow the simple instructions on the pages.

Notes on Polite Waiting

Waiting sucks.

Sorry, there's just no other apt way to put it. It's a terrible strain on the entire societal structure. You become rude to housemates, surly to strangers who get in your way, and the mail carriers peek in your driveway to see if your car is gone before they deliver the mail.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time reminding you that you might need those housemates to commiserate when a rejection arrives, and that those poor strangers didn't do anything to you -- but they might if you don't learn to chill. I'm not going to go on at any great length to tell you that you created this problem by applying to 20 schools, 10 of which you have no real interest in attending and 5 of which you have no real chance of getting in to, thus contributing to the monumental workload facing admissions officers. Instead, I'm going to address the particular waiting behavior that can be most harmful -- the kind you dump on the admissions staff.

• DO NOT call to see whether your file is complete unless you haven't been notified six weeks after mailing the app. Allow one week for the file to get to them, another for the notice to get to you, and four weeks' processing time for clerical functions at the law school and at Law Services.

• If you are told that your file is incomplete or that you failed to include some important thing you're positive you sent, do not -- I repeat, DO NOT -- tell them it's their fault and how could they have lost it, they must just look harder. Thank them for allowing you to correct the problem, then do it ASAP. Remember that they are doing you a favor, and act accordingly.

• If a clerk is rude to you, don't be rude back. Instead, apologize to them. Say something soothing, like, "I'm sorry, I guess we're kind of stressed these days; I guess we're making life pretty rough for you right now."

• Remember that every time you call to check on your file, you delay its completion. The staff is interrupting their filing to answer the phone and check on the app. They spend time shuffling through papers to see whether the Dean's letter has been filed yet. And while they're looking, something isn't getting filed. Or even worse, it's getting misfiled because you interrupted them.

• If you call too often, someone may put the purple sticker on your file -- the one that means "pain in the a**." Purple stickers are the kiss of death if you're discretionary. No one's ever mentioned the purple stickers before? See, I told you no one knows as much about this process as I do. :-)

Okay, so I made up the purple sticker. But not the idea behind it. In admissions, the squeaky wheel rarely gets the grease -- not when there are 500 more wheels in the trunk.  It more often gets dropped by the side of the road and abandoned. (There is a time when sincere and enthusiastic inquiries can help, but it's not now; it's after you've been waitlisted.)

More than once, a person who's been rejected has contacted me to see if I can get them in for the next year.  The first thing I do is call the law school in question to find out if the app is salvageable.  And more than once I've said the name to the admissions officer, or even a clerk, and heard "Not him! You're taking him for a client?!"  I usually reply, "No, I'm not," and thank them.

Distract Yourself

So what can you do to help distract yourself, so that you don't become the dreaded "Waiting to Hear" person?  You can prepare for law school by educating yourself.  One of my students found a list of 5,000 words and phrases entitled "What Literate Americans Know."  Much of it functions as a vocabulary list -- amnesty, amnesia, amino acids.  Since I'm more interested in the gaps in your historical knowledge, I've chosen 250 names of people, and 150 names of places and events, as well as a few stray phrases.  Click here for a totally arbitrary list that you can play with, to help pass those lonely hours while you're waiting to hear.  

Get Rid of That Obnoxious Message!

After the LA Forum, we had drinks with an admissions officer who told us that she has a serious problem making offers of admission or scholarship to applicants whose e-mail addresses and phone messages reflect a high level of immaturity.  She said that if she goes to e-mail an offer of a seat at her school and sees "sexygirl," someone else is going to get that seat, and if she calls to offer a scholarship and hears "whazzup dude," she hangs up without saying a word.  

It's amazing how many admissions officers think that lawyers are supposed to be responsible adults, and furthermore, that responsible adults do not have pierced eyebrows or tongues, blue hair or mohawks, or spandex business attire.  And how will they know if you allow yourself these small expressions of counterculture?  They will go online and look at your facebook profile.  They will google your name, read your posts on law.discussion.org, and check out your favorite quotes from Snoop Dogg or Jessie Ventura. 

So if you want to go to law school, you have to pay the price:  clean up your phone messages and web pages, censor your public comments, and at least pretend to be a person who knows how adults behave.