Gather Ye Info While Ye May

(With apologies to Robert Herrick, whose line I've butchered)

While you're giving both the grammar and style of your writing a thorough review, you can begin working on the 3 R's -- résumé, recommendations, and researching schools.  

Résumés

No matter what your résumé says right now, it will need revising. Law schools don't need to know the same things as an employer does.  Begin reviewing your résumé now.  Make sure to save it on more than one computer disk. Then if you add a job or an award before you apply, you can easily amend the résumé whether you're at home, work, or school.

Compiling the Information

The first step you should undertake is to prepare a basic fact sheet of the commonly asked questions for your own reference. It is unlikely that you will complete all the applications in one sitting; having a reference sheet will save you from having to recheck information for every application. Every applicant should be prepared to provide the following information:

• all colleges, the dates you attended them, and your grade point average at each school;
• all the dates on which you took the LSAT and the score you received, if you know it;
• all jobs, with the dates and the number of hours worked;
• all extracurricular activities and honors, along with dates and titles of any positions of responsibility; (you should decide the importance of each activity, for those schools which ask for only the most important).
• your mailing address and phone number during the school year and over the summer, and the date when you want the school to switch to your summer address.

• If you are not a U.S. citizen, note the details of your citizenship and visa status, including the visa or permanent resident ID #.
• If you served in the military, note your enlistment and discharge dates, rank and responsibilities.
• If you identified any "problem" areas while completing your personal statement (leaves of absence, arrests, academic or disciplinary action), the details of the event, including dates, the reason for the action, the outcome, and the explanation.

Can I use my work resume?

No. A law school resume is not a job resume. It should be only one page in most instances, and should include schools, honors and extracurricular activities, both paid and volunteer work experiences. The number of hours you worked during the school year should be included if it is more than fifteen hours per week.

"But What Should it Look Like?"

Apparently, resume production is a bigger, uh, production, than I thought.  Having filled over a hundred requests for a sample resume this year, I've added a section on resume format in "Essays and Addenda."  Go read "Sample Resumes" to learn more.  

Recommendations

You can begin deciding whom you'd like to write your recommendations as early as the spring of your junior year, and contacting the instructors as soon as you make your decision.

• Asking instructors to write a recommendation shortly after you complete a course with them is an excellent idea. If you wait until later, the instructor's memory may be less sharp.
  • Even worse, the teacher may be on sabbatical, an archeological dig, or have left your college. Instructors often enthusiastically agree to write your recommendation, but they're just too busy. And it's hard to gently pester a professor who's in Ethiopia.

Since 1998 there has been a recommendation forwarding service offered by LSDAS. You'll be able to get one copy of a rec and send it to Law Services. They'll send it to the law schools for you, along with your transcripts. In 2009, Law Services simplified the system quite a bit.  LSAC has already announced changes for the 2011 application cycle, but I've tried to explain both the current and future systems.  Here goes:  

Researching Law Schools

In this wonderful Internet age, every school has a web page.  (Of course, if you're not part of this wonderful internet age, you might disagree, but then you wouldn't be reading this web page!)  But here's my solicited advice:  

You still want to request paper or DVD catalogs if the school has one!

The online application often doesn't have info about personal statements, optional essays, resumes, etc., that you can only see by reading the instructions printed in the catalog. Even the online instructions frequently differ from the paper ones.  So get the catalog!

You can request catalogs from the school's web page in a number of instances. In fact, we recommend this method.  Messages left on an answering machine often get lost or mistranscribed; the information you send over the computer is more likely to be entered directly into a data base.

How many catalogs should you get? As many as seem interesting to you from your reading or web-crawling.  In fact, that's a great way to begin requesting catalogs. Browse the law schools on the web through the links we've provided. Look at our extensive Data section.  When you get to an interesting site, ask for a catalog. If you proceed in this manner, be sure to keep some record of where you've been. Otherwise you run the risk of getting too haphazard and missing a great school.