Law School Admissions Guides: Authors Who Wrote the Book on

In addition to Vault's Law School Buzz Book, there are lots of great law school admissions guides out there. In fact, the Buzz Book is intended to serve as a complement to those guides. Unlike those guides, Vault's (which also include the Business School Buzz Book and College Buzz Book) are composed almost entirely of information provided directly to Vault by students and alumni. So you learn about the experience of applying to, studying at and graduating from a top law school--straight from the mouths of the students and alumni who survived it.

But enough about us. To help law school applicants figure out which admissions guide is best for them, Law School Podcaster hosted a new podcast, Law School Admissions Guides: Authors Who Wrote the Book on How to Apply and Get In. To give you a feel for what's out there, we've pulled excerpts on each of the guides and their authors. Check it out.

Law School Podcaster Guide to Law School Admissions Guides

You've decided to go to law school or you're considering it. Maybe you're thinking about a new career path or you've just been laid off. In any of these cases, law school could be the next best step. But here comes all the questions. Where do you begin? What's your timeline? What should you include in your personal statement? How do law schools evaluate your application? What about the LSAT? Your undergraduate grades? How do you put everything together? To many, the law school admissions process is a bit of a mystery...

"There is so much junk out there that law school applicants just cling on to because they don't know the right information." Anna Ivey, former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School has written the, The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions: Straight Advice on Essays, Resumes, Interviews, and More...

Our guest authors have worked with thousands of law school applicants and several are former deans of admission who have seen first-hand what works for applicants and what does not work. We focus in on what the books are about.

First, Joyce Putnam Curll's book, The Best Law Schools' Admissions Secrets. She retired from her position as Dean of Admissions at Harvard Law School after 34 years. During her time as Dean, Curll talked to more than 200,000 applicants. Her book is based on this experience."I had found that even the most sophisticated applicants weren't sure even of how to decide the basic questions of whether to go to law school or what they should or could do to prepare a good application and the like. So I decided that beginning with those fundamentals of whether, when, and how to go to law school, I would be able to help to show who they were and what they had to offer. More importantly, I could help the less sophisticated applicants by helping to level the playing field between them and those who had a lot of guidance and support from parents and pre-law advisors and those who had never even met a lawyer or a pre-law advisor."

Law School Admission Consultant, Ann Levine, says the focus of her book, The Law School Admissions Game, is not just for people aspiring to attend top law schools. The Law School Admission Game: Play Like an Expert is a law school guide geared toward giving specific insider advice to all law school applicants no matter their backgrounds or goals. So whether someone is applying to Harvard or Hamline or anywhere in between, the information in my book will absolutely apply to their case."

Anna Ivey, Founder of Ivey Guide Consulting says the focus of her book, The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, is to give applicants a 360-degree perspective. Ivey says she has applied to and gone to law school, she has been a lawyer, Dean of Admissions at a top law school, and an admissions coach. Ivey says her approach is conversational with candor to reveal how it really works behind the scenes. "I try to position every admissions issue in the book in the larger context of questions like, why are you going to law school? What do you want to get out of your law school experience? What do you want to get out of your legal career or your non-legal career? So I try to get people to ask themselves questions that really are kind of holistic and not just restricted to getting in the door."

Richard Montauk's book, How To Get Into The Top Law Schools, is literally the biggest book represented here. "It is such a comprehensive book that looks, in a mere 600 pages, at not just the process of trying to get into the best law school possible but also considers such major issues as, should you go to law school, how do you assess that, how do you figure out what your alternatives are and so on."...

The authors vary in their strategy recommendations. Ann Levine, who wrote The Law School Admission Game, says as Director of Admissions for two law schools, and she worked at a third, everything in the book comes first-hand from her own experience. Levine says her book is chockfull of strategies and she'll share four with us. "One is, apply early. Two, apply carefully. Put thought into each piece of the process. Don't assume what law schools want to know about you. You have to strategize. Three, pick your schools carefully. Four, take price and prestige into consideration, but the most important thing is location, and I talk a lot about that in the book." And location, Levine says, is key. "Law school is professional school. So in order to become a professional you need to start networking with the community in which you hope to practice law. And the best way to do that, to get job opportunities in the community where you hope to work later on after graduation, is by being in that location during law school."

Learn more about the differences between all these guides by listening to the podcast or reading the full transcript of Law School Admissions Guides: Authors Who Wrote the Book on How to Apply and Get In.

This post is authorized by Law School Podcaster, your premier broadcast source for law school applicants and students. Law School Podcaster delivers relevant information and advice through regular audio segments for those planning to apply for a JD and for savvy law students seeking success in law school and beyond. Topics include everything from a behind-the-scenes view of the admissions process to post-law school job opportunities and current market trends. Guests include law school deans of admission and career services, law school faculty, LSAT test preparation companies, law school admissions authors, law school admissions consultants and more. On each segment, we go in-depth on a particular topic of interest to a law school applicant and interview relevant experts to help make your application process more efficient and successful and to help you gain acceptance to the right law school for you.