Law School

I received this great question today from an Ivey Files reader:

I know you've addressed this in your book and in the blog, but I had another question regarding the multiple lsat addendum. I took the test twice and experienced a 7 point jump the second time. I have no fancy explanation...the score increase was simply the result of altering my test preparation (I actually scaled back the amount of studying and took a slower, more methodical approach....much more effective for my brain). I am more than content to let the higher score speak for itself, as you suggest, but the language put out by some schools I'd like to apply to makes me think twice about it. For example:

Penn : "If there is a significant difference between an applicant's highest and lowest LSAT score (more than 4 or 5 points) the applicant should address this discrepancy in an addendum to his or her application.”

Michigan : "If you have a significant disparity between scores (six or more points), it would be very helpful to address any explanation for the difference in an optional essay or addendum.”

Virginia: "We encourage applicants with a significant difference in LSAT scores to include with their application any information that may be relevant to the interpretation of test results."

The language suggests they expect you to give them some explanation for two significantly different test scores. Does this mean that I should just write something short and simple that attempts to explain what I believe accounted for my score increase? If I ignore these statements and refuse to submit an explanation, will admissions be more inclined to take my average score?

You are asking all the right questions. I would argue that you don't actually know why your score jumped seven points, because if you look at your LSAT reports for the two test, you'll probably see a pretty wide score band in each for score accuracy. So yes, maybe your score jumped seven points because you studied better/harder/smarter (fill in the blank), but when you're within the margin of error (as reflected by the score bands), or even if you've moved outside the score band, you don't actually know what's behind the difference.

What's a score band? If you look at your LSAT report, LSAC tells admissions officers to view your "real" score as falling within a range of scores. Most LSAT reports that I've seen show a band that's plus or minus 3 of your scaled score, so that's a band of 7 scaled points. Pretty huge, right? Your "real" score is anywhere in that band, and even then the score band captures the "real" score only 68% of the time.*  That leaves a whopping 32% of the time when the score band -- which is already pretty big -- doesn't even include someone's "actual proficiency." (For statistics junkies out there: am I missing something? Am I being unduly harsh? Please post if you have an opinion.)

Given what LSAC itself is saying about the accuracy of its own scores and score bands, can most applicants say something meaningful or even accurate about a movement in scores? I would say no. You are not omniscient. Sometimes you have a good day, sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes it's just the margin of error. You'll never really know. And you're not the one writing the test questions, or grading the exam, or calibrating it against other exam administrations and other test-taker pools, or determining what the statistically appropriate score band is for a given test or a given score. LSAC employs an army of statisticians for that, and the score bands are the best they can do, with an accuracy rate that leaves a lot of room for error. And somehow you're supposed to know more about your scores than they do? Go figure. But over the years, more schools have added language to that effect, asking about score differences as small as four points. So I advise the following:

If a school expressly asks or encourages you to comment on an X-point score difference, you should say something about it, even if realistically you can't be expected to justify or explain the score difference.

If they ask and you stay silent, I don't think they are necessarily going to average your scores, since they have to report the high score to the ABA, and that creates powerful incentives for the school to focus on the high score. However, staying silent after they expressly ask about it would suggest to them that you're not following instructions, and that's not a good outcome, even if the instructions themselves are silly. You should say something, anything, even if it's just: I studied differently/had a better day. In your case, tell them about your different approach to the test.

What if an applicant has to explain a decline in scores? That's a tougher situation, obviously, since most people do better with each successive test. (LSAC says: "Data show that scores for repeat test takers often rise slightly.") The things that can go wrong on a test day are wide and varied, and in a perfect universe, if you were having a bad test day, you should have canceled the score. But if you haven't canceled the score, explain what happened, and try not to give an impression that will undermine anyone's confidence in you as a future law student and lawyer. For example, it doesn't reflect well on an applicant to say that he panics in high-stakes testing situations. (How is he going to survive the much longer, more grueling bar exam? Or even law school exams? Or oral argument in front of a judge?)

I'd love for readers to post their own thoughts. Why do you think your score went up or down? How are you answering application questions about score differences?

_________________

* Here's what LSAC says on page 24 of its Information Book for 2009-10: "Score bands for the LSAT are designed to include your actual proficiency level approximately 68 percent of the time."

Two great new postings from Steve Schwartz at LSAT Blog, one on the shift in test dates this coming season (and why that matters), and the June vs. October debate. Well worth reading.

• LSAT Test Dates in 2010 and 2011 | Change From Previous Years

• Deciding to Take June vs October LSAT | Pros and Cons

 

Is there a type of essay that annoys admissions officers so much that they'll stop in the middle of reading an application to vent? Yep. Here's what just hit my inbox:

I doubt you'd let your clients do this anyway, but the most annoying kind of essay I see is the "Why I'm so perfect/how I've ticked all the boxes. Can I recite my resume for you?" essay. 

It takes the form of: "Since early childhood, I have been an over-achieving perfectionist. Not content simply to excel at everything I have done, like be the president of the school paper and work for my state senator while maintaining a 4.0 GPA, I wanted to share my wonderfulness with the less fortunate. So I also have an extensive background in public service. I recognize that there are certain skills that one needs to excel as a lawyer, so I have acquired those, as well, by doing A, B, and C. Now I am primed to enter law school.  Admission to [---] Law School will be the culmination of my decade of effort - nay, the laurel wreath crowning my wonderfulness."

By the way, that final sentence is only a slight adaptation of the one I actually just read.

We on the admissions committee will take the B+ student with 85% percentile LSATs and an essay demonstrating personal maturity and an interesting set of life experiences over the A student with 90% LSATs and an essay like the one above every time.

For those of you who haven't submitted your applications yet, or who are applying in the coming season, take heed. Anyone with law school admissions experience will have an allergic reaction to that kind of essay, and there are tens of thousands of them floating around every year. Treat that as a template for what NOT to write.

 

Are law schools and business schools, as well as applicants, obsessed with interdisciplinary education? In my experience, yes, and I have cautioned against what Judge Easterbrook called "Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse" ("put together two fields about which you know very little and get the worst of both words"). Getting interdisciplinary education right is hard.

Now Jeff Lipshaw, a professor at Suffolk Law School and all-around smart guy, has published a paper arguing that interdisciplinarity isn't enough anyway, because someone has to make the judgment call about what goes into that intersection, and how to solve those complexities:

The relationship of pure and mixed business and legal judgment can be modeled in a Venn diagram. The question is who is capable of making judgments in the overlap. Businesspeople are not competent to assess the legal implications, and not inclined merely to trust the decision to lawyers. Lawyers, on the other hand, are usually successors to a particular method of organizing the world, and members of a closed discipline. By nature of the very concept of a judgment, it must occur privately in a single conscious mind, no matter how the judgment is ultimately communicated, shared, or adopted by others. The implication for lawyering and legal education is that some of the old canards about leaving business judgment to the business people must fall away....

Business judgment depends far more on the argument from merit, versus legal judgment, which depends far more on the argument from authority, and a particular kind of authority at that. What, then, does it means to be an expert in the overlap of the diagram? We need to define a new professional discipline: the field of metadisciplinarity. Being a metadisciplinarian takes one to a higher order skill than mere interdisciplinarity: it means being an expert in the making of interdisciplinary judgments.... 

Read more here.

For more casual readers, I asked Jeff how this all boils down, and here's what he said:

There's a skill in deciding things you don't know much about.  Unfortunately, it's not a skill taught much in law school, nor anywhere in academia where strong disciplines govern.

Your point is correct - getting the second degree doesn't help much.  You also have to jump across the divide to make good business/legal judgments, whether you have the second degree or not, just as doubling down in academic disciplines doesn't do much except co-opt you in both orthodoxies!

Those of you who work or teach in one or the other discipline, or at the intersection of both, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Please share.

I'm excited to be speaking at NYU's pre-law event this coming Monday. For all you NYUers out there who are thinking of participating: please post your questions here (or shoot me an email at blog at annaivey dot com) and I'll do my best to work them in. Looking forward to meeting you all!

How much do things like determination and grit correlate with future success? It's a big question, and one that intrigues me as a former admissions officer. After all, the gatekeeping function of admissions is to scour all these imperfect proxies (some might say tea leaves) to try to predict the future success of all those wonderful applicants.

On that subject, a recent article by Amanda Ripley in the Atlantic Monthly caught my eye. Many of my blog readers have heard of Teach for America, the non-profit that sends talented and eager college graduates into inner-city and rural schools to teach disadvantaged students. It's a very competitive admissions process to join the "corps" (as they're called). Last year, Teach for America chose 4,100 out of 35,000 candidates, and during the 2008-09 school year, 11 percent of Ivy League seniors applied. It's a very popular career choice for college seniors.

So Teach for America has all this mad talent to choose from. Over the decades that their own researchers as well as outside researchers have been measuring their teachers' success in the classroom, some interesting findings have emerged. The factors that correlate most strongly with great teaching (which they measure very scientifically) are:

• a previous track record of perseverance and passion for long-term goals, or "grit"
• "life satisfaction" (measuring how content they are with their lives) and
• two kinds of performance in college:
  
  • GPA and
  • leadership achievement, a "record of running something and showing tangible results"

Another fascinating finding: an applicant's overall GPA wasn't as good a predictor of success as the GPA from the last two years of college. It turns out that hitting some speed bumps the first few years and being able to get your act together the last two years demonstrates something important about you. That's the kind of thing one may have already suspected intuitively, but it's great to have some data to back up the intuition.

While those findings relate to success as a classroom teacher in particular, they do strike me as having wider applicability that college and grad school applicants might find interesting. What's the take-away? You should still treat your GPA and test scores as paramount -- those are the indicators that will matter most. But if you can also demonstrate perseverance and stick-with-it-ness (whatever your particular challenges might have been), and you are the kind of student who has seized leadership opportunities outside the classroom, you have a lot of great qualities to show off besides the numbers.

So if your applications are still a ways away, think about the choices you can make between now and then that will let you show off these kinds of qualities. And if your applications are starting to sneak up on you, take inventory of your achievements. What concrete achievements can you highlight to demonstrate perseverance and leadership? How are you going to showcase them? It's not enough to say you are a leader and someone who perseveres. You'll need to back it up with a track record proving those things.

This Atlantic article has so much interesting data and examples to chew on, with implications far beyond teaching skills. Take a look, and please leave a comment with your thoughts.

The NYT reports today that the number of people taking the October LSAT in 2009 represented a 20% increase over October 2008, for an all-time high. Law school admissions professionals quoted in the article think it's a delayed reaction to the economy:

“There’s a bit of lag time between when people start to worry about the economy and when they get their applications going,” said Wendy Margolis, director of communications for the Law School Admission Council, which administers the L.S.A.T.

Jeffrey S. Brand, dean of the University of San Francisco School of Law, echoed that view.

“I think the crash was so severe that people were kind of catatonic,” Mr. Brand said. “They weren’t sure what to do. They’re coming out of that mode now.”

Some schools are already reporting huge spikes in applications this season:

Officials at many law schools reported substantial increases in applications over last year. Washington University in St. Louis has had a 19 percent year-to-date increase in applications to its college of law. At the University of San Francisco School of Law, applications are up 35 percent over last year, and at the University of Iowa’s College of Law, applications are up 39 percent.

Some increases are more explicable than others. Applications to the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University have risen 54 percent this year, which may be related to its rise in the U.S. News & World Report rankings to 23 in 2009, from 36 the year before.

But at Cornell University’s Law School, whose ranking has remained relatively stable, applications are up 44 percent, and no one is quite sure of the reason for such a large increase.

Richard Geiger, dean of admissions, said: “I’m a little thrown off by the fact that our increase is much bigger than expected. There’s nothing big we’re doing to explain that kind of increase.”

We're already fielding emails from people looking to apply in the 2010-11 season. Given the statistics in this article, it's not too early to start strategizing.

If you're one of many applicants who are looking at law school as a result of the terrible economy, please post a comment and share your story.

We received a question about how the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) converts applicants' undergraduate grades. (I have posted on this topic before, because it's tricky!) The prospective law school applicant wrote:

Is it true that if I re-took some courses while in college to raise my GPA, the original scores will also be factored in for my LSAC GPA when I sign up for the service? For example, if I got an F the first time I took a class and an A the second time I took it, and the first grade (the F) is excluded from my undergrad's GPA calculations, will my LSAC GPA include both grades?

Also, would it be beneficial or recommended to take post-graduate classes in order to raise my GPA, before I apply to law school?

The LSAC will include the grade from the first time you took the class (the "F" in your example) and average that into its GPA calculation, along with the grade from the second time you took the class (the "A" in your example). See page 35, "Failing Grades" and "Repeated Courses" in the Law School Admission Information Book.

Post-graduate classes can help to mitigate a low undergraduate GPA, if you earn significantly higher grades and thereby demonstrate that your study skills/performance have improved markedly since college. Note, however, that grades awarded after your first undergraduate degree was received are NOT included in the LSAC GPA calculation (see page 34 of the Law School Admission Information Book); instead, you must provide a transcript for the post-grad courses, and you can write a short addendum to highlight the improvement in your grades.

Further questions? Post them here!

Nicole Vikan is a graduate of NYU Law School. She spent her first law school summer at a large law firm, and her second summer in the Homicide Investigation Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. She returned to the District Attorney's Office after graduation and spent five years as a criminal prosecutor, handling cases such as robbery and assault. Nicole then joined Fordham Law School's Career Planning Center, where she advised students seeking employment in the private and public sectors. She is currently a career counselor at Georgetown Law Center's Office of Public Interest and Community Service. As part of the Anna Ivey team, Nicole works with law school applicants and people exploring legal careers.

In a previous post we discussed the general rules to follow when assessing when and how to disclose a criminal issue in your background. Even with those rules in mind, however, you might find yourself struggling with how to answer a "disclosure" question on an application (whether law school, business school, etc.) because you aren't familiar with the terminology.

Criminal disclosure questions often include terms that may seem familiar to you, but have specific meaning in the context of an application (e.g., arrest, charge, adjudication, conviction, "no contest," expunge, etc.).

When you are being asked to disclose information as part of your application, it is your responsibility to know which terms apply to your situation and whether disclosure is required. You may feel comfortable remaining blissfully ignorant now (after all, if you don't know what the terms mean, how can you be held accountable if you make a mistake?), but as we discussed in the previous post the repercussions of a "mistake" in your disclosure can be far reaching.

The best way to guarantee that you are fully informed before answering a disclosure question is to speak to an attorney who practices criminal law in the jurisdiction where your incident took place. Then, and only then, can you be certain how to classify your situation before answering the application question. The descriptions below should not in any way be taken as legal advice. Instead, they provide a general overview of the terminology you might find on applications, a basic glossary to consider before you seek further assistance in addressing your concerns.

 

Was I Charged with a Crime?

Applications may ask if you have ever been "arrested, cited, or charged with any criminal violation." Generally speaking, a charge is a formal accusation of a crime. A charge is usually brought by way of some "charging document." Charging documents include criminal complaints, indictments, or an information. It is not essential that you know the definitions of complaint, indictment or information. The important thing to determine is whether one of these documents was ever filed accusing you of a crime.

The best way to determine this is to order any paperwork related to your criminal case. In most states you have a right to order your criminal record (it may cost you a little bit of money and it's possible that you will have to appear in person to receive the copy). You can also request copies of the court file (sometimes called a "docket") relating to your case. This can sometimes become more complicated if the incident took place when you were a minor. Once you have gathered all of the paperwork you can consult with an attorney to see if there is a charging document accusing you of a crime.

For the vast majority of applicants, the information and indictment will be inapplicable. That is, few applicants will have been charged with a crime by an information or indicted by a grand jury for a criminal offense. If this happened to you, chances are that you are well aware of the circumstances of your case.

For most applicants who have a criminal disclosure issue, the criminal charge will come by way of a "complaint." A complaint is a document that someone files accusing you -- literally "complaining" -- that you have violated the law in some way. Police officers usually apply for complaints, thus you may see a police report filed among court papers in your case or attached to an application for a criminal complaint.

But civilians may also apply for a criminal complaint. This is important to remember because it is possible that you were "charged" with a crime even if you were never arrested.

If you were charged with a crime, it is possible that you were "arraigned" on the charge. An arraignment is a formal proceeding in court where the charges are read aloud (or presented to you in hand), you enter a plea of guilty or not guilty, and bail (if applicable) is argued. You may also be appointed an attorney or asked to hire one yourself. If you recall going through this process in front of a judge or magistrate then chances are you were charged with a crime.

It is also possible, however, that you were charged with a crime but did not have to appear in court. In some jurisdictions, a person can have an attorney appear on his or her behalf to respond to a criminal charge. Thus even if you never appeared in court to enter a plea or to have charges read to you, you may have been charged with a crime.

 

FAQ about Being Charged With a Crime:

1. Can I be charged with a crime without being arrested? → YES. The police or a civilian can accuse you of a crime and file a criminal charge against you even if you were never arrested.

2. If I receive a ticket from a police officer is that a criminal charge? → MAYBE. Police can give you a ticket for some offenses and then file documents afterward that accuse you of a criminal offense. It is important to request all paperwork related to your incident in order to determine what happened. For example, you may be pulled over and given a citation from a police officer and then later have charges filed against you relating to your driving in that case.

3. If the case was dismissed when I first went to court was I still charged? → MAYBE. It's possible that you had your case dismissed when you first appeared in court either by agreeing to some minor punishment (dismissal in exchange for community service, for example) or because the attorney convinced the prosecutor or the court that the case should be dismissed. But it is possible that you were formally charged with the crime and then the charges were dismissed; this may still count as being "charged" for purposes of the application question.

4. My case was "expunged" - doesn't that mean I was never charged? → NO. Whether you were charged has little to do with the outcome of the case. Even if the matter was dismissed, expunged, or sealed, it is possible that you were still "charged" with a criminal offense. For more on this see the section below on "sealed" or "expunged" cases.

5. A spouse / family member / significant other had me arrested and then "dropped the charges" in court before anything happened. Was I charged with a crime? → MAYBE. The actions of your spouse / family member / significant other regarding the resolution of the case are irrelevant. If a charge was brought against you by an acquaintance, the police, or some other authority - even if the charges were "dropped" or the party "refused to press charges" later on - it's possible that you were still charged with a crime.

 

Was I Arrested?

For most people, a formal arrest is an event that sticks in their mind and requires no further explanation. In some cases, however, confusion, intoxication, or the complexity of a situation will leave someone uncertain as to whether he was arrested.

An arrest is a seizure - usually by police officers - that is often accompanied by a prolonged detention and/or the filing of criminal charges. The stereotypical arrest involves the use of handcuffs, verbal warnings about an individual's rights, traveling to a police station or some other detention facility, and often a post-arrest processing (booking). There are other types of detentions that may apply to law school applicants, and it's important once again to research your particular situation to figure out if you were actually arrested.

 

FAQ about Being Arrested:

1. I was never put in handcuffs - was I still arrested? → MAYBE. Police can arrest you without handcuffing you (for your safety, for health reasons, etc.) so don't assume you were not arrested just because you were not handcuffed.

2. I was handcuffed - does that mean I was arrested? → MAYBE. Police can handcuff you for a number of reasons. Just because you were handcuffed does not mean you were necessarily arrested (although you might also have been arrested).

3. I was handcuffed, brought to jail, fingerprinted, and booked - but then they dismissed the charges. That's not an arrest, is it? → MAYBE. That situation has all the hallmarks of an arrest; whether you were charged with a crime has nothing to do with whether you were arrested.

4. I was drunk and was brought to the police station overnight to sober up - is that an arrest? → MAYBE. Some law enforcement agencies will place people in what's called "protective custody," an event that involves detention by the authorities without the additional characteristics of an arrest (handcuffing, reading of rights, booking, etc.). However, in some cases police do make a formal arrest in order to place you in some form of temporary detention. If you believe you fall into this category, consult with an attorney to determine how to classify your situation.

5. I was caught by store security for stealing and then police came and took my information before releasing me. Was I arrested? → MAYBE. Store security can effect an arrest and often assist law enforcement authorities with formal arrests. If you believe you fall into this category, consult with an attorney to determine how to classify your situation.

6. I was handcuffed, brought to the police station, fingerprinted, and booked - but no one ever said "you're under arrest." Was I arrested? → MAYBE. There are no magic words that indicate an arrest. While most arrests include a police officer telling you what's happening, you can still be arrested even if no one says the word "arrest."

 

Was I Convicted or did I Plead "Nolo Contendere," "No Contest," "Admit to Sufficient Facts," or "Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal"?

 

Some disclosure questions will ask if you have ever been "convicted of a criminal offense." What is a conviction?

A conviction is a finding (or judgment) by a judge or jury that a person is guilty of a particular crime or charge. This judgment can come by way of a plea of guilty or a finding after a trial. If you'd stood trial as a defendant in a criminal case, it's a good bet that you had legal counsel, know the outcome of the case, and remember the details of the event.

For most applicants, the issue of criminal convictions arises if they have been charged with a criminal offense and resolved the case in some way short of going to trial or pleading and being found guilty. While some applicants may have plead guilty to a criminal offense (and therefore were "convicted" of the charge), a number of applicants have resolved a criminal matter by some other method that involves a combination of punishment and a partial admission of responsibility.

The nature and circumstances of those resolutions varies considerably among states. Pleas can include:

• "Continuance Without a Finding" (aka CWOF or "admission to sufficient facts")
• "Nolo Contendere" (aka "no contest plea")
• "Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal" (aka "ACOD," "pre-trial diversion," "pre-trial probation," or "Probation before Judgment")

Each of the terms above involves a different set of circumstances and is defined by the law of the state where the incident took place. In some cases, such as a plea to "sufficient facts," the defendant must make an admission or acknowledgment before the court that he has done something wrong. In other cases, including some forms of pre-trial diversion or probation, no such admission is required.

These types of adjudications often involve a nominal punishment of some kind, including a fine, a diversion program (most often for driving offenses or incidents involving alcohol or drugs), community service, or a probationary period.

Applicants are often confused or ill-informed about what these terms mean. Because the terms vary so much among jurisdictions, you should gather the relevant documents from your case and seek legal advice about how to classify your situation.

 

FAQ about Convictions, Probation, and Pre-Trial Diversion:

1. My lawyer told me that if I admitted what happened and did community service, the case would get dismissed. Is that a conviction? → MAYBE. In most cases, if a charge was dismissed then there is not a conviction for that charge. However, in some cases a person can admit to doing something, sustain a conviction, and be placed on a period of probation, after which the case is dismissed. Depending on the jurisdiction, this can amount to a conviction. You should consult an attorney if you admitted to wrongdoing as part of your case.

2. I was given pre-trial diversion and stayed out of trouble for some period of time. I was not punished in any way (no community service, no fine, etc.). Is this considered probation? → MAYBE. Being placed on pre-trial diversion, pre-trial probation, or some period of supervision - without more, such as an admission of guilt or responsibility - is usually not considered probation. However, these pre-trial diversion programs may qualify as "probation" in the jurisdiction where the incident took place. You should read the paperwork from your case very carefully and then consult with an attorney to see if your situation qualified as "probation" in that jurisdiction.

3. I don't remember what happened in my case but I know it was eventually dismissed and my attorney said it would never appear on my record. So I was never put on probation, right? → MAYBE. Just because a case ended in dismissal does not mean that you avoided probation. In some jurisdictions, a case can be continued, deferred, or stayed for a period of time, after which the case is dismissed. However, the period during which the case was continued or stayed may qualify as a probationary period. The laws of each jurisdiction determine whether this period of adjournment or continuation was considered "probation," so once again, you should receive legal advice if you have a question about classifying your case.

 

My Case was Sealed / My Case was Expunged

Many jurisdictions have a process for "sealing" a criminal record, an act that closes the criminal record from public view unless it is sought by a court order. In other places a record can be expunged from the public rolls. This is considered more permanent than "sealing" a record, and has the effect of eliminating or eradicating the record (with a few exceptions).

Sealing or expunging a record is usually done by either (1) the passage of time or (2) a motion or request by someone made before a court or magistrate. The laws of each jurisdiction determine if, and how, records are sealed or expunged in that jurisdiction. For some jurisdictions, juvenile cases are expunged after a set period of time, such as when the defendant reaches the age of 18. In other cases, a person can move to seal his or her record after a set number of years passes from the date the case concluded.

There is great confusion surrounding the notion of sealing or expunging a record, and many people believe - incorrectly - that if their case resulted in something short of a conviction, it was automatically sealed or expunged. Unless you have a document from a court indicating that your case was sealed or expunged, you should assume that neither applies to your case. Expungement and sealing of a record is not the default status for a case that has been concluded (even if the charges were dismissed).

Even if your case was sealed or expunged, you may still have to disclose the incident on your application (and, for future lawyers, for admission to a state bar). Sealing or expunging a criminal case can prevent it from appearing on a standard criminal record check, but by applying to school you likely waive any protection of that information because you agree to be honest on your application.

 

FAQs about Sealed / Expunged Cases

 

1. My case was dismissed prior to trial in exchange for 20 hours of community service, so my case was expunged, right? → MAYBE. The outcome of a case (in terms of guilt or innocence, or the disposition of the case) has little effect on whether the case is expunged or sealed.

2. My case happened when I was a 14-year old kid, so it's sealed now because it's a juvenile case, right? → MAYBE. The sealing or expungement of juvenile records varies from state to state. Do not assume that a juvenile case is automatically sealed. Order your paperwork from the case and consult with an attorney from the jurisdiction where the case took place.

3. I was on probation, but my attorney said that if I didn't get into trouble again I would not have "a criminal record" - so I don't have to disclose anything at all? → MAYBE. A "criminal record" is a general team that has many meanings. You can have a "criminal record" even if you've never been convicted of a crime (but have been arrested and charged with one). Law enforcement and the courts have records of prior arrests and criminal charges, even if the person was not convicted. This would be the broadest definition of a "criminal record."

The term could also be interpreted to mean that unless a person was convicted of a crime, he has no criminal record. Under that narrower definition, you might not have a "criminal record," and you would need to get clarification on what, exactly, the application is asking for.

However, few schools will ask if you have a "criminal record." Instead, they'll be much more specific in the inquiry, asking about arrests, charges, convictions, etc. Instead of guessing about which definition is being used by the school and whether you have a "criminal record," read the instructions on the disclosure question very carefully and consult an attorney if necessary.

 

Questions? Comments? We want to hear from you!

Gregory Henning is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Virginia Law School. After graduating from law school, he clerked for Judge R. Lanier Anderson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and then became an Assistant District Attorney in Boston. As part of the Ivey Consulting team, Greg works with law school and public policy school applicants.

Hello Ivey Team,

I just discovered your service and ordered the book, but I have questions about work experience that I thought perhaps the blog could answer. I'm 29 and a police officer, and I'd really like to go to a good law school. How much will work experience likely help? Are there certain types of work experiences that help more than others? If it comes down to a person with work experience versus a recently graduated student with a similar GPA/LSAT, will one triumph over the other more often than not?

Thanks so much.

Meaningful work experience-like that of a police officer-can make an application stronger and give it an edge. If your work experience has influenced your decision to apply to law school, tell the admissions committee why and how. I have worked with former police officers who are motivated to become prosecutors because they have fought crime on the streets and want to fight crime in the courtroom. That type of focused interest and determination appeals to admissions officers, and may give an applicant an advantage over a candidate with similar "numbers" but less interesting or meaningful work experience.

If you have developed significant skills in your job, you may be able to make a case for why lower grades in undergrad don't reflect your ability to succeed in law school. I worked with a student who had average grades in college, but then led platoons as a commander in the US Army. His amazing experience and stellar recommendations from his time in the armed forces made him into a markedly different--and obviously stronger!--candidate than he was when he had finished college four years earlier.

Questions? Comments? Please share!

 

Nicole Vikan is a graduate of NYU Law School. She spent her first law school summer at a large law firm, and her second summer in the Homicide Investigation Unit at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. She returned to the District Attorney's Office after graduation and spent five years as a criminal prosecutor, handling cases such as robbery and assault. Nicole then joined Fordham Law School's Career Planning Center, where she advised students seeking employment in the private and public sectors. She is currently a career counselor at Georgetown Law Center's Office of Public Interest and Community Service. As part of the Anna Ivey team, Nicole works with law school applicants and people exploring legal careers.