SpaceIsThePlace '22–'23 app cycle Class of 2026 class year

This one goes out to all the “non-traditional” (what a yucky word) and second-career aspiring lawyers out there.

First of all, let’s ditch “non-traditional.” The term is loaded with innuendos about who law students and lawyers should be and the experiences they ought to have.The legal industry is famously hidebound, preoccupied with prestige, and socioeconomically top-heavy; what’s meant by “traditional,” in the context of who forms the next generation of America’s business and political class (in other words: us), should always come up for scrutiny. Go ahead and accuse me of overthinking it, but really it’s a simple plea: If there is a phrase for describing a demographic of applicants that is closer to neutral, why not use it?

I say forget “non-traditional.” If you’re looking for a different identifier, here’s the one I go with: grown.

Anywaaayyyy. With the elderly-person grousing taken care of, on to the particulars.

With my stats, I was worried my applications to the T14 would be dead on arrival. So I put everything I had into smashing all the written components of my package.

I won’t claim that my approach and results are reproducible or generalizable (URM, FGLI, 10 years WE, most spent in senior positions at a very well-known company). What helped me most in the application stage was that I waited as long as I did to go to law school. I was able to live a lot of life, and learned huge amounts about myself and my interests from those experiences. I had time to identify and inspect my strengths as well as my weaknesses, and to figure out what I really wanted out of a legal education. It also meant I had a lot of material to work with :)

So:

It was really important to me to show adcomms that I can write about the arc of my life lucidly and — you’ll hate this — entertainingly, and that I have enough humility not to exclude the painful or embarrassing bits. (Careful with that last part. There’s a fine line between displaying vulnerability and trauma-dumping. It took a lot of drafts to find it.)

I also wanted to show them the self-awareness it takes to consider and make a big life change, believing (hoping!) they would understand I was serious about this. It was important that I show them I have the capacity for meaningful self-inventory — a useful skill for anyone at any phase of life, let alone future lawyers.

Finally, I knew I had limited space to sketch my personality, so I made sure my essays addressed a representative range of the emotional and intellectual journeys that brought me to this point. Above all, they had to tell a cohesive story about me and what I believe in. I found it useful to think of the writing samples as being in conversation with one another. I let each essay fill in any important blanks the others created, so that they added up to an interlocking whole.

Oh, and also: shoot your shot! Especially people who are at 5+ years WE, first-geners and URM students. You are some of the most interesting, distinctive folks in the applicant pool. Your life experiences make you worthy, in and of themselves. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I very nearly talked myself out of applying to Yale, out of the belief that there was no chance. Now I’m going there with $$$$. Life can be good, but only if you let it!