A2Z 24: Specializing in Law School: Does it Help With Admissions?

[Music] hello everybody it is deensy speaking to you from my basement today i want to talk about a great question we got over email from libby she asks she says i'm 99.7 sure i want to specialize in a particular topic in law school what role does identifying your particular area of interest play in the law school applications process does it help does it hurt uh and if it if it plays any role are some topics of specialty more favored than others it's a great question and it is one i hear or have heard in the last few weeks a number of times uh while recruiting so i think it's something that is very much in the air for people and i hope this discussion will prove useful but let's break it down i think there's really two questions here one is what is the extent that one specializes in law school and then two what role does that possibly play in the admissions process so let's first talk about um the room for specializing in law school all law schools i should start out by saying in general i'm i talk generally about law schools in this in this video series um this is an area the curriculum is one that you know i feel funny about opining about other schools curriculums i really don't know much about any school's curriculum except for michigan but i'll try to keep this general but take take that everything i'm saying with that uh knowledge in mind and i'm only an expert about michigan's curriculum okay that said every law school that i know of uh requires at least one year of foundational coursework in the first year so uh the courses that a school thinks are necessary for you as foundational building blocks may vary but most schools have about one year's worth of curriculum that they're going to make you take some schools like michigan let you take one elective in your first year other schools don't have any room for that some schools go so far as to have two years or even more of set curriculum but i think one is uh sort of the modal amount of required courses and as i say the specifics might vary so some schools may think you should take criminal law in your first year other schools don't require that some schools require property other schools don't require that so there may be like i say variation but in general pretty similar so that means that if you're going to you know specialize take a lot of courses in something you're going to do that in your second and third years roughly that's like 16 courses you take about four courses a semester might be a few less if you're taking one or more clinics because those tend to consume a lot of credits could be a few more if you you know take very heavy credit loads or or take classes with smaller numbers of credits but roughly you're going to have 16 classes to spread your wings and try different areas of the law so when you think about that 16 classes that's not that many to take four classes in a particular subject would be a lot of classes right so it's not like undergrad where you are declaring a major and taking the vast majority of your classes in that field it is much more uh free form than that for the general for as a general matter uh so all of that is to say it is absolutely fine if you don't go into law school thinking i know what my specialty is going to be uh by the same token if you do have a sense of that that can be useful that can be helpful to inspiring you and keeping you uh motivated across the time of course of your law school career but um there's not gonna be you know a real need for you to partic to pick a particular specialty and and you know even if you go into it thinking that's what you're going to do you may change and that is totally fine there's a lot of freedom in those upper level years for law school to play around with different fields in the way law works it's not like you are memorizing particular laws for particular jurisdictions you are learning sort of the theory of how law gets made how it all fits together and so you know you might i will use myself as an example um i never took any upper-level criminal law courses but then i did a fair amount of criminal law work in my practice i never took first amendment and i did a fair amount of first amendment work in my legal practice and so on i did take a ton of international classes which i think was four or maybe even five um i never did anything with international law in my practice but i think it you know it still educated me in a way that i found uh very useful and you can apply it to other fields so there we've covered sort of the necessity of having a particular area of interest there is no necessity um and the possibility to which you would get to explore it if you do have a particular area of interest which is you know somewhat but you're probably going to take a wide variety of classes now do you talk about it in your law school application i think that is a very interesting question some people have had a set of experiences that make them think that law school is for them they're in you know has instruct has shown them that they are interested in legal issues so maybe that's something from your personal life um legal things that you were involved in uh sometimes it's people's uh family divorces or um lawsuits that you know family members have been involved in that sort of thing uh sometimes it's particular work experiences you worked at a law firm and enjoyed it a lot um sometimes it's volunteer work uh so there can be a variety of ways you get exposed to something that you think you want to explore and whether you should talk about it in your in your application i think depends on the depth of your interest in the sincerity of it so i think it is very common for people to have had some exposure to the law and think well this is interesting and i want to go to law school but not necessarily want to pursue whatever the topic was that got them interested but then sometimes people try to take that experience and shape it into more than it is and it tends to fall flat in a personal statement so for example people might say uh my my parents got divorced when i was young um the lawyer that uh was involved you know was great or the judge was great and you know i was very intrigued by the way it works and you know that led me to law school but the chances are they probably don't want to you know actually go down that particular field of work they're not actually looking to uh get into divorce law so that's not that doesn't tell me that much about the person and it isn't usually a great essay on the other hand sometimes people have much more uh sustained exposure to an area of the law that they actually know a bit more about and that can be a good basis for a an essay so for example suppose you are a cpa um you've worked in an accounting office you've gotten exposure to tax law issues you think those are very intriguing you enjoy puzzling those out that could make for a more fully fleshed out essay and that might be something you want to explore so i think you really have to just look hard at whatever it is that is you know motivating you to go to law school if it's a particular field of law and just think how much do i really have to say about this is it a very sincere interest is it am i kind of reaching and if reaching don't worry about it just talk about something else in your personal statement it is not at all necessary that you're focusing on an area of the law now the la the second question uh that libby asked was are some areas uh do some areas give you an edge over others that is the a very interesting question and leads me to discussion of the one pitfall you potentially have in talking about a particular area of the law schools often have a wide range of things that they are good in but might have a few particular specialties so if you are talking about an area of the law that is a particular broad and deep specialty at a law school that might be the kind of thing that an admissions officer thinks oh that's great you know i really we really love having people who have this interest we kind of have to feed this area of our curriculum so this person will fit in great but you have to be careful because some schools will not have that as a field and so if you were talking at length about how you really want to delve into the field of equine law you have to be conscious of the fact that not all schools are going to offer that and you may in fact get an admissions person who says oh well they'd be really unhappy here then so this doesn't seem like it's a good idea for us to admit this particular candidate uh likewise you have to be careful because if you're talking about an area of the law where one faculty member uh has a particular mark on the on the area um that person could be planning to retire planning to switch their field of interest like there are going to be things that the admissions office knows about faculty members that you are not going to necessarily know so i would keep it uh more general if i'm talking about an area of the law and not focus a lot on one particular faculty member i think that can be a little dangerous bottom line if you want to talk about your particular area make sure it is general enough to speak to a number of law schools and not get so specific that you end up shooting yourself in the foot a little bit okay i think that is all i have to say about that so now it is time for the grammar portion of our show and i'm gonna cheat a little bit today it's not really uh grammar i want to talk about i want to talk about a word that i remember learning in law school that i feel like people said like once a week in law school that i had never heard before and that word is draconian apparently there's a guy named draco not the one from harry potter different guy from ancient greece who uh was a little harsh believed in imposing the death penalty for example for stealing cabbage so when you say something is draconian you mean it is extremely harsh uh i i just i've always liked that word i think it's a kind of a fun word so uh and i i regret that i didn't know about it till i was about 26 years old so now i am you know making sure that anybody watching this feels free to toss around the word draconian well in advance of getting yourself to law school uh okay that's all i have we'd love to hear your feedback and any comments or questions please put them in the comment section below or send us an email to law.jd.admissions.umich.edu and put vlog in the subject line again thanks to libby for providing an excellent question and if you found this helpful you might want to check out my admissions blog there's a link below many thanks as always to dustin johnston and wherever you go go blue [Music] foreign

Channel: Michigan Law

Views: 6,936

Keywords: A2Z, Law School, Michigan Law, How to get into Law School, How to apply to Law School, Law School Application, Law School Tips and Tricks, JD, Application, T-14, Dean Z, Sarah Zearfoss, MLaw, UMichLaw, University of Michigan Law School, Michigan Law Admissions, Law School Admissions, Applying to Law School, U-M, GoBlue, Ann Arbor, law school recruiting events, questions to ask law school, law school recruiting, K-JD, Should I go K-JD?, Should I take time off before law school?

Id: LVdlTkUMHNo

Length: 12min 37sec (757 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 03 2020