Hey everybody, it’s Dean Z speaking to you from the moot courtroom
at the University of Michigan Law School. I had a slightly traumatizing 1L oral argument experience in this room
30 some years ago, but I lived through it. And here I am today. It's a good lesson in there. Let's talk today about interviews,
law school interviews. You may think that's a weird topic
because Michigan doesn't do interviews. So what do I know about interviews? But of course, I've been in this business quite a while
and I've talked to lots of people who do do interviews. So I think I have some useful advice
to give. And also at the end,
I'm going to talk about why Michigan doesn't do interviews
and other schools do. And so I will be, you know, relating it
back to what I actually know about at the end. So first first question,
you get invited to do an interview. Should you do it? It's an easy answer. The answer is yes. If you get invited and you don't do it,
you will almost certainly not be admitted to that law school
unless you have some really compelling reason
why you can't do an interview. What about the schools where anybody
can interview if they request? I again, I would say you should do that,
assuming you don't have some well-grounded fear for thinking that you're going
to be really terrible in an interview, then yes,
you should take that opportunity. This is a very straightforward way
to show your interest in a school. So take that opportunity
if you have it, what's it going to be like and how should you plan for it? So I would say, bear in mind,
and this is going to I'm going to weave this through all the next 5 minutes. But there's you have two missions here. One is to appear to be a normal person, and two is to demonstrate
your interest in the law school. And there are lots of ways you can do
this, both explicitly and implicitly. Let's start with the implicit part. First, you want to be professional. You want to put a little bit of effort
into this undertaking so, you know, comb your hair, you know, wear normal clothes,
don't wear ratty old t shirt. Don't you know
you don't have to dress up in a suit and tie and a and a tiara and a gown. You just have to be sort of neat
and presentable, nothing over-the-top but that, you know, putting the effort
in shows, I am taking this seriously. I am interested in you. Likewise. Be on time. This is a pretty basic one. But, you know, even one or 2 minutes
sends a signal to this person. I think my time is
more important than your time in life,
not a signal you ever really want to send. So you should always try to be on time. But in this situation
to where you are basically saying, please let me into your law school,
you don't want to send that signal. So plan your life
however you need to do it to make sure you have ample time
to get to this zoom or phone call or whatever it is. I don't think
most of them are in person, so just make sure you are on time. Make sure you are in a quiet
and private location. So that's both for you and for them. Like you don't want lots of background noise because that may
make it hard for them to understand you. You don't want to be distracted
by anything going on in the next room. You want to you know, you don't need
to have like some fancy background. You can always just blur it if it's on Zoom,
but you want to make sure you are in a place where you are going to feel
relaxed and ready to talk and and you are presenting yourself well from that perspective,
you may think these this is so basic. Why is she telling me this? But honestly,
I have heard some really hilarious stories over the years about,
you know, one guy who did it from did the interview on the beach,
someone else. There is a story that I don't quite remember that involves
like a Hawaiian shirt and a bird, another one about a toilet that was
flashing repeatedly in the background. You just don't you just don't want
to be remembered for that kind of thing. Okay. Now the conversation itself, the questions that are going to be asked
are going to be straight forward. It's not going to be anything crazy like,
you know, having to do mathematical formulas
on the fly or something. You should be prepared
to talk about everything on your resume. You should be prepared to talk about,
you know, the intersection of your resume. If you say you play chess, you should be prepared
to talk about chess. Or if you say you speak a language, you should be prepared
to speak the language. Maybe talk about the people who wrote your letters of rec,
what your relationship is with them. Some of the more tricky, if you will, questions would be telling us
about of an accomplishment you've had. Tell us about an obstacle overcome that sort of thing. Honestly, Google is your friend here. If you Google X Law School
interview questions, you will get many hits
that will enable you to have some ideas about what's going to be asked of you
in these interviews. And I highly recommend doing that just
so you can get as comfortable as possible. But again, your point here
is to convey your interest in the school whenever you can,
and also just being relaxed. So if you can just have a good back
and forth, you are 90% of the way there. It's just a convo
and the people who you are talking to in most cases are people
who are good at having conversations. That's why they are doing this task. They're the ones asking the questions because they are good at putting you
at your ease for the most part. And honestly, if you are nervous, it is. I find it very winning when people say
I'm actually a little nervous because paradoxically it shows a lot of confidence
to be able to admit you are nervous. So if that's where you are,
go ahead and say that. And it will
it will almost always make you feel better because the person will try to put you
at your ease and you've gotten it off your chest and you will feel much
more honest and authentic itself. Okay. Okay. So then the other part of an interview is they will ask you,
do you have questions for us? And this is the probably the best place
where you can convey your enthusiasm for the school. You know, you you'll have to have done some research
to come up with some good questions. Honestly,
I used to be very confused about this when I was young and doing interviews. I thought if you admitted
to having questions, it would suggest you hadn't prepared
well enough. But the opposite is actually the case
because obviously you can never know everything about a school.
You haven't gone there. So that's where this resource comes in. So you should definitely know enough that you can tee up
a couple of of good questions. One kind of question I think is
very successful is when you were saying, you know, what's your opinion about X, Y,
Z aspect of the school? People love to give their opinions. And in that in that shows
that you've both done the research and that you are interested
in the person you are talking to. And so that is a really strong signal. So don't stay away from things that are
very easily answerable from their website. Don't ask questions about data like what
percentage of your classes that do that? Because that's the answer
is like two words. And then there you are with silence. So try and ask something that will elicit several sentences
from the person you were talking to. Sometimes people are good at asking
sort of imaginative questions. Don't do it
if you feel like that. That's not me. But sometimes I've gotten
some fun questions when I'm on the road. The other week someone asked me
if you could meld Michigan with any other law school.
What law school would you choose? And I really enjoyed that. It made me think about things in a way
I wasn't typically thinking about them. So if you're good at that
kind of question, that's another great route to take. But, you know, just overall,
you want to be as relaxed as you possibly can be. And I understand that
that will be challenging. But, you know, do your best and just don't just be prepared for a normal conversation
when your job is to show, I'm interested in law school and I'm in particular
interested in your law school. One last thing about this is
should you write a thank you note? I would say in most cases
that is not necessary. On the other hand,
if you are good at writing, take notes. It certainly would never hurt. Don't write a one sentence.
Thank you note. Thank you for the interview. That's no point in doing that. But if you could say a couple sentences
about how you enjoyed it and something in
particular that you enjoyed, that by all means there's no reason
not to do that. But I also don't think you should feel
compelled. Okay,
that's all I have about the questions. Now I want to talk about the why. Why does Michigan not interview
and why do these other schools interview? The reason Michigan doesn't interview is
I think there are a lot of potential problems with it. There is no social science research
to suggest we make better decisions with interviews. In fact, there's a lot of reason
to think we make worse decisions. Humans are full of biases. Who knows what they are?
I mean, some of them are. Or, you know, we obviously we know that there are gender
and racial biases in this world. But there are weird ones, too. Like some people love red hair,
some people don't love red hair. Some people I don't know love tall people. Some people love short people.
I don't know. I'm making this up. Who doesn't love a short person? Right,
because I'm really short and that's great. But my point is, many of them
you may be aware of, even if you are working
really hard on your biases, though, there are probably some
that you are not aware of or that you are just incapable
of not reacting to. So you got to be,
you know, wondering about about that
when you are conducting an interview. And and I just don't think
it leads to better decisions. And in fact,
I think it can be really problematic. So why does any school do it? It's pretty straightforward. It's about gauging your interest
at a very basic level. If they invite you to interview
and you say no, they know
you're not going to take it offer. They will not waste an offer on
you and they get to move on. If they get nothing
else from the exercise, they get that. And then the conversation. I mean, I'm sure they think they're
getting useful information. They think that they are finding out
the real you and so forth. But I just I believe in science
and I just don't think that's actually what's happening. So but that's why I say it's really important to think about ways
to convey your enthusiasm for the school, because that is really,
at the end of the day, the one solid thing that they are trying to ascertain
from these interviews. Okay. I think that's all I have to say
about interviews now to Graham. I think that we all know that
when we're using the articles A and an, we use a before consonants
and an before vowels. So you would say and evil interview or a very, very good interview. What do
you do, though, when you have acronyms? So if you're writing LSA T, you might think you would write A
because L is a consonant, but you pronounce ell
as if it has a vowel in front. It's it's pronounced e l l right. So the correct way to do that is to say
an lsa t as opposed to a lsa t. This has been something
that, for whatever reason about my psychology, has kind of been
tormenting me over my life. I have often struggled with this
the right way to do this, but I feel very confident in giving you this advice now about how to do it. On the other hand,
I also think it is impossible that anybody would ever ding you for that in a personal statement
if you did it incorrectly. So it's a very low stress kind of grammar lesson for us today, but I just want to share that
because I think about it a lot. All right. That's all we have for today. Thank you, as always, for listening. I've been traveling a lot lately and it's always so gratifying
when I meet someone who says, Oh, I watched your video on blah,
blah, blah, and I found it useful. So thank you so much for that.
Thank you for watching. If you have any questions, anything
you think you'd like us to address, please leave it in the comments below
or send email to law admissions at u messed up edu
and put vlog in the subject line. Otherwise,
I just want to say thank you as always to Dustin Johnston,
without whom I could not do this. And wherever you go, go blue. The.
