Internet Resources for Potential Law School Applicants

Applying to law school can be a tricky process. The jargon used is tricky. Expert knowledge of law schools is hard to find among friends and family, because few will have attended law school, and virtually none will have attended more than one law school. But you can harness the awesome power of the Internet to aid your law school decision-making process - from whether to apply, to where to apply, to where to attend when your acceptance letters start rolling in.

Law School Admission Council (www.lsac.org)
If you choose to attend law school, this site will be crucial - admissions policies require that your transcriptions be sent through the LSAC's Law School Data Assembly Service (LSDAS). But it also has information for prospective applicants. The Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools is an invaluable resource with information on lawyering careers and law schools themselves. Although not all data is available for all law schools, this guide provides information concerning curriculum, faculty, diversity, admissions standards, and financial aid, among other things, for most schools. Under "Law School Description," many schools provide a profile of their latest admissions cycle. The profile is represented in a grid with the number of students who fall into each LSAT/GPA range.

LawSchoolNumbers (www.lawschoolnumbers.com)
LawSchoolNumbers (LSN) is an innovative and popular resource. This is useful in determining your chances at getting into the school of your choice. It's essentially a giant database of law school admissions statistics and results, with data provided by users. Create an account and profile, input your admissions statistics (LSAT, GPA, extracurriculars, etc.) then add schools you plan to apply to. As decisions are made on your applications, enter them into LSN. You can view this same data for all users who make it public (and most do). By analyzing charts and graphs from past years, you can measure the probability that a law school will admit you; by scoping out the profiles of users deep into the current cycle, you can track your own progress and determine whether a school is holding onto your admissions letter or will send it out soon.

Law School Discussion (www.lawschooldiscussion.org)
Law School Discussion (LSD) is a message board that provides information in numerous areas: LSAT studying, law school reviews, application help, and more. If you have a specific question about the law school applications process that Google doesn't answer, head over to LSD and ask in the appropriate forum. The boards are active and users are knowledgeable, you will have an answer - likely a correct one - very soon.

Internet Legal Research Group's Index to Law School Rankings (www.ilrg.com/rankings.html)
Rankings are crucial when it comes to deciding where to attend law school. Although complaints about the U.S. News & World Report's rankings system abound, it is the most commonly used set, and, for better or worse, the prestige of a law school is closely tied to its ranking. The Internet Legal Research Group (ILRG) links to these rankings on its website, but has also compiled several alternative ranking systems, and links to those, too. Many of these alternative ranking systems are more transparent and targeted - for example, the Supreme Court clerkship placement of various schools. Using all the information at hand will help you to make the best decision about where to attend law school.