Activist Clarity Through Law School Applications

Activist Clarity Through Law School Applications
By Kirsten Anderberg (http://www.kirstenanderberg.com)
Written January 2, 2007

I wonder how many people think they want to be lawyers, then give up on the idea when they confront the laborious law school application process. Certainly no other application process I have engaged in has been so exhausting. Over the last few months, I have begun the law school application process, again. I say again, because I did this before in 1993, and attended an accredited law school for two years, leaving in good standing, having passed all of my classes. With my son finally grown, I feel I would like to return to the thing I left unfinished, my law degree. But as I tackle the lengthy process of even identifying myself as a potential law student, I find myself exhausted already! And I am still not even done with the first complete law school application!

I know I can do this, because I did it before under much harder circumstances. But I have to say, applying to law school is not for the weak of heart. You really do have to have a certain drive to carry you through all of the paperwork involved with merely applying to law school. I often joke that you need a 4 year degree to be able to fully understand how to submit a law school application. The first time I applied to law schools, I was allowed two pages to explain who I was, as my resume, and another 2 pages to announce my “personal statement,” which explained what I thought I would add to their student population, and why they should invest in me as a future attorney. Those 4 pages took me about 6 months to write. I am not kidding. The hardest part was getting it down to 4 pages.

This time, I find myself once again laboring through the applications’ hard questions, personal questions, that really take time and thought. I am finding that even in trying to contemplate answers for these questions, I am taking a sort of “spirit quest.” These are big “life” questions, and trying to answer them, really does take one on a sort of inner spiritual journey. At this point, I would even recommend just trying to complete a law school application, for your own spiritual clarity, if you are an activist! It sounds funny, but I can see how even just completing the application steps would be enlightening for the average activist. The law school application I am currently completing has me answering the following questions:
* How did you become interested in the study of law?
* What groups of people would you want to work with?
* Why do you want to attend our school as opposed to other law schools?
* What do you believe to be some of the most pressing national and international problems and why?
* What experiences have led you to want to become an activist lawyer (include work experience, activism, community relations, etc.)?
* Write a social and political autobiography, including events that had a major impact on you
* List all organizations you have worked with in the last 5 years, and include the organization’s name, how long you were involved with them, the goals of the organization, your role in the group, and your evaluation of the group’s “effectiveness”
In addition to answering these questions in 200 words or less each, you may want to think who you would go to for “letters of recommendation.” In answering these questions, and mocking the law school application process, I can see many an activist getting more clarity with their direction and path. A Raja Yoga, of sorts. A mental exercise.

But I am doing this law school application for more than merely spiritual reasons or mental exercise. I want to go back to law school and earn my Doctorate of Jurisprudence (JD). And the road to that JD is not an easy one. The first hurdle most potential law students face is the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT). This intimidating 3 hour exam is full of mind-twisting logic puzzles and bizarre analytic puzzles, and it is pricy as well. I can see how the first wimps fall off the truck at this LSAT turn! But I would think most who are adventurous enough to consider law schooling, are not held off by a little 3 hour test. So most of us figure out how to get the LSAT fee waiver if we are poor, and sit through the test, as it is required for the application process at most law schools in the U.S. Once your LSAT is done, you must deal with the law school admission questions, and those vary from school to school. Depending on the emphasis of the law school you are applying to, the questions will change. I find the hardest part of these law school admissions packets are the personal statements that have low word counts! Getting your most profound thoughts and desires into small word counts is daunting.

So to apply to law school, you need a certain drive to overcome the law school admissions’ obstacles and requirements, to not be psyched out at the very start by all the pieces and projects involved with the application process. You need to take the LSAT. You need to complete the personal essays asked of you by each school applied to. You also will need to order tons of “official transcripts” from past colleges. I am having to provide a total of 14 official transcripts (2 of each) in just ONE current law school application packet, which is about $100 in transcripts alone! I also need those letters of recommendation filled out and mailed in on my behalf by others. And then there is the application fee, that I either need to find a way to pay for myself or I need to appeal to the school for an admissions fee waiver, which is yet more letter writing! Organizing that mess of materials is yet another hurdle to prove you may be able to handle the mess of information that the first year of law schooling requires.

I often say that the most valuable skill I obtained from my previous two years in law school was the organization I learned there. Refined organization skills are necessary in law school. You either come to school with them, or develop them quickly, or you will sink and be overwhelmed by the material. To many, the law school *admissions process* alone, was too overwhelming, and they dropped out of the race early on. But those of us who proceed on, wading through piles of paperwork, sketching our life plans and histories out on papers late at night, with word counts always, have a strange drive. A drive to penetrate “The Big Door Marked “Law.”” No amount of admissions paperwork or personal statements can keep us away! And once we get accepted to a law school, next comes the uphill paperwork battle to find *funding* for said education!

Law school is highly competitive from the second you approach it. In my first round of law schooling, only 10% of those who *applied* gained admission into the first year class. Of that 10% who were accepted, only ½ of that first year class passed and was allowed to continue on to become 2nd year law students. Of the 2nd year students, only 1/3 of those were passed on to become 3rd year students, finally eligible to receive their JD’s and sit for the BAR exams, to become practicing attorneys. And remember, not all who sit for the BAR pass either. The reasons for this skimming down of the numbers in a pyramid fashion is a complex one, akin to the reason the American Medical Association only allows so many doctors to emerge yearly as well, but that is for another article on another day. I have almost finished my first (in my second time around) law school application now and although it has been laborious, and draining in ways, I am beginning to feel that unique exhilaration one gets from accomplishing something that was hard...that thrill one gets from the view once one is up the mountain, so to speak.

After my first year law school exams, I was filled with a sense of excitement and accomplishment like I had never felt before. It was the hardest mental work I had ever done, and more than once I felt I could not go on, that the school work was too hard, too much, too fast...but I kept up somehow, and passed and it was an amazing feeling of empowerment, based solely on meritocracy. As I begin to complete my law school applications now, I am again filled with that same feeling of excitement. Of potentials. Of the Unknown. In ways, going to law school is like jumping off a blind cliff. Even the second time around. It throws your whole life into a different orbit. The law school application process itself gives one a sense of accomplishment and a new air of clarity. If you are feeling a little lost lately, not sure where you are headed, I recommend downloading a law school application from the internet (you can Google “people’s law school” to find public interest law schools for a start), and use their admissions applications as a personal goals assessment exercise! Or better yet, send it off, and become an activist attorney!

More law school articles by Kirsten Anderberg:
Law School Demystified (http://users.resist.ca/~kirstena/pagelawschooldemystified.html)
Law School As Revenge (http://users.resist.ca/~kirstena/pagelawschoolasrevenge.html)
Law School As Activist Revenge (http://users.resist.ca/~kirstena/pagelawschoolactivistrevenge.html)