Special considerations for law school reapplicants

If you are a reapplicant to law school, there are some extra things you need to be mindful of compared to applying the first time around.

That's because those law schools will have your previous applications on record. Your old applications don't magically go away.

A lot of reapplicants aren't thinking about the fact that you are not a clean slate to those law school, so here are two things (among others) you should be especially thoughtful about:

  • Think about how much you can plausibly reinvent yourself in your Personal Statement and how you are positioning yourself in your application overall. For example, have your goals pivoted from what you told them before? If so, is there a credible reason for that change?

  • You might, on reflection, realize now that you should be disclosing some things that you failed to disclose before. That can get awkward. You should definitely disclose the second time around, as needed, but you might have to handle your previous failure to disclose with some finesse.

And something you don't need to worry about:

  • Those recommendations that are sitting in your LSAC account from last cycle? You can use those for your new application cycle if you want. They don't need to be updated unless you have continued working with that person in the meantime, in whatever context (academic or professional). If there has been no new work together since the original letter was written, it's fine to reuse it. If more than one year has passed, as a courtesy you should let those recommenders know that you are applying again and plan on resubmitting the existing letters, and they should kindly let you know if that poses any issues for them (the recommenders). They'll probably be very happy not to have to write a new letter. 😄

  • That being said, you might decide that there are newer, better, or more appropriate people to ask since you applied. That's fine too. You don't have to use the recommenders you used before. You can and should exercise your judgment around which letters to reuse, or which new ones to ask for, in the new cycle.

If you're a reapplicant and these are all things you haven't already thought through, please get in touch and we can talk it out.