15

TRANSFER AND OTHER OPTIONS

—EXECUTIVE SUMMARY—

If you do not get into one of your top-choice schools, consider:
—Transferring to one of your top choices after a year at another law school.
—Attending a foreign law program for one or more years.
—Becoming an exchange student or third-year matriculant at one of your
top-choice schools.
—Taking advantage of law schools’ reciprocity policies to use another school’s
career services facilities.

 

Come summer, you may find that you have been rejected by all of the law programs from which you had most hoped to hear positive feedback. Although this is hardly an ideal situation to be in, there are still several paths—other than waiting to reapply for entry into the first-year program—by which the determined applicant can reach her goal: to benefit from the resources of a top program.

TRANSFERRING FROM AN INSTITUTION WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN ADMITTED

Each year, the top law programs’ admissions offices receive applications from law students wishing to transfer to their institutions. Some of these students have discovered that they are unhappy with their current program—for reasons including unsatisfactory curricula, career services, or location—or have simply realized that their ultimate goals have changed. Most, however, are simply hoping to attend a school with a more impressive reputation than the one at which they first enrolled.

Until recently, most schools took in very few transfers. They did so only to “top up” their second-year classes, to make up for the (minimal) attrition from the first-year class. As the chart below suggests, some schools still operate in this fashion, but others do not. Many top schools have determined that they can profit from a policy of accepting substantial numbers of transfer students—up to 10 percent of their second-year classes. There are several important reasons for these schools’ changed policies. There are always some applicants for the first-year class who have substantial strengths but also present substantial academic question marks. These applicants can transform themselves into very attractive candidates, without such weaknesses, upon highly successful completion of a year of law school. Another reason for the schools to have changed policies is that transfer students’ GPA and LSAT numbers do not count in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. Thus, schools can get students whom they value highly (due to their work experience or personal characteristics, for instance) without having to pay a price in terms of their median GPA or LSAT numbers (and thus their U.S. News rankings). Those schools that do not provide generous financial aid to transfer students have yet another reason to value them. (See Chapter 18 for a discussion of schools’ financial treatment of transfers.) In addition, transfer applicants function as the ultimate wait list: Schools can use transfer students to adjust a class’s composition after its first year.

TRANSFER APPLICATION DEADLINES*

Several schools have also instituted early transfer application programs. Chicago’s binding early decision program has a deadline of April 30, whereas Georgetown’s nonbinding early application program has a deadline of March 15.

EVALUATING TRANSFER APPLICANTS

Schools examine one or more of the following when evaluating transfer applicants:

• First-year law school grades and class rank

• Law school professors’ recommendations

• Legal writing sample (from first year of law school)

• Quality of the law school

• LSAT score(s)

• Undergraduate performance

• Rationale for transferring:

—Professional/academic

—Personal

• Work experience, extracurricular and community pursuits, and so on; i.e., the rest of your file

All schools consider first-year law school grades (better stated as your rank in class) to be the single most important criterion when evaluating transfer applicants. Some, in fact, consider little but this one factor. Some consider the quality of the law school at which you earn those grades, but others, remarkably, do not.

Some schools take into account one or more of the other criteria listed above. Thus, some schools will consider you in much the same way that they would have (or did) when you first applied to law school. They will consider your undergraduate performance (grades, grade trend, strength of curriculum, quality of school, and so forth) as well as your LSAT score. They will also evaluate your professional experience to date, and so on.

Other schools will evaluate your reasons for wishing to transfer. Some demand that you have a professional or academic reason for doing so. For instance, you may have decided that you want to practice international tax law but your current school offers no courses in this, whereas your target school offers several. Other schools care little about such professional interests and require instead that you have personal reasons for wishing to transfer. One such reason would be that your spouse will attend the medical school of your target law school’s university, thus requiring that she move to its location. More and more schools, however, recognize as legitimate your desire to move up to a more prestigious program.

RECENT TRANSFER NUMBERS

RECENT TRANSFER NUMBERS

CHOOSING THE SCHOOL YOU WILL TRANSFER FROM

If you intend to go to law school only if you get into a top school, you may wish to avoid overcommitting to law at this stage. If you have (or can obtain) a fine job, consider attending law school part-time. This will allow you to continue to make money, bolster your nonacademic résumé even as you are attending classes, and even to outwork your classmates for top grades (given that few attending part-time programs will be particularly concerned about maximizing their GPAs). If you decide that law is not for you, or if you do not fare well enough in GPA terms to transfer into a top program, you can walk away from the field without having suffered unduly. After all, your career will not have been on hold and you will have sharpened your reasoning, writing, and research skills while developing some substantive knowledge of law.

If your situation lends itself only to a full-time program, you are faced with a difficult choice. On the one hand, you can select a much lesser school in the knowledge that it will be easier to rank in the top 10 percent of a weak class than of a strong class. This will make it easier to get into schools that consider rank in class of paramount importance. The problem with this is that you risk being saddled with the weak school on your résumé if you fail to transfer to a stronger school. On the other hand, you can opt for the best school you have gotten into. In this case, your chances of finding your way to the top of the class will be diminished, but your résumé will not be a disaster if you end up graduating from this school.

In general, if you feel that you are good enough to merit acceptance at the top schools, you should be able to get top grades at any (lesser) school. Thus, you are likely to favor attending the strongest school to accept you.

RULES FOR PLAYING THE TRANSFER GAME ONCE YOU ARE IN LAW SCHOOL

➤ Get the most out of your first year.

—Your rank in class will be critically important, so do all that you can to maximize it. (See Chapters 16 and 17 for discussions of how best to do so.)

—Be sure to impress two professors deeply, particularly those teaching you in smaller courses or multiple courses. You will want each of them to write a highly detailed recommendation about your dynamic class performance, marvelously researched and written papers, and sterling exam. Put your discretionary time into preparing for their classes.

—Pick up any academic awards that you can. For example, moot court at many schools is regarded as something of a chore by most students, but it offers a fine opportunity to bolster your legal résumé.

➤ Analyze your target schools.

—Make sure they admit sufficient numbers of transfer applicants to warrant your efforts.

—Speak with their admissions officers to determine which criteria they employ in evaluating transfer applicants. Do so at the appropriate time—when they are least busy. If you applied for first-year admission, contact them the summer following your application. If you are going to be applying to the school for the first time as a transfer, discuss matters in late spring (when first-year applications have been largely wrapped up).

➤ Analyze your appeal to the school.

—Are their needs consistent with the profile you can present? Examine information about the first-year class when it becomes available. This will help you to see how you can position yourself to fill gaps in a class’s composition.

➤ Upgrade your credentials as appropriate.

—If your target schools will consider your LSAT score(s), you may wish to retake the exam.

—See the discussion in Chapter 8 regarding how to improve your other credentials.

➤ Market yourself according to the advice in this book’s second part (Chapters 8 through 13).

—Emphasize in particular the work you have done in your first year of law school.

—Emphasize any professional or academic reasons for wanting to transfer.

(See Part IV for a sample transfer essay and my critique of it.)

—Demonstrate that you will be an active member of your new law school community, just as you have been at your old one.

—Do not underestimate the importance of your personal needs. When writing your transfer personal statement, do not hesitate to address personal reasons for your desire to transfer to School X. If, for instance, your spouse is transferred to a location in the vicinity of your dream school—and a long flight from the one you are currently attending—be sure to bring this to the attention of the admissions officers.

➤ Understand that some law schools try to make it difficult for you to transfer out. They do this by neglecting to provide you with a transcript in time for you to apply or by pressuring professors not to give you a good recommendation. Although it is understandable that a law school would not wish to lose its strongest students, it is reprehensible that some schools would stand in the way of your bettering your opportunities. By all means ask friendly professors and/or administrators for help if you encounter such a situation.

—If these requests for help do not work, consider taking the following steps: (1) let your law school know that you might contact the LSAC about this behavior; (2) contact your college pre-law advisor and urge him or her to contact the law school (with the implicit threat that future classes at the college will be warned against applying to this law school); or (3) threaten to post suitable warnings on chat rooms or blogs (but be very careful about the legal implications of doing so).

—Unfortunately, I have to intervene several times each year on behalf of clients facing this type of problem.

➤ Be prepared to wait for an answer on your transfer applications until late in the summer after your first year.

—Schools do not make decisions about transfer applicants until they have second-semester (third-quarter) grades available. As a result, expect to hear no earlier than midsummer whether you have been admitted. (The few schools with early decision or early application programs, such as Chicago and Georgetown, make their decisions as early as May.)

➤ Recognize that this is a policy area in flux.

—Many schools are likely to increase the number of transfer students they accept. Schools in the midst of such a change are likely to be temporarily easier to get into than would otherwise be the case.

—Most schools are likely to change their admissions policies to a substantial extent over the next few years. For example, fewer schools are likely to consider only first-year law school performance in evaluating transfers. (Schools are likely to make a full file review the standard.) Make sure you know what each school currently considers relevant.

Several factors, however, may shift the balance in your decision of what school to attend for your first year:

• Consider the criteria employed by your likely target schools. If most of them emphasize the quality of law school attended, go to the best school you can. If they do not place much weight on this factor, however, you may still wish to consider a lower-tier option.

• If you have an inexpensive state school nearby or near where you wish to locate, by all means consider the financial aspects of your decision. In this case, your target transfer schools will likely understand the financial reasons for your choice of a less than stellar initial law school.

• A school that has one or more very small first-year classes (fifteen to thirty students, say) makes it easier for you to get to know and impress at least one professor than a school that features only classes of one hundred or more. (This will make it easier to get a strong, detailed professorial recommendation when you do your transfer application.)

• A school that has very limited offerings in an area that is likely to interest you may give you an academic/professional rationale for looking to transfer. (Of course, you will need to show that you discovered this interest after your initial applications to law school.)

CHOOSING THE SCHOOL YOU WILL TRANSFER TO

One of the benefits of transferring is that you can fine-tune your school selection criteria based on real experience of law school. Rather than having to imagine what law school will be like, and what sort of program will best suit you, as a veteran (of one year) you can make a more informed decision. Look again at the first section of this book, especially Chapter 3, “How to Choose the Right School for You,” if you are in any doubt about what factors to consider.

But consider some new factors, too. Transfer students are generally treated the same as other second-year students. Thus, at most schools, they suffer no disadvantages in selecting second-year courses. There are, however, a number of areas in which they may be treated differently (and perhaps worse). Transfer students:

• Are generally not eligible for grants.

• May not be eligible for joint-degree programs.

• May not be eligible for Order of the Coif, which is granted to the top 10 percent of the graduating class. (Eligibility generally depends on 75 percent of course credits being taken for a grade, rather than pass/fail, but many schools accept first-year course credits from the initial law school without accepting the grades, so it can be hard to meet the 75 percent standard.)

• May or may not be allowed to join the school’s law review. At Boston College, for example, transfer students are eligible to join the school’s other student journals (although they must meet a particularly high standard to do so), but they are not eligible to join the law review.

• May need to be in residence for two full years (and thus not be eligible for foreign exchange programs).

• May be eligible for early season job recruitment activities (in August), but only if they have already been accepted and paid their fees.

PREPARE BEFORE LAW SCHOOL

The importance of your first-year grades and other aspects of your law school performance means that you should do everything possible before school starts to get a jump on the process. See Chapter 16 for a thorough discussion of how best to do so.

Ultimately, it will be up to you to use and adapt the marketing skills you have already learned in this book and apply them to your second application process. All sorts of unpredictable factors may make you a desirable transfer student. If a school yielded an unexpectedly low number of students in a particular category—female students, black students, or students interested in public service, for example—they may see you as a way to boost their poor statistical showing. Use this to your advantage.

ADMISSIONS DEANS DISCUSS TRANSFERRING

EVALUATIVE CRITERIA

 

Our emphasis is upon how well they’ve done in law school. We look for stars in other law schools. Our assumption is that they want to move up, not that they are looking for a specific program of study. Faye Deal, Stanford

We look primarily at a transfer applicant’s performance in law school and the strength of the school. Only at the margins do we look at other factors. Our goal is to get people who will rank in the top half of our graduating class. Sarah C. Zearfoss, Michigan

We examine the first-year law school grades, taking account of the quality of the law school at which they were earned, plus a recommendation from a law school professor. We also examine the rest of an applicant’s credentials, including undergraduate performance, work experience, and so on. Ann Killian Perry, Chicago We look at many of the same factors as we do for applicants to the first-year class, such as involvement in extracurricular activities and leadership experience. A significant part of the evaluation is dedicated to grades in the first year, as well as recommendations received from law school professors. Nkonye Iwerebon, Columbia The primary consideration is first-year law school performance and recommendations from law faculty. However, as the transfer applicant pool has grown, we also look at academic interests. What about Penn Law appeals to them? What will they study here? In particularly close calls, the undergraduate record will also be examined. Renée Post, Penn

We primarily look at first-year law school grades. Our secondary concerns are the reasons someone wants to transfer to Vanderbilt. What has attracted them and will be beneficial to their intellectual or professional development and/or is there a personal reason for them to be in Nashville? Todd Morton, Vanderbilt

The key is first-year law school performance, but we look at everything: undergraduate performance, LSAT score, work experience, and the reason they want to come here. Anne Richard, George Washington

We have a twofold process. Candidates have to have done very well in their first year of law school, but they also need to have been strong enough candidates before law school to have been admitted as a first-year student here. Monica Ingram, Texas Law school performance is paramount. In the direct pool, we look at LSAT and GPA to predict how well we think you will do in law school. In the transfer pool, we know how well you did in law school. Jason Trujillo, Virginia

The most important factor for transfer candidates is outstanding performance in the first year of law school. First-year grades are evaluated alongside of the candidate’s undergraduate record, LSAT score, and other subjective factors. Kenneth Kleinrock, NYU

First-year grades and recommendations from their law schools are by far the most important credentials. The LSAT is much less relevant at that point. Andy Cornblatt, Georgetown

We don’t emphasize the LSAT or undergraduate GPA as much as the first- and second-term law school GPA. Edward Tom, Boalt Hall (Berkeley)

 

GENERAL COMMENTS

 

Most law schools are now accepting more transfer applicants. They are very enthusiastic members of the community. Andy Cornblatt, Georgetown

Think long and hard about why and where you want to transfer. Be sure to develop strong relationships with several faculty members (who will ultimately be called upon to write your recommendations). Renée Post, Penn

If you know the law school you want to attend but are given a no the first time you apply, don’t despair. You can go to the best law school that admits you and prove yourself in your first year. There are a number of top law schools that will be happy to look at you as a transfer applicant. Georgetown, for example, admits forty-five to fifty transfer applicants each year. Andy Cornblatt, Georgetown

We receive about 250 applications. Those that are not completed in time typically lack first-year transcripts. Some schools are so dilatory in getting grades out that it effectively eliminates a student’s opportunity to transfer. Susan Palmer, Virginia We have few first-year students fail to return for their second year. Our admission of twenty to thirty transfer students is because we like to get an infusion of new blood. This gives a second chance to those who did not get in here before or got in and were unhappy with the school they chose. Sarah C. Zearfoss, Michigan

BEGIN A DEGREE ABROAD

If you are not accepted at a top program of your choice, rather than attend an American law school, you could study law abroad for a year (or more). This could be done in a Commonwealth country, such as England, which enjoys a common law heritage similar to that of the United States. Or you could study in a very different legal system such as the civil code system of Western Europe and Latin America. (The American system is slowly shifting to incorporate more of the civil code system, just as the civil code systems are incorporating more of the common law approach. But even though the two systems are coming closer together, the differences remain marked.)

Studying law abroad offers you the chance to show that you are definitely interested in law. It also gives American schools a set of highly relevant grades to examine to determine whether you are academically up to snuff. In addition, you can add to your admissions profile by learning about a foreign legal system and culture.

As the study of law becomes more and more global, American law schools have placed a higher value on foreign legal study. This can work to your advantage in the admissions game. Note, however, that there is tension between the goal of maximizing your admissions opportunities and getting credit for prior work done.

If you choose to study in a common law system, you will have more limited uniqueness value when it comes time to apply to American programs. (For example, a not insubstantial number of Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, Rotary, and other scholarship winners go to England to study law and then enroll in American law schools.) Yet at the same time, it is fairly easy to receive credit for up to one year of course work done abroad due to English (and Commonwealth) common law’s similarity to American law.

On the other hand, if you choose to study in another system, such as a civil code system, you will have more uniqueness value when you apply to American programs because such study is less common. (It generally involves studying in a language other than English, making it difficult for many potential applicants to pursue.) The result is that you will improve your admissions chances substantially, but risk not getting credit for as many courses as you might have had you studied in a common law setting.

STUDYING LAW IN BRITAIN

A Bachelor of Laws, the law degree in Britain, is a three-year program. Although the program is geared to prepare students to practice law in England, many of the first-year “common law” courses are similar to American first-year courses. (Foreigners often do just one or two years of study, intending to learn about law but not necessarily wanting to stay the whole three years.) The first year at the London School of Economics, for instance, features these courses:

➤ English Legal System

➤ Public Law

➤ Law of Contracts and Torts (“Obligations”)

➤ Criminal Law

➤ Property I

The tuition for LSE, as with other leading British schools such as Oxford and Cambridge, is somewhat less expensive than tuition at private law schools in the United States.

Studying abroad will appeal most to those who are likely to have a substantial international aspect to their practice. The list of practices involving such an international dimension continues to increase. No longer do just a few people at New York or Washington firms, or working for the State Department, need (or wish) to understand foreign law. Even in family law, formerly a true backwater, there are now attorneys who specialize in divorces for those whose spouse lives abroad or is a foreign national, just as there are attorneys whose practice is devoted to child custody cases involving spouses domiciled abroad. Others who will be attracted to foreign legal study include those who wish simply to have the opportunity to live abroad for the period of study.

The tuition for foreign schools—not just British schools—is generally substantially less than tuition for American programs.

TRANSFERRING TO AN AMERICAN PROGRAM AFTER A YEAR OR TWO ABROAD

Most American law schools require that those studying law abroad apply for admission as a first-year student and, once admitted, petition for advanced standing. The dean or a faculty committee will evaluate your individual case and decide for which courses to give you credit. The most you can get is one year’s worth of credit. (A few schools, including Yale, do not give credit for work done abroad.) Obviously, this can be a slightly risky undertaking, depending upon the policies of the school you ultimately attend. The school in America, after having seen your exemplary performance at a prestigious school such as Oxford, may admit you—but may not give you a full year’s credit. Check your target school’s policies and determine how recent admittees with similar backgrounds have been treated before assuming that your foreign course work will receive full (or any) credit.

ADMISSIONS DEANS DISCUSS STUDYING LAW ABROAD

We really like to see someone who has studied law abroad, such as at the top English law programs. This provides a sophisticated training that few entering students have. Sarah C. Zearfoss, Michigan

Doing law in England after your bachelor’s degree can help you in two ways: It shows seriousness of purpose and it also gives us a set of relevant grades that will be a factor used in making the admissions decision. Elizabeth Rosselot, Boston College

COMPLETE A DEGREE ABROAD

There is another approach available to those intending to study law abroad. You can complete a degree abroad, which will typically take about three years, then apply to an American program for an LLM degree, which can be finished in one year. With an LLM you can practice in some, but not all, states.

When it comes time to get a job, however, it may be difficult to convince a top firm, company, or agency that your education stacks up to that of your competition. If your law degree is from a well-known, highly regarded foreign school, you will reduce this risk somewhat. Similarly, if your performance at the American program is compelling, you may make it easier to get a top job. (Some LLM programs require that LLM students do course work separate from JD students. This will work against you. Try, instead, to compete directly—and successfully—with JD students, who are, after all, your competition for jobs.)

This approach to getting a job in the United States is too risky for most candidates to consider. Only those who are likely to have a very substantial international dimension to their practices are at all likely to profit from it. (But see the box “Canadian Law Schools” for a potentially attractive option.)

AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH

Some foreign law schools permit their students to do a year abroad (and receive full credit for it). This opens up the possibility of doing two years abroad, then a third year in an American JD program—and then an LLM degree at this or another American law school. Doing two years in an American program will basically eliminate the problem of being taken seriously by leading American employers. (Many serious observers of the American legal scene believe that law school should not be more than two years anyway.) As a result, this approach may appeal to a segment of those intending to become well versed in international law or hoping to have a practice that focuses on more than one country or region.

CANADIAN LAW SCHOOLS

The combination of low tuition (generally a modest fraction of that at American law schools), common law curriculum (in most programs), and geographic proximity makes Canadian law schools a potentially appealing alternative to American programs. For some time, there have been accepted routes to bar admission in some American states. Massachusetts and New York accept Canadian law degrees from ABA-approved law schools as the equivalent of ABA-approved American law schools. Other states are less permissive, however, requiring either that you have practiced for a given period of time, in another American state or (perhaps) in a Canadian province, or have pursued further legal education in the United States, such as an LLM. (For detailed information about the educational credentials necessary to sit each state’s bar exam, consult www.abanet.org/legaled/publications/compguide2005/chart10.pdf.) What has made Canadian schools a more attractive option in recent years is that leading American law firms have started actively recruiting at some of them, notably British Columbia, McGill, Osgoode Hall, and Toronto. (This recruiting is primarily to stock American, not Canadian, offices of these firms.) Also noteworthy is the number of London-based law firms recruiting at the top Canadian programs. These firms find Canadian graduates’ global outlook—and bilingualism, in some cases—particularly attractive.

Application to Canadian common law programs greatly resembles that for American programs, down to the requirement that candidates register with the LSDAS and take the LSAT. Note, however, that even at the leading Canadian programs the LSAT results fall short of those at leading American programs.

PARTICIPATE IN AN EXCHANGE PROGRAM OR BECOME A THIRD-YEAR MATRICULANT (VISITING STUDENT)

Each year a small number of law students study for one or two semesters at an institution other than their own. The courses they take are credited toward the degree they will receive at their “home” institution. This can be done in one of two ways: as an exchange student or as a visiting student. A number of schools have established official exchange programs with each other (the Harvard–Berkeley Exchange is one notable example), thereby allowing students at one to take courses at the partner school. The other option is to become a visiting student at a leading school. Most of the top schools permit a handful of visiting students. Columbia, for example, accepts five to ten visiting students each year.

BENEFITS OF BECOMING AN EXCHANGE STUDENT OR VISITING STUDENT

Job opportunities. Attending a prestigious law school for your second or third year is an excellent way to gain access to recruiters who otherwise might have passed you by. At most schools, visiting students are allowed to use the career placement tools, programs, and facilities. Although prospective employers will no doubt notice that you will be receiving your degree from a school other than the one you are now attending, your résumé will nevertheless be substantially enhanced. You can expect prospective employers to take notice if you perform well at the stronger institution.

The improvement in your job prospects may also be a matter of the school’s location. If you want to get a job in Chicago but are currently attending a school in Kansas, doing a year at Northwestern could obviously improve your contacts with your desired job market.

Access to influential professors. The professor in your taxation seminar probably will not know—or care—that you are an exchange student or visiting student. Use this to your advantage. Build professional (even personal) relationships with influential professors: Impress them in class, do outstanding papers and exams for them, and so on. If you outperform the students from this school, you may well be able to get recommendations, job referrals, and other professional assistance.

The possibility of getting a degree from your target school. At several schools, there is a tiny loophole that allows some hardworking, ambitious visiting students to earn bona fide degrees. Taking a double load of courses, and thus getting approximately two years’ worth of course credit in your one year, may entitle you to a degree from this school rather than your home school. The chances of pulling this off are slim, indeed, but a few people have managed it.

MAXIMIZING YOUR CHANCES

Admission to a prestigious law program as an exchange student or visiting student is highly competitive. Although to some extent dependent on the fluctuation of student body size and your performance to date in law school, your chances of admission will rise dramatically if you can show the committee that you have a genuine need to be at their particular school. Committees are not often swayed, however, by your desire to seek employment in their area or by your declaration that you must attend their school because they are the only program on the planet to offer an Abused Animal Clinical Program. They are more likely to treat your application favorably if you demonstrate the necessity of your being in Chicago or Philadelphia or New Haven, rather than your need to attend Chicago,

 

VISITING STUDENT APPLICATION DEADLINES

Penn, or Yale Law School. The reason could be a family illness, a spouse’s personal situation, or anything else that would have a serious effect on the way you live your life.

ADMISSIONS DEANS DISCUSS VISITING STUDENTS

About twenty to thirty people apply for three to five spots. We only admit people with a compelling need to be here. That does not mean a specific kind of law that we offer courses in; it’s much more on the personal side, such as having a spouse transferred. Edward Tom, Boalt Hall (Berkeley)

We take quite a few: up to fifteen per semester. We look at their law school performance and other credentials to make sure they won’t have trouble here. We do our best to accommodate them: They’re usually coming for important personal reasons. Anne Richard, George Washington

We have a small number of visiting/nonmatriculating 3L applicants each year and enroll between ten and fifteen students. Students must have permission from their home school, have solid law school records through the 2L year, and present a compelling reason to be in New York City for the final year of law school. Kenneth Kleinrock, NYU

We enroll two to four visiting students each year. Those applicants ordinarily have compelling academic or personal reasons for wanting to visit Penn Law. Renée Post, Penn

USE ANOTHER LAW SCHOOL’S CAREER PLACEMENT OFFICE

Nearly every ABA-approved law school in the country allows law students from other programs to use its career services facilities (but not to take part in the on-campus recruiting of its students). The practice, referred to by career services directors as “reciprocity,” can be useful—especially for those students attending lower-tier schools.

Each school’s policy differs slightly from the next. The more rigid policies adhere to a quid pro quo, one-to-one basis. In order for a student at Wisconsin to use the career placement office at Harvard, for instance, there must be a Harvard student with a desire to use Wisconsin’s. This seems to be a rule that is honored more in the breach than in the observance, however, at least as long as the number of students requesting such service at the given school remains small.

Limitations to be aware of:

• Some schools grant reciprocity only to law school graduates, not to current law students. This presents a problem, of course, if you are in your first year at School X and are dying to access the career placement office at School Y in order to get a summer job.

• Some schools will not grant reciprocity during the busy months of their on-campus interviewing program.

• A general rule is that students cannot use services of a school within the same area as the one they are currently attending. An American University student, therefore, will probably not be permitted to use Georgetown’s career placement office. Similarly, in areas well populated with law schools, students from out of the area may be limited to using the services of only one school.

• Even at the most welcoming of schools, some services will not be available. Thus, counseling and résumé review are seldom on offer.