Inside the Black Box

The J.D. Admissions team recently came together to offer their thoughts on some underrated and overrated approaches that applicants might take towards their HLS application. We hope you’ll find some of these nuggets useful.

We thought we would take this chance to preview our upcoming recruitment activities, which will once again be entirely virtual. For those interested in having the J.D. Admissions office join your group, school, or organization for an open Q&A on the admissions process, we’d also like to share details on how to get in touch.

Our final entry in the "Real Talk" series covers the "holistic" admissions process at HLS.

Wondering if you are eligible to apply? Have a question about our application requirements? Just want to say hello? Feel free to contact the J.D Admissions Office.

Our next installment of the Real Talk blog series covers the question of how expressing interest in HLS plays into the application process.

In this week’s installment in the Real Talk series, we cover the role of second-hand information in the application process. 

This week's entry in the Real Talk series covers the resume. 

Our next installment in the "Real Talk" blog series covers letters of recommendation. Read on for more!

For our first entry in the Real Talk series, Associate Director Nefyn Meissner shares advice on approaching the personal statement.

August is a month of transition in the J.D. Admissions Office. Orientation for incoming 1L students is on the horizon, and we’re already gearing up for another admissions cycle beginning in September. We know many applicants are also beginning to prepare their applications. We’re excited to begin reading your stories and about your accomplishments soon, but in the meantime, we want to help you submit the best application you can.

Happy almost-August! I’m thrilled to announce the launch of a new podcast, in collaboration with the Yale Law School admissions team. YLS admissions dean Miriam Ingber and I have teamed up to co-host Navigating Law School Admissions with Miriam & Kristi.

It’s December and here in the J.D. Admissions Office that means it’s Application Reading Season. Thanks to the rolling admissions timeline, we will be receiving your applications on a daily basis until the application closes, and our team is already hard at work carefully reviewing the files we’ve received thus far. We read files whenever […]

Admissions Assistant Alessandra Luedeking takes you behind the scenes of the interview assignment process. 

So you received an invitation to interview with a member of our Harvard Law School Admissions Committee! Read on to hear how that very Committee suggests you prepare for our meeting.

Considering whether to write an optional statement? If you complete your personal statement and still feel that you have more to share, an optional statement provides you with an opportunity to do so. Here is our advice to determine whether submitting an optional statement is the right choice for your application.

Letters of recommendation are an important part of your application. We’ve compiled some tips and advice on how best to approach these letters to help you better prepare for this part of the process.

Each interview is bespoke to the candidate – your interviewer will have read your entire application and will have prepared questions specific to you. That said, we each have a go-to question or two.

The personal statement is “an opportunity to give the Admissions Committee a better sense of who you are as a person and as a potential student and graduate of Harvard Law School.” But what does that mean to us?

This fall, we will discuss each major component of your application in a series of blog posts. Our next topic is transcripts. Like your test scores, your grades are a component of your application that we look at when we are trying to get a sense of your academic abilities. We know that you are […]

This fall, we will discuss each major component of your application in a series of blog posts.  First up: test score(s).