We are assessing whether each applicant (i) has a clear interest in law school rooted in their relevant experiences; (ii) is academically prepared to excel in YLS classes; (iii) will contribute to the YLS community and the larger legal community; and (iv) has the personal qualities to be a positive community member. There is no need to try and stand out! Instead, applicants should strive to present the strongest and most authentic version of themselves.
At YLS, your chance of admission is not related to the timing of your application; there is no advantage to applying earlier in the cycle. We encourage you to apply when your materials are as strong and complete as they can be, which may mean that you delay your application until you receive a particular recommendation, test score, additional grade, etc.
Many applicants are admitted during their final year of college. If you decide to apply at this point, make sure that you can make a compelling case for why you are interested in law school, grounded in your relevant personal, academic, extracurricular, or professional experiences. You should also be mindful that postgraduate experience can both strengthen your application and be helpful in legal hiring, so if you are considering waiting, feel confident doing so.
While we generally prefer academic letters, we understand it may not be feasible to obtain them if you have been out of school for a substantial period of time. There is no hard and fast rule for when a professional recommender is appropriate, but we generally expect two academic letters if you are currently in an academic program or graduated within the last few years (though there are always exceptions).
Professional recommenders are most helpful when they can speak with authority on (i) skills relevant to legal study (e.g., analytical ability, research and writing skills, work ethic, collaboration) or (ii) your interest and expertise in an area connected to your legal interests. Letters from internship supervisors are less helpful than letters from someone who has supervised your full-time work over a longer period.
An academic recommender is someone who has evaluated your academic work, including classroom work or other substantial academic research and writing. Professors who taught you or supervisors of a thesis or major academic project are excellent choices.
A TA or graduate instructor can also be an effective academic recommender if they directly evaluated your work—substance over signature is the priority. At the same time, more experienced recommenders can sometimes offer a helpful comparative perspective.
For most applicants, a third letter of recommendation is not necessary. A third letter that simply revisits themes, skills, and experiences already described in the first two letters, or that comes from someone who knows you less well, risks diluting the strength of the letters overall. If, however, a third recommender can describe a different set of relevant skills and experiences, that can be a valuable addition.
The personal statement should help us understand why you want to study law and why this is the right next step for you at this time. Personal statements tend to be more effective when they point to multiple experiences (personal, professional, extracurricular, volunteer, or academic) that show how your interests in specific legal areas have developed over time and are connected to your future goals. Authenticity is critical for an effective personal statement, and grounding your stated interest in a range of experiences is key.
We look for candidates whose applications convey thoughtful consideration of why law school and a legal career are the right next step. For this reason, it is often most effective to describe a specific interest or interests, well supported by your experiences. However, we understand that interests change over time and can be broad and multi-faceted.
If your personal experiences, including challenges or difficult circumstances, are relevant to your interest in law school, they can absolutely be part of your personal statement. It is important, however, to balance any personal elements with relevant professional, extracurricular, volunteer, and academic experiences. In other words, writing about a hardship can be responsive, but there should be a reason why this circumstance is relevant to the overall narrative being crafted.
Your 250-word essay does not need to be about law, and it does not need to explicitly connect to the rest of your application. It may be closely related to another written piece (or not!), but it shouldn’t be duplicative. Successful applicants often choose topics related to their stated experiences and interests, and you should consider whether your topic choice will help create a cohesive overall application.
When writing your 250-word essay, you should draw on an idea or issue from your academic, extracurricular, or professional work. Your choice and presentation of the topic should help us understand how you engage intellectually with the world around you. Some of the strongest pieces we receive stay with us well beyond our review of your file because they introduce an idea that is new to us or discuss something familiar with a fresh approach. A successful 250-word essay leaves us wanting to continue the conversation.
Either approach is entirely acceptable.
The purpose of the resume is to highlight the most important information and allow the reader to quickly understand the chronology of your experiences. For most applicants, one page is sufficient.
Some applicants may need a longer resume to cover important information; this is most likely to be the case if you have extensive full-time work experience or a substantial publication record. In deciding what to include and how much detail to provide, consider both recency and relevance.
We expect significant overlap between the resume and the activities sections in content and language. Copying is acceptable.
The activities sections follow a consistent format, which makes it easier for us to review and compare applications. We also ask for information that resumes often omit (e.g., whether the position was paid/unpaid; approximate number of hours) and ask you to organize your activities by relative importance rather than reverse chronological order, so we understand what was particularly meaningful to you.
We find that a list, table, or chart is usually the most effective way to convey the information in the College Activities Section, especially if there are numerous different activities. For the Post-College Activities Section, it depends on how many different activities are included. For example, if you are a recent college graduate with one job and one volunteer activity, a brief paragraph may be most effective. In general, the more complex and detailed the information, the more helpful it is to use a structured format rather than free text.
For irregular activities (say, an activity that varied in its level of commitment or was of limited duration), it is fine to estimate the number of hours or average them out, or to provide a very brief explanation (e.g. "one-week conference, 60 hours/week").
If you are searching for a job, you can write "job search" or similar language and estimate the hours. If you know of a future commitment that has not yet begun, it is fine to list this activity and approximate start date, but please make clear that it is a forthcoming commitment.
An addendum should be strongly considered if (i) you are contextualizing something substantial that (ii) resulted from an external event and (iii) had a substantial impact on (iv) an important part of your application, and (v) this information can't be found elsewhere in the application.
If you write an addendum for something minor (e.g., one or two withdrawals from courses, a lower grade or two, or slight underperformance one semester) you risk drawing undue attention to this aspect of your application. We find that addenda for LSAT score jumps or small score decreases are unnecessary and generally not additive.
If we can reasonably infer a circumstance and its impact on the application from an essay or other component of the application (e.g., the “any other” section of an activities section), it is not necessary to write a separate addendum.
It is critically important for you to carefully read our character and fitness questions and similar questions asked by other law schools. It is your responsibility to review these questions and answer accurately.
For YLS, you must disclose felony or misdemeanor charges, convictions, or guilty or no contest pleas. You may answer "no" to the C&F question if the record has been expunged or sealed, if the conviction has been vacated, or if the applicant has been pardoned.
You must also disclose any discipline by any academic institution you have attended. If you have been found responsible, or subject to sanctions or other disciplinary action, for misconduct of any kind or deficient scholarship, or have any charges pending, these must be reported, regardless of how they are characterized by the institution, including incidents that have been purged or excluded from student records.
In general, it is better to err on the side of disclosure. C&F questions will arise again during the bar admission process, and any discrepancies between your law school application and bar materials can create serious complications.
We strongly encourage all applicants to write an optional essay, and more than 90 percent of applicants choose to do so. The prompts reflect values that are central to the Law School community and give us another way to learn about you. For most applicants, the optional essay strengthens their application.
We have no preference for which prompt you choose to answer. Whichever prompt you choose, read it carefully and ensure your essay is responsive (e.g., if you write about changing your mind, the essay should reflect an actual shift in your thinking).
It is often a challenge to find the line between cohesion and repetition. Thematic overlap can strengthen an application when it builds upon your interests with experiences that are not already explored in your personal statement or 250-word essay. It is also entirely appropriate to showcase a topic that is not otherwise explored in your written materials.
Yes. If you are selected for an interview, it indicates that your application is under serious consideration. Selected applicants will receive an invitation and detailed instructions.
All interviews are conducted synchronously and virtually. While we generally conduct our interviews during regular business hours in the Eastern time zone, there may be some flexibility if you are abroad or facing other challenges. If you encounter logistical issues, contact the Admissions Office and we will do our best to accommodate you.
When you submit your application, you certify that all written work is your original work. You should be very careful to ensure that if you choose to use AI, you can still honestly certify that you created everything in your application. You will also be asked to disclose any AI use as part of your application so we can assess whether your use of AI was appropriate. The consequences for failure to disclose or misrepresentation can be severe and can include revocation of an admission offer.
Most importantly, you must be the author of every part of your law school application. Neither AI nor any other person should generate any written content for you. This includes substantial editing or taking specific text suggestions and using it instead of your own words. Some appropriate uses can include checking spelling or grammar, asking for synonym suggestions, getting formatting assistance (e.g., reformat a paragraph as a bulleted list), or requesting feedback (e.g., What are the takeaways from this essay? Are these two essays duplicative?).
Submit readable, professional materials and closely follow the application’s formatting instructions for each component. For your resume, which does not have a specific font size requirement, use your judgment and prioritize readability.
The written pieces should feel connected and thematically consistent, but not repetitive. Ultimately, we want to understand your interest in law school and the issues that matter most to you, and the essays are your best opportunity to explore these questions.
Use your judgment about which aspects of your background and experiences you wish to highlight, and consider seeking feedback from a trusted friend, family member, advisor, or mentor before you submit. This can help you assess whether the essays are cohesive without being duplicative.