Skip to main content

Suggested Timeline

Freshman/Sophomore Year

  • Select a major in a field that both interests you and allows you to excel academically
  • Take increasingly challenging courses during your academic career, focusing on ones that enable you to hone your critical thinking, writing, speaking, problem solving, and research skills
  • Explore the legal profession by seeking out jobs, internships, or volunteer positions in legal environments to determine if a legal career is right for you
  • Get involved: Consider joining the student organization, Law Society, and/or pursuing other opportunities on campus and/or in the community
  • Meet with a Pre-Law advisor to express your interest in attending law school and to develop a timeline for taking the LSAT and applying to law school
  • Cultivate relationships with your professors so that they will know you and your work well enough to write you letters of recommendation
  • Read a newspaper (i.e. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post) every day. Not only will you stay informed, but doing so is good training for developing critical reading skills (which must be developed over time) and for the reading comprehension section of the LSAT

Prior to the Start of Your Junior Year

  • Take a free diagnostic LSAT through test-preparation service to assess your "baseline" score. Begin familiarizing yourself with and preparing for the LSAT, and consider whether you should enroll in a commercial preparation course.

Junior Year (2 years prior to entering law school)

  • Continue to take challenging courses, focusing on ones that enable you to hone your critical thinking, writing, speaking, problem solving, and research skills
  • Continue to explore the legal profession
  • Begin to research law schools
  • Engage in rigorous preparation for the LSAT, and plan to take the test in June of your junior year and no later than September of your senior year.
  • Think carefully about whether you will go straight to law school after graduation or take some time off
  • Register for the CAS
  • Maintain existing relationships with your professors, develop new ones, and approach your professors and ask them to write letters of recommendation

Summer Before Your Senior Year

  • Continue to explore the legal profession, and secure a summer job or internship in a law-related field
  • Draft and obtain feedback on your personal statement for your law school application
  • Continue researching law schools and compile a tentative list of schools to apply to, keeping in mind their average LSAT scores and GPAs

Senior Year (1 year prior to entering law school)

  • Continue to take challenging courses, focusing on ones that enable you to hone your critical thinking, writing, speaking, problem solving, and research skills
  • Continue to explore the legal profession
  • Continue to research law schools
  • Meet with a pre-law advisor to discuss law school applications
  • Complete your law school applications by November 1st and no later than Thanksgiving