Behave Yourself!

In law school, you are transitioning from a student to a professional. So even while you are an undergraduate, you need to think about this.  You need to start becoming the kind of person you would pay hundreds of dollars to be your lawyer. 

Clean Up Your Social Media

Law school admissions staff will look at your social media. And yes, if you say and do crazy things on social media, it is possible for law schools to reject your application. 

Go through all your social media and remove photos or posts that are unprofessional. Ask your friends to remove photos and posts that include you that are unprofessional. There may be people you need to unfriend.

You are going to find tons of social media groups about applying to law school full of gossip. These are especially active in the spring, when law schools are doing the bulk of their acceptances. You should ignore these sites, but if you find yourself reading this stuff, at least resist the urge to post or participate.  Law school admissions staff are very familiar with all these social media sites, and they read them.  If you post unprofessional content or say horrible things about a particular law school, they just might revoke your acceptance (seriously!).  

Character & Fitness

To be admitted to the bar in any state and practice law, in addition to passing the bar exam, you also have to meet “character and fitness” requirements. Law schools do not want to admit people who cannot meet these requirements, so character and fitness is part of the law school application process. Your law school application will become part of your bar application. 

Every state bar association has different definitions and requirements for character and fitness, so these will also vary by law school. Read the question prompts carefully for each school you are applying to. 

Disclosure is Key

Generally, you will be asked to disclose any criminal charges, like underage drinking. You will be asked about any academic proceedings you were a part of, so this does include disciplinary actions on your campus, such as dorm infractions or plagiarism.  

If you have any kind of legal history, this will NOT automatically disqualify you for law school, but you need to disclose and explain things. Acknowledge what you did and take responsibility. Failing to disclose things has much worse consequences than what you actually did.  

If you are not sure about something or have questions, contact the law school admissions staff. They want to help you with this stuff. 

Think Ahead

Think before you post anything on social media. From now on, don’t get yourself into situations where you could get into legal or academic trouble. Pay your speeding tickets. Or better yet, do not get any speeding tickets.

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