Hey guys!
I have a meeting with William and Mary’s Admissions Dean on Thursday and was hoping to get some feedback on what to wear. I was thinking about wearing a light blue dress shirt, dark blue jeans, black dress shoes, and a gray sport coat (it’s going to be low 40s to high 50s). I was thinking about khaki pants, but I’ll be sitting in on a class afterward and didn’t want to be overdressed.
I haven’t applied yet, but I intend to after the Nov. LSAT. W&M is my first choice and I really want to impress without being too showy.
Thoughts?
Here’s the rule for all clothing choices from now until forever: you want people to remember you, not your clothing. Wear something uneventful that won’t be remarked upon. Your selection sounds fine.
Also, there’s always that one guy in law school that wears a suit and tie to every class. If you think you’re overdressed, just stand near him.
Maybe it’s because I’m on the west coast, but I wouldn’t blink at jeans to some meeting with the admissions dean at a law school. I doubt he or she will be dressed up.
Huge differences between west and east coast clothing styles and what is deemed appropriate in a professional setting @Demosthenes49
OP, your proposed clothing sounds appropriate.
Jeans are not appropriate attire generally in East Coast law firms, particularly for interviewing, so I’d follow the same rules. A $30 pair of black or navy blue slacks from Dillard’s will work just fine for this.
agree with HA. W&L (and Virginia) dress can also be preppy. Khakis would work better than jeans, IMO.
I had super limited space before I left (I had to fly out) and I brought the jeans. To provide a bit more context, this is a meeting just to get more information about the campus, put a name to a face, and to get a first hand experience on campus. The outfit looks well put together, the jeans are a dark blue and well-fitting, and I’m wearing black dress shoes, matching belt, a dark gray sport coat, and a nice button-down dress shirt. Additionally, it’s forecasted to be fairly cold, I’m sitting in on a class, meeting with a few students from one of their law clinics, and doing a full campus tour. It just seemed like a nice fair of well-fitting, dark blue jeans would be appropriate.
I don’t have time to go out and buy another pair of khakis, nor do I have room in my bag for another pair of pants. I understand the different standards on the respective coasts and I just hope my choice of pants doesn’t negatively impact my application.
It’s hard to imagine anything mattering less than the pants you wear to an informational tour.
ETA: Please report back what the admissions deans wears.
It’s your first choice school. For lawyers, every. single. detail. matters. I’d stop by Belk in Williamsburg on the way there (https://www.belk.com/store/?StoreID=321) or wear khakhis. Jeans are NOT ok, and if you ever interview in my firm in jeans, you won’t get a job.
Interviewing for a job and taking an informational tour are not the same thing. For one thing, the money runs the opposite direction. I bet clients show up in jeans all the time and no one says a word.
@Demosthenes49 OP has a meeting with the Admissions Dean of the Law School, not an informational tour. I recommend khakis too, even if it’s a hassle to get them.
He has a non-applicant meeting to get information about a school. He’ll be wearing a dress shirt, sport coat, and dress shoes. This isn’t an admissions interview. It isn’t a job interview. He hasn’t even applied yet. Are you seriously telling me you think his pants will endanger his ability to apply in the future?
Update: I left from DC super early so I could make it to a Target before the meeting. I got khaki-colored chinos and wore those. When I got to campus, literally everyone was wearing jeans ?. Regardless, I felt like I looked professional. If anything, I felt a little bit overdressed. No one looked at me strangely, but they could all easily tell I was there with admissions lol
Without an LSAT score & before filing an application, what did you discuss with the Dean of the law school ?
Thanks for reporting back. I’m not at all surprised everyone else wore jeans.
@Publisher It was the Assoc. Dean of Admissions, not the Dean/President of the school.
I actually do have an LSAT score (160 and I’m retaking in Nov) and I had sent her copies of my transcripts ahead of time, but we didn’t really talk about that. She asked some general interview questions (“tell me about yourself,” “why law,” “what type of law are you looking to get into,” “which of your extracurriculars are you most proud of and why”). She threw in follow up questions here and there and asked a couple unanticipated questions like “why did you choose SDSU for your undergrad,” but nothing too crazy.
Then she pulled out some of the brochures and we discussed the different bar passage rates for the states, percentage of students that got judicial clerkships, acceptance rates into their clinics, employment rates, and things like that.
Once she was done with her questions, I asked about dual degrees (I’m looking at a dual JD/MPH), how that would work, class availability for certain subjects (i.e. are all of these listed classes consistently available or are some of them only sporadically available?), and what type of experience the professors have had (Side Note: I was told to ask this by several attorneys I’ve worked with in the past. They said many professors work almost exclusively in theory and many have never set foot in the courtroom. According to them, this can occasionally cause problems because they don’t understand the real world problems with applying theory.). I also got some information about two of their clinics I was interested and she put me in touch with the staff attorneys in charge of them.
Thank you for your thorough response.
Please be careful about taking advice from any attorney who suggested that you insult WFU law professors by inquiring about their real world experience.
Everything that you discussed–other than your choice of undergraduate school–is available on the internet. One of the primary goals of a law school education is to learn to teach oneself.
Law school interviews may be useful for borderline applicants & during scholarship competitions, but not as information gathering sessions.
If you need someone with substantial experience to review your law school personal statement, I would be willing to offer a brief critique if you private message it to me.
In the recent past, WFU law offered lots of merit scholarships. I can think of no other reason for one to attend this law school other than the desire to practice in the state of North Carolina.
To be clear, I think that you are receiving poor advice with respect to applying to law school. It is all about the numbers (LSAT score & undergraduate GPA) unless you are an URM.
Thanks for offering to review my statement; I’ll definitely take you up on that offer once I’ve hammered out a few more drafts. With regards to the other things you mentioned, I just would like to clarify that I was at William and Mary, not Wake Forest and that I didn’t ask the professors themselves, but rather the admissions dean. Also, I was careful to phrase the question relating to experience. It was along the lines of “do the professors take a more theoretical approach to teaching law or do they tend to focus more on their experiences in practice?” It wasn’t until she said that the overwhelming majority of the professors teach from their own experiences that I commented that was a good thing. We talked a bit about some of the professors’ career histories (the dean brought this up) and discussed how some of them may be great mentors for me in the future. I would never ask a professor himself or herself about their real world experience in a direct or insulting manner.
With respect to the other questions, my summations in the post were perhaps a little over broad. I asked about bar passage rates in California and New York specifically, as those are areas I’m interested in practicing in. The website only references the schools average passage rate overall. I also asked about the regular availability of specific classes within a particular concentration, as I’ve been screwed before by my undergrad saying a course was an option for my major and then not offering it for the two years I was there. With respect to judicial clerkships, I was more looking to see the level of judges the students were clerking for (trial v appellate, state v federal) as I couldn’t find that information readily online. Lastly, the question about the MPH/JD program was a point I really needed to verify, as the MPH is with a different university and admission is contingent on explicit permission from the law school. W&M’s website clearly mentioned that they offer joint degrees, but they didn’t mention (at least that I saw) working with other schools to complete them.
Most of the interview was the dean interviewing me, going over a little booklet thing she had, and then me asking questions for clarification. I intended for the meeting to demonstrate commitment to the school, gain a bit of name recognition, and to see the campus itself. The meeting with the dean was a secondary option when requesting a tour amd I didn’t see a reason not to. I plan on applying under binding early decision this year, as all students accepted under that program are granted full rides, so I really wanted to improve my chances as much as possible.
With respect to bar exams, I made up a list of the 50 state bar exams from most difficult to easiest. Although not at my side now, I recall that Delaware was the most difficult & that California was the second or third most difficult bar exam in which to earn a passing score (I think that it was third after Delaware & Oregon). New York was the 33rd most difficult bar exam. Bar exams are fairly easy now with the development & adoption of the UBE (Uniform Bar Exam). Essentially the UBE allows one to sit for about 30 different state bar exams at once. New York has adopted the UBE while California has not. Within the UBE different jurisdictions have different passing scores so that while easy to pass for New York & Alabama, not so easy to earn a passing grade for Colorado.
Law school is intended to be a theoretical learning experience for the most part. All or almost all accredited law schools do offer practical training in clinics.
Practice tips are better learned after law school through actual experience. As much as we like to idealize the practice of law, the reality is that it is more like the sausage making process than like an idealized version in which the smarter, more hardworking, honest lawyer wins.
Practicing law in state courts is usually a very different experience than working in the federal system.
Don’t worry though, if you are idealistic, a couple of years or less in the real world will take care of that. Enjoy the comfort of learning theory & remaining idealistic during your brief stay in law school.