Status Check with Spivey

Do resume gaps hurt your law school admissions chances? Is the so-called "KJD tax" real? And how much do GPA and LSAT medians actually matter? In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike Spivey and Spivey Consulting President Anna Hicks-Jaco answer questions submitted by the Reddit law school admissions community. They discuss employment gaps, high-turnover jobs, low undergraduate...

What makes a great law school personal statement opening sentence? In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike Spivey is joined by Sarah Zearfoss (Dean Z), Senior Assistant Dean at the University of Michigan Law School and former Dean of Admissions, to evaluate five famous opening lines from literature and discuss how they would work as personal statement introductions. They explore the imp...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco shares 20 easy law school application fixes crowdsourced from Spivey Consulting Group’s team of former admissions officers. From essay formatting and résumé consistency to application form mistakes and final submission checks, these are common issues that may seem minor individually but can collectively affect how polished and detail-ori...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike and Anna interview Natalie Blazer, the Dean of Admissions and Chief Admissions Officer at UVA Law. Mike and Dean Blazer discuss the unusual nature of this past 2025-2026 admissions cycle (2:11), why Dean Blazer loves waitlists and why this past cycle ran about three months longer than usual (4:32), why having high numbers means less for an applica...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Anna Hicks-Jaco is joined by Spivey consultant Meg Krishnan, former Director of Admissions and Programs at UChicago Law, for a conversation about preparing for law school admissions interviews. Meg spent nine admissions cycles at UChicago Law, ultimately running the school’s interview program and personally conducting thousands of admissions interviews...

Originally published in 2021, this conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté explores self-doubt, stress, anxiety, addiction, and the pressures that can come with pursuing ambitious academic and professional goals. Mike Spivey speaks with Dr. Maté, world-renowned physician and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, When the Body Says No, and The Myth of Normal, about how these challenges can affect prosp...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike is joined by Dr. Milana Hogan, Chief Talent Officer at Sullivan & Cromwell, and Rob Baker, a former law firm hiring committee member and BigLaw attorney, for a conversation about the increasingly front-loaded BigLaw recruiting process and what prospective and current law students should know about navigating it. Rob has held recruiting roles a...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike has a conversation with Simone Stolzoff, an author and journalist whose work explores uncertainty, ambition, and our relationship with work. Simone is the author of How to Not Know and The Good Enough Job . His latest book examines why uncertainty feels so uncomfortable and how developing a healthier relationship with not knowing can create opport...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Anna Hicks-Jaco is joined by three experienced law school financial aid professionals: Dalmarie Lawrence, Director of Financial Aid at the University of the District of Columbia School of Law; Montré Everett, Director of Financial Aid at UC Davis School of Law; and Matt Wakeman, Assistant Dean of Financial Aid at the University of Virginia School of La...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike, joined by LSAT experts Graeme Blake and Ellen Cassidy, discusses the changes coming to the LSAT this August and the federal class-action lawsuit that LSAC is currently facing over CAS fees. Graeme has been teaching the LSAT for over 15 years and is the founder of LSAT Hacks , and Ellen is the author of The Loophole in LSAT Logical Reasoning and f...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Legal Education Access Pipeline (LEAP) Founder & CEO, Cindy Lopez, joins us for a conversation with Paula Gluzman, Spivey’s Director of Diversity & Inclusion and a J.D. Admissions Consultant. Cindy is a retired career Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, served as Board President of a college access nonprofit for underserved you...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike has a conversation with Orin Kerr, a prominent law professor and legal academic who currently serves as a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In his 25+ years as a law school faculty member, Professor Kerr has written 75+ law review articles, authored casebooks, and been cited in 4,500+ aca...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Anna Hicks-Jaco discusses the strategy of reapplying to law school, joined by former law school admissions officers and Spivey consultants Sir Williams and Julia Truemper . They give a great deal of insider insights and strategic advice, including common reapplication mistakes (8:11, 17:57, 34:26), how to explain why you’re reapplying (32:15), whether...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike has a conversation with Vincent Sheu, an attorney and AI startup founder with a JD and a Master's in Computer Science from Stanford (in addition to degrees in Statistics, Molecular and Cell Biology, and Bioengineering). Mike and Vincent discuss how he uses AI in his legal work today (19:20, 22:20), how he expects to be using AI in legal work i...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Anna Hicks-Jaco has a conversation with two Spivey consultants and former law school admissions officers, Kristen Mercado and Nathan Neely , on the decision whether to reapply to law school. What are good reasons—and what are bad reasons—to reapply? How much of an LSAT improvement is enough to justify reapplying (6:00)? How much of an impact can improv...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike has a conversation with Rob Baker , a long-time practicing entertainment lawyer who has served on hiring committees for multiple law firms, ranging from biglaw to mid-law to a small firm, and who leads Spivey Consutling’s new employment coaching and law school mentorship program. Rob discusses his law school application process (3:49), what it was...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike discusses the five reasons that being denied from law school hurts—and the concrete ways that you can handle it. Mike mentions a few other podcasts and a video clip in this episode: Dr. Guy Winch on Overcoming the Stresses of School, Work, & Admissions (Status Check with Spivey) (long discussion of rumination) Dr. Guy Winch on Handling Rejecti...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , we take questions from Reddit ! Mike Spivey , Mike Burns , and Anna Hicks-Jaco discuss just how slow this cycle is (10:19) and how that might impact late-cycle applicants (6:47), why law schools place applicants on “holds” (1:23), decision timelines and how/why they vary (4:23), advice for scholarship reconsideration (11:20), whether schools rescind ad...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike has a conversation with Dr. Nita Farahany—speaker, author, Duke Law Distinguished Professor, and the Founding Director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society—on the future of artificial intelligence in law school, legal employment, legislation, and our day-to-day lives. They discuss a wide range of AI-related topics, including how signif...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Dr. Guy Winch returns to the podcast for a conversation about his new book, Mind Over Grind: How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life . They discuss burnout (especially for those in school or their early career), how society glorifies overworking even when it doesn’t lead to better outcomes (5:53), the difference between rumination and valuable se...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike interviews General David Petraeus, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Four-Star General in the United States Army. He is currently a Partner at KKR, Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, and Chairman of KKR Middle East. Prior to joining KKR, General Petraeus served for over 37 years in the U.S. military, culminating in command...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Anna has an in-depth discussion on law school admissions interviews with two Spivey consultants—Sam Parker, who joined Spivey this past fall from her position as Associate Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School, where she personally interviewed over a thousand applicants; and Paula Gluzman, who, in addition to her experience as Assistant Director...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike interviews Miller Leonard, author of How to Get a Job After Law School: The Job Won’t Find You (free online ⁠here⁠ ), on the lessons he’s learned about networking and getting a legal job in his 25+ years as an attorney. Throughout his career, Miller has been a prosecutor, public defender, legal aid attorney, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, and Mu...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Anna Hicks-Jaco has a conversation with two of Spivey’s newest consultants—Sam Parker, former Harvard Law Associate Director of Admissions, and Julia Truemper, former Vanderbilt Law Associate Director of Admissions—all about the law school admissions advice that admissions officers won’t give you, discussing insider secrets and debunking myths and comm...

In this episode of Status Check with Spivey , Mike has a conversation with Dayna Bowen Matthew , Dean of the George Washington University Law School, where she has led the law school since 2020. Prior to her time at GW, she was a Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, the University of Colorado Law School, and the University of Kentucky College of Law, and she has served as...