Top Law Schools

It seems to me that the vast majority of schools do not give instructions pertaining to page formatting for essays/addenda - if anything, a few mention font size. While 1-inch margins are standard, is there any room for manipulating the margin size in order to meet length requirements? Specifically, I'm trying to fit an essay onto 2 pages - and it fits perfectly with 0.84 margins on top and bottom and 0.9 on the sides. Will adcoms notice this? And, more importantly, will anyone care?

I read many essays for my grad school. If the reviewers have to print them out, they will notice. Perhaps not if they're just read electronically, b/c you can play around with zoom until your eyes are comfortable.

More importantly, though, if you have to tweak with margins to make something fit, then you're not writing with concision. I guarantee you can edit enough words out to total a line or two. Guaranteed.

I know my experience isn't in law school per se, but the principle is the same.

If you're going to manipulate anything, I would avoid the top. The top margin is super noticeable.

ltrego wrote:If you're going to manipulate anything, I would avoid the top. The top margin is super noticeable.

+1

Bottom & right are the least noticeable

reduce period size to size 9.

use garamond.

kerning = -.1 or something like that.

replace tabs with five spaces.

replace spaces at size 11 with size 10.

pick three, if you do all of them your PS will look weird AF.

or, better yet, edit it down. I do a lot of editing. A lot of times people think they need 2.5 pages when they really just have a lot of passive voice.

scoobers wrote:reduce period size to size 9.

use garamond.

kerning = -.1 or something like that.

replace tabs with five spaces.

replace spaces at size 11 with size 10.

pick three, if you do all of them your PS will look weird AF.

or, better yet, edit it down. I do a lot of editing. A lot of times people think they need 2.5 pages when they really just have a lot of passive voice.

Yeah just edit it, OP. These people read thousands of these things. Do you really think they can't tell the overly-lengthy ones from those that followed the guidelines, even if it "fits" onto two pages?

Times New Roman, 11 pt., 1 inch margins, double spaced, two pages. Put the title, name, etc. in the heading, that'll save you some space. But just follow those guidelines, that's what they expect to see. Deviate far from than that and they'll know what you're up to.