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Non-traditional path to law school. Prior small business owner. Between 40 and 45 age. T-14 school. Rising 3L. Well-respected educational pedigree prior to law school. Big law job this summer. Married.

I remember how much anxiety I had about my age and non-traditional background while applying to law school and going through firm interviews. Now that I have been through it, I am here to answer questions to help if you are having similar anxiety.

Fire away.

In what way is your being cute relevant to the questions your anticipate getting?

Lincoln wrote:In what way is your being cute relevant to the questions your anticipate getting?

Sense of humor much?

I'm pretty cute myself. I was hoping you were going to say it had played a big part in your success so far.

Lincoln wrote:I'm pretty cute myself. I was hoping you were going to say it had played a big part in your success so far.

I'm actually the opposite of cute
Just put that up there for laughs.

..

Willsmithjr wrote:

Lincoln wrote:I'm pretty cute myself. I was hoping you were going to say it had played a big part in your success so far.

I'm actually the opposite of cute
Just put that up there for laughs.

lol!

..

How did you spin business ownership in your biglaw interviews? Or did you have to?

justonemoregame wrote:How did you spin business ownership in your biglaw interviews? Or did you have to?

Experience serving clients. To head off the concerns that I would have difficulty transitioning from being my own boss to being a junior associate at the bottom of the totem pole, I said that I actually had many bosses: clients, business partners, investors, etc.

Working independently under pressure. I had to do this many times and talked about how I understood taking the initiative to learn about problems and trying to solve it on my own because no one else was available for me to pass the buck to.

It also helped that my business was in the area of law and industry that I want to practice. I have contacts that are useful, but I don't think this was a necessary condition. It was helpful to make my career transition narrative for.

Experience with legal issues. I had experience hiring biglaw firms for various transactional and litigation matters. I was able to talk about why dealing with those issues reaffirmed my interest in going to law school.

Most importantly, I said that I wanted to be a lawyer more than I wanted to be a business owner. I enjoyed the experience but I wanted to return to what I had set out to do in undergrad. Biglaw wants to know that I would not get bored being a junior associate and leave to start my own thing again. So I said that I want to be an excellent lawyer and was looking for a firm that would teach me how to be that.