Top Law Schools

Here's my situation:

I'm about to start my senior year at a top 50 university; LSAT = 169, which was what I got on all my practice tests; and GPA = 3.94. Fine extracurriculars, fine recommendations, fine essays, parents are paying for school so I'll graduate debt-free.

But I have some baggage. I attended a top liberal arts college for three years. My freshman year, I had a consensual sexual encounter. My junior year, the person with whom I'd had the encounter accused me of sexual assault. There was a disciplinary hearing; I was expelled. No criminal charges of any kind; everything happened within the school's disciplinary system. And I certainly never admitted any wrongdoing, as there was none on my part. I appealed the expulsion, the appeal wasn't granted, I sued the school for breach of contract, we settled. One of the terms of the settlement was that the charge and the expulsion would be vacated from my school record and it would be recorded that I was a student in good standing at my former college.

While the lawsuit was going on, I was applying to other schools. I started at my current university as a second-semester sophomore and will graduate in spring of 2016 (effectively repeating 1.5 years of undergrad). No other disciplinary problems at my old school, and none at all at my current school--plus nothing remotely related to academic dishonesty and the like.

I'm planning to disclose this incident in detail in an addendum to my applications, and I'll give all schools to which I apply a copy of the judge's motion to dismiss the case, which lays out some of the details of the settlement. Today I got my priority track invite from Duke (one of my top choices) which made me feel great, but now I'm worrying that it's just giving me false hope. I.e. my question is this: do I have any chance at all of getting into a T-20 law school given this weird disciplinary record?

I have no idea about this sort of thing -- but (A) want to give this a bump and (B) I think you should be fine (?). The charge was vacated and you are a "student in good standing" for as far as things are concerned. In addition, I have a sneaking suspicion (while purely speculative) with the Rolling Stone incident and other instances of overzealous pursuits by universities of alleged perpetrators of sexual assault being exposed and new questions about the fairness of due process (or the lack thereof) in those proceedings, you stand a good chance of being ok. Anybody else with more authority on the matter?

I have a couple of thoughts on this both from experience and partially speculation. First of all, in terms of what to expect from your cycle, I would predict that you will do a little bit worse that you would predict based purely off your numbers. This will mean both that you might get rejected from a couple of surprising schools and you may also receive lower $$ than you would predict just based off your numbers. This is because either schools will doubt your maturity and/or will assume your options are more limited than one would predict purely based on numbers. Additionally, you will likely be stripped of the benefit of the doubt. Functionally, this will probably mean that schools that don't traditionally conduct interviews for candidates will want to interview you, again to assess your maturity. If a school does conduct an interview, this means they are definitely will consider you based on your app, but want to hear you explain your disciplinary record in your own words.

Speculatively, I partially disagree with what Hornet said. I think it is possible that a couple schools completely believe your story, but I think it is equally likely that schools will believe you just got lucky because there was no actual evidence. This, again, will likely mean that you will not get in to a couple of surprising schools.

I would suggest you consider taking time off. Schools will have a much easier time both believing you are mature and giving you the benefit of the doubt if this incident happened 5+ years ago rather than 2 or 3 years ago. It doesn't matter if you believe you are completely innocent, some schools will just not want to take a risk on a situation like this.

After reading your post inothingam I would generally agree. I guess what I was trying to say is all is not lost. I think your assessment is definitely probably accurate (again I am speculating).

Some places will likely not take you just because but some will for your numbers (again I would assume). I think taking a substantial time off as suggested may help to mitigate maturity concerns, but I would still apply this year if I were you just to see. This is assuming of course all the TLS requisites are already met. Aka you are sure about law, know the risks, etc.

I'm not really sure if maturity is the concern adcoms would have about a possible sexual assault (apologies, OP, that's not meant as a comment on what you did/didn't do, just thinking about if adcomms were inclined to disbelieve you - also not saying they will be, just responding to prior comments). Underage drinking or shoplifting at age 15, that might go to maturity. But I don't think sexual assault is seen as something that's linked to immaturity, or that people see predilection for sexual assault as something you mature out of.

(I agree that distance could help assuage adcomms' concerns, I just don't think couching it in terms of maturity is quite the way to go.)

Thank you all for your honest responses, they were good to hear. Here are my feelings.

First, I'm definitely expecting to not get into schools that I "should" get into based on my numbers alone, and to have to do more interviews than the average applicant might. In other words I'm dropping my expectations from T14 to T20, more or less (though of course I'll still apply to some T14 schools.)

Second, as for whether schools will believe me, I'm hoping that the fact that I successfully transferred to a decent university even before the suit had been settled will inspire law schools to take a chance on me in the same way that my current undergrad institution did--maybe they'll see that it's worth it to admit me, and that my current school has no regrets for accepting me. (It may help that one of my letters of recommendation is coming directly from the president of my current school, who served as Dean at several good law schools before taking his current position.)

Third, I understand the "maturity" idea that inothingam was getting at (and I understand why it's inappropriate to call sexual assault an "immature" action, A. Nony Mouse) but that's certainly not going to stop me from applying this cycle. My "incident" did in fact happen 4.5 years ago (even if the expulsion that it led to happened only 2 years ago), so hopefully my squeaky-clean record since then will be noticed. And I am really, really certain about wanting to go to law school and be a lawyer, so I feel that I have very little to lose in applying now rather than later: the worst that happens is that I am rejected from literally every school I apply to, so I work for a few years or get a masters and try again in 2017. If I still don't get in anywhere in 2017...then maybe I give up and start working on my novel.