Review of Law School Expert Podcast

The Law School Expert Podcast by Ann Levine

Ann Levine has appeared on this blog before when I reviewed her absolutely phenomenal guidebook "The Law School Admissions Game."  I found it to be almost without fault, and far and away the single most helpful resource for getting into law school that I have ever encountered.

That glowing praise aside, I have also mentioned Ms. Levine and LawSchoolExpert.com at other times.  The site is basically a portal for her services as an admissions consultant for law school applicants, but it does contain a highly useful blog and links to her podcast.

The blog is a good resource, but not the type of thing I would write a full review for.  The podcast, on the other hand, deserves some consideration.

Podcasts that aim to provide a service can be wonderful, but they tend to suffer from a common problem: They are either put out by one person, and suffer from narrow minded, one size fits all opinions, or they cull information from a variety of resources, but are unable to help the listener sort the good from the bad.

The LawSchoolExpert podcast deftly avoids this by combining the expertise of host Ann Levine with the real-world stories of 3-4 guests on each show.  Ms. Levine's expertise is well documented on her website, but additionally has been noted in her excellent book as providing an insider guide to the law school admission process.  The guests, on the other hand, complement this nicely with anecdotal stories of their own experiences, including what worked and what didn't.  The listener gets the best of both worlds!

Part of the reason it works so well is the way Levine handles the podcast.   I have no idea how she selects her guests, but they usually represent a nice cross section of the audience the topic is aimed at.  For example, in her podcast on applications for "non-traditional" students (i.e. those with significant prior careers) she managed to find some who had been in completely different fields, some with strong credentials, some with weaker credentials, and even a variety of different ages and genders.  The rest comes from her expert wrangling of these personalities during the podcast, as Levine makes sure to ask each questions to bring out the most useful information.  Finally, she caps it off with a strong editorial of expert opinion, making sure to point out anytime a guests experience is a rare exception, so listeners can use the information correctly.

The podcast covers a variety of topics, again, generally focused on law school admissions, current or former students will find little useful information.  The podcast publishes very irregularly, but that is part of the beauty.  Rather than forcing out a show every week, episodes are published in half hour blocks about important topics, and it is easy to locate past shows that relate directly to your own query.  I would recommend listening to all of them, but searching by title and topic is an option as well.  They can be located in iTunes, or directly from her site here.  They are hosted by BlogTalkRadio, which apparently allows listeners to call in live, however I have never known this to happen.