To gap year or not to gap year? There is no clear answer.
I have spent the last four years grappling with whether I wanted to take a gap year before going to law school. Do I take the time off to work? Volunteer? Go get a master’s degree? Relax at home with the support of my parents?
When I was considering the possibility of law school as a high schooler, I had no idea that gap years before law school were the norm. I cannot think of a single person I know personally who took one before college. The friends of friends who did were wealthy, supported by their families for a flamboyant year of vacationing and travel before their collegiate career began. In my picture of what the next five years looked like as a mere 18-year-old, a gap year wasn’t even an option I thought of.
As I solidified my decision to go to law school and quickly realized that more and more law schools not only valued a gap year but wanted it, I was puzzled on what to do. I didn’t want to go work another job just to say I had some work experience — I had four different internships’ worth of experience and the knowledge that there was nothing else I wanted to do. While I saved up enough for a fun trip once I graduate, I have nowhere near the capital needed to fund a year-long excursion abroad. And as much as I love to volunteer and help others, volunteering outside of trash clean-ups or animal rescues walks into murky water that always feels a little neocolonial and white saviorish.
It is an ethical dilemma I am still researching and reckoning with, and I want to do more research before I commit to such a task. I don’t want to burn out from school, but I also don’t want to get so used to financial independence that I simply don’t want to go to law school any longer, settling for something I half-enjoy out of mere ease.
I am the queen of “it wasn’t the right time,” but one thing I have been certain about since last fall is that now is the right time to go to law school. I don’t want to wait to start my career just because I think it’s something adcomm would appreciate.
While I certainly am not alone in this thought process, there are many others who think differently. At the four best law schools in the nation, somewhere between 70-90% of their 1L classes took gap years. Some think getting into school is worth the forced break while others genuinely want a diversified work experience before going to school and starting their legal careers. Some want paralegal or legal secretary experience to confirm that the law is really what they want to do. Some applicants wanted to travel, others wanted a break to avoid burnout. The possibilities as to why an applicant chooses, or doesn’t choose, to take a gap year are quite literally endless.
If you are in undergrad and considering whether you want to take a gap year, I will share advice with you that was given to me two years ago.
At a law school panel with different admissions counselors sharing advice on the law school process, I asked a question about how heavily they weighed gap years in comparison to those who come straight out of undergrad. They were very transparent when they said that their older students are often a little more mature, more certain that the law is right for them and just generally have more real-world experience than their KJDs. But an admissions counselor from the University of Buffalo laid it out a little differently.
She basically reminded me, and all the others in the Zoom call, that unless you are planning on taking multiple years between undergrad and law school, by the time you graduate and get started with a new job, you are practically already applying to law school. There is no time to solidify your work experience and confirm law school is 100% right for you. Some may not have a job by then either. This admissions counselor’s advice was basically to only do it if you’re going to take more than one year off or really want a diverse experience. Only you know if and when you are ready to go to law school.
This advice may not resonate with everyone, but it resonated with me. Was I really going to take a gap year just to add one full-time position to my resume that I will likely only have worked a few weeks to a few months at most? Unless I were to take a whole extra year off or push my LSAT exams to the last minute, I can’t even use all the free time I would’ve gotten back from homework and extracurricular responsibilities to study and take the LSAT.
Ultimately, you have to make the decision that is best for you, your wallet and your mental health. Sure, taking a year or more off can help you choose a legal subfield you are interested in and give you time to study for the LSAT, but going straight through also shows adcomm an elevated ability to multi-task and delegate multiple different responsibilities at a time — a useful skill to exemplify on your law school applications, perhaps.
To gap year or not to gap year is the age old question, but only you know what is best for you.
