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Tuesday, March 19
The Indiana Daily Student

Law School Fair draws 124 law schools

Senior Caitlin Gardner fills out paperwork for information on the School of Law at Northeastern University at the IU Law School Fair on Monday in Alumni Hall.

An estimated more than 500 students wandered from table to table in Alumni Hall in the Indiana Memorial Union on Monday, asking questions and gathering brochures from the law schools they hope to attend after graduation.

The Law School Fair took place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. as part of Law Day and has been the largest Law School Fair to take place at any school nationwide for 10 consecutive years, according to the University.

There were 124 law schools in attendance.

Mac Francis, director and prelaw adviser in the Health Professions and Prelaw Center, said that planning for the fair begins at least a year in advance.

Francis said planning already began for next year’s fair a week or two ago.

“It all came together today,” he said. “I’m always a little nervous beforehand.”

IU coordinates law school visits to undergraduate institutions all around the Midwest, and many of the institutions that came to IU’s fair will visit other large Midwestern universities in the next four days, Francis said.

John Simpson, director emeritus of the Health Professions and Prelaw Center, said he estimates IU has had a law school fair for the past 20 to 25 years.

“We were in rather at the beginning of it, I think,” he said.

IU’s fair doesn’t only cater to IU students, Simpson said.

Students from more than 20 other undergraduate institutions came to IU on Monday for the law fair. Francis said this is likely due to the volume of schools that come to recruit at IU’s fair.

“We get about twice as many schools as No. 1,” he said.

George Justice, assistant dean of admissions for the law school at Touro College, said he attends about 75 law fairs per academic year — most of them in the fall — and that IU’s is consistently one of the best in the ?country.

“It’s predictable because students will be here,” he said. “That isn’t necessarily true of other universities.”

Justice attributed this to the work that Francis and his colleagues do to get the word out about IU’s fair.

Simpson said law fairs like IU’s provide a rare ?opportunity to get personal attention from law school representatives.

“We’re a smaller law school, so we really appreciate that personalization,” ?Justice said.

He said the ability to interact with students allows him to put a personality to the school he’s representing and add humanity to the ?admission process.

At Touro, Justice said he is one of the reviewers of ?admission decisions.

He acknowledged that a lot of the school’s information is available online but once again emphasized the importance of the human element.

“The website’s fine, but you’re not gonna be attending a website,” he said.

Justice said the number of schools attending IU’s fair is remarkable for an ?individual institution.

Law Day also included a panel discussion on law school admission and application from 9 to 10:45 a.m. in the Whittenberger ?auditorium.

This panel discussion featured Janet Hein, director of admissions at IU’s Maurer School of Law, Collins Byrd, dean of admissions and the University of Iowa College of Law, and Pamela Bloomquist, dean of admissions and financial aid at the Loyola University Chicago School of law, according to the University.

Francis estimated that there would be at least 500 students in attendance, since that was the rough number last year, but he said that attendance increased at the panel and therefore would likely be higher at the fair.

“Things are picking up,” he said.

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