Return to Blog Homepage

Law Schools Will Google You, So Clean Up Those Tweets

BPPshinners-lsat-blog-law-schools-will-google-you
I spend a lot of time on Twitter. Offering LSAT advice, pepping people up who seem down on their LSAT studies, that sort of thing.

And at least twice a day, I read a tweet that says, “I’m about to smoke this blunt then hit up the LSAT studiezzzzzzzzzzz.”

Most of the time, I can tell someone’s general demographic information from this tweet. Where they live. A first name. Even a picture. Looking at their history, I can usually even get a list of law schools to which they’re applying.

Starting to see why this is a bad thing? Ready for an after-school-special style LSAT blog post?

Law school admissions officers will look at your online presence. When you’re applying for a job, law firms will look at your online presence. They don’t like to see you admitting to felonious activity in a very public forum. That shows bad judgment.

Think I’m kidding? When I was in law school, some pictures were (privately) posted in a Facebook group from a party. We all set our privacy features to “Medieval Virgin Chastity Belt” or whatever the strictest setting is. Still, when going to some job interviews, pictures were printed out and people in them were asked to explain themselves. Yes, these things will come back to bite you.

You can put money on law schools (and firms) having a Twitter search set up for their schools (and firms). If you’ve ever posted an interest in them, they’re probably following you. Even if you haven’t, they’ll still probably run a Google search to see if there’s anything embarrassing about you online.

So you have to run this search first. After deciding to not post like an idiot anymore, go through all the sites you frequent and take down anything that speaks ill of your character. De-tag Facebook pictures like it’s your job. Delete posting histories at message boards. Change the names of your accounts to something so generic or misleading no one would ever guess it was you.

Then, do a Google search. If anything comes up that you can control, control it.

At the end of the day, law schools and firms have access to more information about you than ever before. They’re going to use it because they have a lot on the line. So make sure that there’s nothing they can use to decide against you. And, for the love of God, stop posting about your criminal activities online.

This has been a Public Service Announcement paid, in part, by Blueprint LSAT Prep. The more you know.

Speaking of PSAs, win a free Blueprint LSAT Prep course by shooting your own 30-second anti-self-study PSA in our latest video contest.