A recent webinar held by the excellent people at PIE provided a welcome degree of validation for us here at Amicus Partners. Discussing the role of technology in student recruitment, the speakers provided some great insights into the present and future of student recruitment. The “validation” part kicked in as the speakers began talking about the cost advantages that technology provides, especially when compared to the costs of offline events such as education fairs.

At Amicus Partners, I have seen the cost advantages up close. Targeted campaigns on Facebook for instance can be up and running for less than 5 cents a click; higher visibility campaigns (resulting in nearly 50,000 clicks a month) can be had for roughly 20 cents a click.

These are mind boggling numbers, and as any law school’s finance department will tell you, far, far lower than what will be spent on travel costs for one education fair alone.

Which is not to say that education fairs or in-person events are meaningless, far from it. At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I continue to believe that in-person interactions are crucial. But they need not be the only method of outreach.

Think of online campaigns as the first step of any outreach activity as opposed to the be all and end all. And, as elucidated above, these online campaigns do not necessarily entail a substantial financial investment.

Such campaigns should ideally include a social media presence, which in itself is again not that difficult to do. In fact, this is something that law schools around the world are already doing, some to great effect.

Having said that, and this is something our former intern Swati researched on, law schools rarely have a separate social media presence for LLM applicants alone. Instead, the presence is largely for and by the JD audience.

Which is unfortunate to say the least.

Not only does this mean that graduate admissions teams do not have access to the leads which social media campaigns can churn out, but it also adds to the perception that graduate programs are low down in the priority list for foreign law schools.

Which is, again, quite unfortunate.

But this can change. At very little cost. 

So, if you are a law school that is looking to build on India recruitments, here are a few things you can do:

  • Build a presence on at least one platform such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook (In that order)
  • Have a specific data collection page for LLM applicants to derive maximum benefit from the campaign
  • Outsource work to organisations such as Amicus Partners (cough cough)