This blog originally appeared on New England Law | Boston's website.
You are so much more than your LSAT score, undergraduate GPA, and extracurricular activities. That's why your personal statement is a critical part of your law school application: it's your chance to address the law school admission committee directly and show them your character, what’s important to you, and why you’re a great fit for the school. So don’t let it go to waste!
1. Focus on you
This may seem obvious, but law school applicants sometimes miss this important point: your personal statement needs to be about you. Not the people or work that influenced you. You.
Think about your strengths, defining characteristics, and values—especially the ones that might come into play as a lawyer. Are you thoughtful, analytical, empathetic, service oriented? How do you spend your free time? What motivates you?
2. Brainstorm broadly
Good law school personal statement ideas often come from:
- Extracurricular activities
- Meaningful obstacles or challenges
- Professional activities
- Accomplishments
- Hobbies or other unique interests that are important to you
Handy tip: Update your résumé before you brainstorm personal statement topics. Even though you definitely don’t want to just repeat your résumé in your personal statement, you’ll be forced to remember all the things you’ve been involved in since you became an undergrad.
Related: How to Write the Grad School Application Essay/Personal Statement
3. Be genuine
You don’t need to be a superhero to impress the law school admission committee. You can even write your personal statement about a mistake or a weakness—just make sure you turn it around to show how you ultimately overcame that mistake or weakness. But don’t stretch the truth (ahem). We can tell. And we fact check.
4. Just write
Once you have a personal statement topic in mind, set aside some time to write—and just let yourself go. Give yourself permission to bang out a crummy first draft. Don’t worry about making it sound good; just focus on getting your ideas on the page (er, screen). You can always edit later.
Related: 7 Steps to Writing Your Grad School Personal Statement
5. Remember your “why”
You want to go to law school to work in the legal field. But why is law school a critical next step in your career path? While you don’t necessarily need to spell out why you want to be a lawyer, your underlying reasons for going to law school should be the foundation of your personal statement.
6. Be specific
Zero in on a specific instance or moment in time, then really dig into the details and make the moment come alive. You’re only going to be able to highlight one or two things about yourself, so be thoughtful about what those things are.
7. Grab their attention
Unlike your undergraduate application essay, you may need to be more straightforward with your personal statement for law school. You still want to tell a story that allows the admission committee to get to know the real you and remember you in a sea of applicants.
Start your personal statement with an attention-grabbing anecdote, a surprising fact, or an intriguing line of dialogue. That being said, write like you normally would—don’t write in a style you haven’t mastered.
Related: Great Grad School Application Essay Examples
8. Know what makes the school tick
You probably already did lots of research to determine which law schools really fit you (you did, right? Right?!). So by the time you’re drafting the personal statement portion of your application, you should have a good sense of what your intended schools are all about. If you don’t, then you don’t know the law school well enough to write a great personal statement.
9. Polish it up
Competition is tough, and you want your application to be as strong as it can be. Plus, there’s a lot of writing in law school, and you need to prove that your skills are up to snuff.
Carefully proofread your personal statement—not to mention the rest of your law school application—before you send it in. Did you fully respond to any given prompt? Did you adhere to any special formatting or submission criteria? Have you have used the right law school name?
Finally, ask others to review your personal statement too, like an undergrad professor, mentor, or that good college friend who aced English 101. You can also take your essay to the writing or career services office at your undergraduate school.
Read the full article here, and start searching for law schools on CollegeXpress.
