Career Center, Career Files, Law Students

Personal Statement Dos And Dont's

A bad essay might drag an otherwise strong application into the rejection pile, just as a good essay can help a borderline application find a place in the “yes” pile. You need to write something strong. Here’s how.

By David Busis  
on

Laptop in classic library

Numbers speak, but they always say the same thing. A 180 is a 180; a 4.0 is a 4.0. Law schools use personal statements, among other factors, to differentiate applicants with comparable LSAT scores and grades.

A bad essay might drag an otherwise strong application into the rejection pile, just as a good essay can help a borderline application find a place in the “yes” pile. You need to write something strong. Here’s how.

1. Tell a story about yourself.

It’s not called a legal or social-issue statement, and you shouldn’t be opining about social or legal issues. You should tell a story about how you became who you are, and maybe about why you’re applying to law school. (But you don’t have to explain why you’re applying to law school unless the prompt asks).

My definition of a story is simple: something happens, and you learn or grow. The event itself doesn’t have to be dramatic. An essay about milking goats or shopping for a couch could be just as compelling as one about immigrating to America or fighting injustice in the developing world. In fact, it’s easy to render an extraordinary event mundane with soggy writing, but difficult to make a mundane event seem extraordinary. An essay that does the latter has a better chance of standing out.

Place the event in the wider context of your life. Why did it feel like a milestone when you stood up to that rude barista? How did those lazy days of reading novels in the hammock—the first time you allowed yourself to relax in months—help you clarify your priorities? When did your growing interest in food policy become a conviction that you had to go to law school?

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If you can explain why the event mattered to you, you’ll be able to make it matter to your readers.

2. Proofread till your eyes ache.

Typos make you look stupid. Full stop.

Let your essay rest for a day or two, which restores your perspective, then read it out loud, which forces you to slow down. Think about every word.

Look for comma splices, apostrophe errors, capitalization errors, double words (“He was going going to stay longer”), missing articles (“I want to be lawyer because”), extra spaces, and homophone errors (“You’re to kind,” “No, your too kind”). If you know you sometimes confuse, say, it’s and its, search for every instance of each word.

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Look also for common word mixups: lose and loose, affect and effect, i.e. and e.g., than and then. If you can’t tell the difference between the words in these pairs, get thee to a dictionary.

For basic primers on grammar and usage—how to use a semicolon, how to eliminate run-ons—I recommend the Purdue OWL. For nit-picky questions—how to use hyphens in a phrase like “three- to five-hour hike,”—I recommend the Chicago Manual of Style. For questions of capitalization, check the dictionary first.

3. Be concrete, not abstract.

I’ll make my meaning concrete with an example:

For me, college was liberating because it gave me a new opportunity to choose for myself whether to sink or swim. I rose to the challenge and spent the next three years removing the shackles which for so long I believed truly existed. I started acting as though what I had been led to believe about myself was not immutable truth.

The clichés in this passage are only a symptom of the author’s vagueness. If he’s trying to say that he reinvented himslef in college, he should tell the reader how:

In high school, I was afraid of seeming like a goody-goody and took a perverse pride in not working hard. I left that childish attitude behind when I started college. Microeconomics was the first subject that excited me enough to study late into the night.

(Many people file this kind of mistake under the “show, don’t tell” principle, but there’s nothing wrong with telling so long as you also show. Call it the kindergarten rule: you want to show and tell.)

4. Don’t write about your trip abroad.

Every year, hordes of Americans go to the developing world, look at poor people, and decide to care about social justice. Nearly all of them apply to law school.

I’m only being glib to show you what it looks like from the other side of the desk. Admissions officers are swimming in First World versus Third World essays. If you do choose to write about your trip abroad, the punchline should be more nuanced than, “And then I realized how lucky I was,” or, “And now I care about human rights.”

If you’re writing about something you only witnessed, there’s a good chance your essay is weak. If you’re writing about something you did, your essay may have legs.

5. Don’t do it for the children unless you’re really, really sincere.

This is a broader version of the guideline above. If you write about your burning passion to help the children, the underserved, or the voiceless, you’re going to come across as flaky or disingenuous unless you have a solid record of community service.

6. Don’t begin with a meaningful quote.

Essays built around quotations are usually strained, boring, impersonal, and trite—plus they smell like high school. If you’re determined to write about a quote, choose one to which you have a personal connection, and use it to begin a scene:

“The squeaky wheel gets the oil,” my mother reminded me, as we waited in line at the DMV.

7. Don’t say that a movie or TV show inspired your career path.

The only reason you should mention a courtroom drama is to note how it diverges from real life. If you say you want to become a lawyer because of Atticus Finch or Alicia Florrick, you will—and there’s only one way to say this—look like a chump.

David Busis is a writer and law school admissions consultant. This post is adapted from his Admissions Starter course with 7Sage.

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