Personal Statements
Learn How to Write a Stellar Personal Statement
Creating Your Personal Statement
Your personal statement is perhaps your first opportunity in life to flex some of your latent lawyering skills.
In writing your personal statement, you are both the lawyer (advocate) and the client (subject matter). Your job is to advocate in the most effective way possible on behalf of your own law school candidacy. To “win” this case, you have to convince the judge and jury (the admissions committee) that your candidacy is compelling enough to gain admission.
By the time you fill out your law school applications, you can no longer change some aspects of your case, like your grades or your LSAT. Yet it is the way in which you advocate on your own behalf that can make the difference in persuading the admissions committee that your candidacy is compelling.
Selecting a Personal Statement Topic
Selecting a personal statement topic is the first step and, sometimes, the hardest. Taking a look at your own personal experiences will be the key element to crafting the perfect personal statement. See the three recommended steps below.
First, Make a Chronology of Your Life
Go back through your life and make a chronology that includes: (1) academic, personal, and extracurricular accomplishments; (2) tragedies and obstacles overcome; (3) books or other pieces of writing that stuck with you over the years; (4) important/inspirational courses and professors you’ve taken; (5) meaningful jobs and volunteer work you’ve done; (6) the most important/inspirational people in your life and (7) if you’re leaning heavily towards a type of law you’d like to practice someday or a cause you’d like to serve using your legal education, then list in your chronology the events that pushed you in those directions.
Second, Canvass Those Closest to You
Ask your 3 closest family members and 3 closest friends to list the qualities they admire most about you, and the accomplishments, obstacles overcome in life, and life and academic experiences that most immediately come to mind when they think of you. Compile and condense those lists to see which qualities, accomplishments, obstacles overcome, life and academic experiences would make the best source material for a law school personal statement. Then add these to your chronology (and for the qualities, list any life experiences that exemplify those qualities). When canvassing your family and friends, you may want to show them your chronology as a way to help move along your conversations with them.
Third, Develop Personal Statement Topics from Your Chronology
With all this information organized into a chronology, you should be able to easily generate compelling topics for personal statements.
Popular Personal Statement Topics
You can write about almost anything when it comes to a personal statement for law school. In our experience, the majority of personal statements — and certainly many of the most successful ones — fit into one of the following three categories.
1. Answering a Question an Admissions Dean Would Most Likely Ask
Sometimes, after an admissions dean has read through an applicant’s resume and list of activities, it’s obvious what a person should write about. If you’re a serious collegiate athlete, write about that. If you’ve had significant leadership positions in student government or non-profits, then write about how they’ve matured you or how you hope to carry those efforts forward with a legal education. If a serious obstacle in your life has affected how you’ve studied or spent your time in extracurriculars, then write about that experience. The point is, if your resume or extracurriculars have a predominant theme, then hammer home that theme in a compelling personal statement.
2. A Memorable Academic Experience
Sometimes a college or even high school course steers you towards a life in the law. It could be a hands-on government experience during a college independent research course, or a science class that covered the intersection of science, policy and the law, or a term paper that explored law, policy or politics. Whatever that memorable academic experience, write about it and its impact on your career goals.
3. Words of Wisdom
Sometimes a book, a speech or even a quote can change the arc of your life. Or perhaps you were inspired by the example of a professor or teacher, and that inspiration has carried you forward to this day. If it has, then write about it, making sure to relate that writing or professor’s example to your life in tangible ways.
5 Dos of Personal Statement Writing
While there are probably 100 instructions we could offer about writing effective personal statements, these five are especially important.
1. Follow Directions
Every law school application has directions about the substance and format of the personal statement you need to write. Whatever those directions are — follow them. You could write a terrific essay, but if it doesn’t address the topic requested, admissions committee members will wonder why you didn’t follow their directions.
Take a look at some of the sample personal statement questions below that we’ve collected from various law schools. And note: some law schools will tell you to write about pretty much anything and to choose the length. In such cases, it’s far better to craft a traditional essay and keep it to two pages or less, than to try something substantively risky that goes on for five or 10 pages. In all instances, you should double-space your personal statement and put your name and Social Security number at the top of every page.
2. Grammar, Spelling & Details
The spelling and grammar of your personal statement must be flawless. Most personal statements are only two pages/500 words or so length. Find at least three people to proof your work before you submit it to any law school. And before you mail or hit the “Send” button on your applications, make sure you are sending the right personal statement to the right law school. This sounds like such obvious advice, but each year law schools receive the wrong personal statement from an applicant and that, alone, is enough to deny you admission.
3. Distinguish Yourself
The whole point of writing a strong personal statement is to convince an admissions committee that your written communication skills and some aspect of your life are more compelling than another applicant with a similar LSAT score. Put differently, if a law school admissions committee is looking to fill out its incoming class with an academic pedigree that’s similar to yours, then you need to explain why you’re more interesting or will contribute more to the incoming class than the next person with your same grades.
4. Be Confident & Positive
It almost always helps if your tone exudes confidence and positivity no matter the subject matter of your personal statement. Here’s what confidence and positivity mean in the context of a personal statement:
Confidence: Confidence, in a personal statement, means stating forcefully yet humbly what you expect to accomplish with your law degree, or stressing how you overcame something as opposed to dwelling on the obstacle, setback or tragedy in your life.
Positivity: Positivity, in a personal statement, means emphasizing the solutions to a problem or injustice rather than dramatizing for effect the problem or injustice or stressing what you learned or how you’ve matured by overcoming adversity in your life.
5. Start Strong & End Strong
Your opening paragraph or sentence must captivate your readers, and it must successfully introduce the subject matter of your personal statement. Likewise, your conclusion must resolve the topic you’ve raised in a memorable way. Because the beginning and ending of your personal statement are so critical, you should try out three different openings and three different conclusions to see which ones work best.
5 Don’ts of Personal Statement Writing
Just as there are probably 100 “Dos” we could offer, there are 100 “Don’ts” we could list, too — but the five below are among the most important.
1. Don’t Distill Your Resume into Essay Form
A personal statement is not a long-form resume. Your resume exists to organize and summarize your achievements and experiences into one page. Your personal statement exists to demonstrate to an admissions committee that your written communication skills are strong, that you are insightful and interesting, and that there exists a coherent story about why you’re applying to law school.
2. Don’t Focus on Your Weaknesses
Your personal statement is a positive essay to convince an admissions committee to admit you to their school. It is not a forum for excuses, explanations, or justifications about why some aspect of your law school application is weaker than it should be.
3. Don’t Write Colloquially
Think of the admissions committee as the judge or the jury hearing your case. You would never submit a court brief written in an informal style, replete with contractions, sarcasm, and unconventional structure. Do not write your personal statement in an informal manner.
4. Don’t Focus on Another Person to the Exclusion of Yourself
Sometimes, if you write about a book or quote or professor or some other person in your life, it is tempting to spend a significant amount of time during your personal statement writing about that person rather than yourself. Resist this temptation. You are not writing a personal statement in order to get that person admitted to law school. You are writing a personal statement to show how their wisdom affected you in a meaningful way and why you are a perfect candidate for admission.
5. Don’t Submit a Lightly Edited Draft
A surprising number of admissions deans at top law schools have told us that their schools routinely reject applicants with super-high GPAs and LSATs when those applicants submit a personal statement that clearly reflects a lack of effort or attention to detail. Nothing — nothing — turns off an admissions committee more than an applicant turning in a rough draft personal statement.
Sample Personal Statement Questions
Below are the personal statement writing instructions for seven top law schools. They should give you a good sense of the kinds of questions most law schools ask of applicants, as well as the instructions on the form for completing your personal statement.
Columbia Law School
“While there is no official page limit, a good guideline is two double-spaced pages, using readable fonts and margins. Your personal statement/essay should be a clear and concise example of your best writing. It should also be free from spelling and grammatical errors.”
Georgetown Law
“Georgetown Law does not have a minimum or maximum length for the personal statement, though we recommend around two pages double-spaced. You can write your personal statement on any subject that will enable the Admissions Committee to get to know you.”
Harvard Law School
“The personal statement provides an opportunity for you to present yourself, your background, your ideas, and your qualifications to the Admissions Committee. Please limit your statement to two pages using a minimum of 11-point font, 1-inch margins, and double spacing. We expect applicants to use the full two pages in crafting their statement.
The personal statement is intended as an opportunity to give the Admissions Committee a better sense of who you are as a person and as a potential student and graduate of Harvard Law School. In many instances, applicants have used the personal statement to provide more context on how their experiences and strengths could make them valuable contributors to the Harvard and legal communities, to illuminate their intellectual background and interests, or to clarify or elaborate on other information in their application. Because applicants and their experiences differ, you are the best person to determine the content of your statement.”
University of Michigan Law School
“As you prepare to write your personal statement, please keep the following in mind. First, we do not have a fixed checklist of particular attributes we seek in our students, and you will have the best insights into what is most important for us to know. Second, there is no set convention for communicating the information you choose to share. A successful essay might involve writing directly about expansive themes such as your goals or philosophy or background or identity, or very differently, might be a vignette that reveals something significant about you. Thus, there is no formula for a successful personal statement, and different individuals will find different topics to be well-suited to them. Applicants have, for example, elaborated on their significant life experiences; meaningful intellectual interests and extracurricular activities; factors inspiring them to obtain a legal education or to pursue particular career goals; significant obstacles met and overcome; special talents or skills; issues of identity, such as gender, sex, race, or ethnicity; particular political, philosophical, or religious beliefs; socioeconomic challenges; atypical backgrounds, educational paths, employment histories, or prior careers; or experiences and perspectives relating to discrimination, disadvantage, or disability. Any of these subjects, and many more, could be an appropriate basis for communicating important information about yourself that will aid us in reaching a thoughtful decision. In other words, think broadly about what you might wish to convey and how you might best convey it.
While we do not impose a page or word limit for the personal statement, we value clear and concise writing; most personal statements are between two and four pages. For ease of reading, please use double-spacing and at least an 11-point font.”
Northwestern University School of Law
“Your personal statement is an opportunity to present yourself as more than an LSAT score and GPA. The personal statement sets you apart from other candidates. It is also a sample of your ability to express thoughts clearly and cogently.”
Stanford Law School
“Enclose a statement of about two pages sharing important or unusual information about yourself that is not otherwise apparent in your application. This statement must be submitted electronically with your electronic application.”
University of Texas School of Law
“The personal statement is an opportunity to share with the Admissions Committee your background, interests, as well as the important experiences and aspects of yourself not otherwise apparent from your résumé and academic record. Your personal statement demonstrates to the Admissions Committee not only how you write—a skill fundamental to success in the legal profession—but also how you think and how you have reflected upon and derived meaning from your life experiences. Although there is no specific topic or question for the personal statement, your narrative should at some point address your decision to pursue a legal education.
Your personal statement may not exceed two (2) double-spaced pages with a minimum 11-point font size and 1-inch margins.”