What, Like It’s Hard? | Let’s get personal

When I finally took my last dreaded LSAT this summer, I kept telling myself I was going to write my personal statement.

I kept telling myself I was going to get it done. 

Then I said that it was time to start writing. 

Suddenly, it was August, my internship was over, and I still hadn’t written it.

If you have applied via the Common App for your undergraduate education, you might recall writing a “Common App essay.” This is one decently long essay that gets sent to all schools you applied to with only slight, if any, changes in between each application. The personal statement is essentially the same thing but for law schools — it is a two-ish page essay that gets changed only slightly between applications. 

It is supposed to explain to admissions committees (adcomm) why you want to go to law school and be a lawyer. You might even explain what kind of law you want to practice or why you want to join a specific program. It seems easy on the surface, and for some I am sure it is, but this often makes or breaks an application.

I went into overcompensation mode to figure out what I should write about. I made pro-con lists, spent hours on the phone with my mom brainstorming and started who knows how many drafts until I settled on a topic. You see, the best personal statements I read revolved around a story or incident in the author’s life. For example, a free story you can find on 7Sage revolves around the author being asked if the law firm she worked for made her want to jump off the building. Another was about the death of a dear friend.

What is my personal story? I have plenty of reasons for wanting to be a lawyer, and lots of events in my life have crystallized that future. But I wanted the perfect story, one that would leave an impact on adcomm of every school I applied to. I wanted them to look at my name and go, “Oh, that’s the girl that wrote about X!”

I finally decided to write about shoes and my time working in a Chicago prosecutor’s office. I wrote six different drafts in hopes that it was about as perfect as it could get. I hope it will leave the impact I want it to have on adcomm, but you can never be certain until you get an interview or decision in your mailbox.

A lot of people place an emphasis on the hards of an application — what your GPA is and what you got on your LSAT or GRE. To a certain extent, it can make submitting applications seem formulaic. But more and more schools are switching to a holistic approach, and it won’t matter how shiny your 4.0 and 180 is if you submit a crappy personal statement. For my fellow applicants who are applying to reach schools, this is your shot to show your passion and affirm that you would be an excellent student even if your scores are under the medians.

If I could do it all again, I would have tried harder to write it over the summer. A personal statement definitely does not take a whole summer to write, but you need to make sure that when you go to write your own story, you give yourself at least a few weeks. You need some time to brainstorm, some time to write and lots of time to revise. Make sure you are sharing it with people who are close to you and know you well, people who have experience applying to law school and people who have little idea who you are. 

I would encourage people to not share it with a ton of people. The feedback often gets conflicting, which only confuses you more. Identify five to six individuals who you think will give you substantive feedback, and be unafraid to receive criticism and edits. With the personal statement, you will work on it for so long that eventually, picking out what actually needs to be fixed will become impossible.

In terms of picking your story and the topic you are going to write about, really sit with your thoughts and try to identify moments where you were most confident law school was right for you, or maybe moments where you were too scared to take the leap but overcame that anxiety. Your personal statement doesn’t have to be some sob story or existential moment in your life, but it has to be something that speaks to why you decided on law school. When I was brainstorming topics, I tried focusing on my past work and volunteer experiences. I also began thinking back to moments where I became an advocate or witnessed adversity.

Getting this essay just right will be one of the more difficult parts of the application process, but when it comes together you will be completely relieved to move on — which is why a lot of people recommend getting it done before applications even open up. In retrospect, I really wish I was more on top of things and got it done when I wasn’t shrouded in homework and tests, but we live and we learn. We can move on to other aspects of the application process knowing what it takes to write a good essay and with a whole list of brainstormed ideas to use for other prompts on hand.