Law School Personal Statement — BRAINSTORM

If you’re planning to apply to law schools for next fall, it is NOT too early to begin working on the personal statement portion of your law school application. Please, allow yourself ample time in this stage! Spending time in this, over a period of weeks will enable you to target your statement’s theme. It will help you present yourself to the admissions committees as a valuable addition to their school. Get it on paper!

Brainstorming is the first stage in writing your law school personal statement. It is the process of gathering all of your ideas, and jogging memories of helpful information. This stage is critically important! Your goal is simply to capture your inner thoughts, who you are, onto paper so that you can communicate to lawschool admissions who you are.

Brainstorming is NOT:

• A draft
• An outline
• Nowhere close to the final essay.
  Do not edit & do not censor your thoughts.

Use the following to kick-start your lawschool personal statement:

Reflect on the following key questions. Discuss them with friends or family members—Do not scrimp with your time! These answers could form the heart of your personal statement. (It’s okay to not have a response to every question.)

Pre-college education:

How did this period in your life influence your decision to pursue law school?

• Volunteer and community work
• organizations, both community and student
• course work
• teachers.
• Was your education non-traditional (such as performing arts, home school, etc.)
• High school is a formative time, and may be quite important. Remember however, that you must portray yourself with a high level of maturity so high-school experiences in general probably shouldn’t occupy a large percentage of your final essay.)

College experiences:

In what ways have your college years influenced your decision to apply to lawschool?

• How did you come to choose your major? What was your decision making-process?
• What were your academic interests, research, special programs or independent study, student and community organizations, courses.

Sports, Hobby or Travel experiences:

How have these experiences contributed to your personal growth and influenced you?

• Varsity or non-traditional sports
• Championships or special honors, endurance athlete or unique athletic accomplishments, such mountain climbing, free-diving, etc.
• Travel, Travel alone? Lived abroad? Unusual living arrangements? Did you speak the language?

Work experiences:

How have past and current work experiences influenced your decision to pursue law?

• Internships, part-time and summer jobs, volunteer or community work.
• Did your financial situation require you to work while attending school?
• How many hours?
• Did you work for a family business, and was this required of you?
• Your work acquaintances…were they significantly different from you…younger, older, disabled, non-English speaking?
• Unique responsibilities or have you started your own company?
• Any unusual skills in any of your jobs?

People:

Who, and how has an individual or individuals influenced on your decision to pursue law school?

• Parents, siblings, relatives
• teachers and professors
• friends of your family, college friends, parents of friends,
• clergy, merchants, supervisors, coaches, doctors, lawyers, etc.

Family Background:

How has your family influenced you?

• Where did you grow up
• Are you or your parents/grandparents first generation US citizens?
• Languages spoken in your home.
• Are you an only child, or have more than five siblings?
• Are you adopted, and do you know your birth parents?
• Anything non-traditional about your household…significantly older/younger siblings, multi-generational?
• Did parents have unusual occupations or in the military?
• Did you have some responsibility for providing a degree of financial support to the family or have unusual responsibilities at home?
• Memorable vacation traditions?
• Unusual living situations such as: military base, farm, unique setting?
• How is your family different from the families of your friends?

Situation or situations that influenced your desire to be an attorney:

Were there one or several key events?
Note any turning points in your life, travel experiences, important people, life lessons, etc.

• Travel experiences
• Academic
• Work
• Athletics
• Family
• Academic
• Happy, sad, traumatic, moving or memorable events.
• Past successes or failures–
  Record any major successes and how you accomplished them. Past failures are sometimes great motivators and where we sometimes learn the most…don’t be afraid to mention them.

Personal Motivations and Goals to pursue law:

Remember that the admissions staff reviewing your application already know you’re “passionate” about the law and their school.
Think through your other interests, activities and experiences to develop something unique about you and what you would bring to their law school.

• Personal skills, interests, values, goals… As a mind-jogger, what would you do if you were not able to attend law school?
• A unique or valuable perspective or experiences that you would bring to the field.
• Your short and long-term goals. How would a particular school help you achieve that goal? Why would school “x” be the perfect place to help you meet these goals?
• What drives you to get up in the morning?

Happy Thinking!!

Tags: applications, law school, Law School Admissions, law school personal statement, personal statement, Writing