CHAPTER 6: THE PERSONAL STATEMENT

We come to it at last: the dreaded “personal statement.” This is the part of the application that many applicants fear the most. Some applicants have an unreasonable expectation that their personal statement needs to be earth-shattering, or that they need an incredibly memorable and dramatic story. That’s not the case. Even if you weren’t born into poverty, haven’t battled cancer, or didn’t move to India to save thousands of children, you still have an interesting story to tell. So how do all of us normal people write a personal statement?

Well, first of all, you will likely have more interesting stories than most applicants as a result of your time in the military– especially when you consider that a large percentage of applicants are coming straight out of college. But more importantly, the thing to understand about the personal statement is that how you write matters as much as what you write about. There are two reasons for this: 1) law schools use the personal statement to evaluate your writing ability, which is a crucial skill for law students and lawyers; and 2) good writing can turn the most ordinary story into something interesting to read.

An engaging writing style makes your personal statement authentic, lively, and interesting, even if the story is somewhat routine. This should give you confidence going into the personal statement because your writing is entirely under your control– and great writing largely comes down to revision, revision, and more revision.

As you begin writing, we have several recommendations that will help you with your writing style. We like William Zinsser’s On Writing Well and James Kilpatrick’s The Writer’s Art. These two books cover the basics of great writing and will give you a solid foundation as you begin your personal statement.

WHY DOES THE PERSONAL STATEMENT MATTER SO MUCH?

To gain admission to elite schools, you have to be more than just your numbers. This is where the personal statement comes in. While your LSAT and GPA will speak to your intelligence and work ethic, your personal statement will show something essential about who you are and what special qualities you will bring to a law school program. (Don’t worry about looking “unique,” even for top law schools. Most people, frankly, aren’t the only this-or-that on the planet, and that’s perfectly fine. Don’t hold yourself to that standard.) If done well, the personal statement can elevate an application with slightly weaker numbers. Typically, though, you can’t write your way around flat-out non-competitive numbers, so manage your expectations.

The weight given to personal statements will vary by school. If you are applying to a Top-14 law school, the personal statement will be crucial. The top programs get thousands of applications a year and turn away lots of people with good LSAT and GPA numbers. A good personal statement helps you stand out from the crowd and can convince an admissions committee that you are worth having in their classrooms.

Your personal statement conveys more about you than just the words you put on paper. Your maturity and self-reflection about the course of your life and your future career should be evident, and your choice of topic should reflect your personality and priorities. Your ultimate goal with the personal statement goal is to allow your energy, passions, and goals to shine through.

WHY THIS WORKS IN YOUR FAVOR

The impact that a personal statement can have works in your favor– if you know how to make the most of it. Admissions committees actually look forward to reading the thousands of essays that come in every year and learning more about the applicants. So they are disappointed when they receive essays that are dry, boring, clichéd, error-riddled, and predictable. A trite or lifeless essay can spoil an otherwise compelling application.

And this gives you an advantage. If you make your statement truly personal, introspective, and alive with detail, you will capture the attention and imagination of the reader. The best way to do this is to tell a good story. Take the reader on an emotional ride. This is not a term paper or a book report, and it’s certainly not supposed to show you can “write like a lawyer.” Tell a story that only you can tell, in your own voice. This shouldn't be difficult for a military veteran.

PERSONAL STORIES VS. PROFESSIONAL ESSAYS

Essays can be roughly categorized as either personal or professional. A “personal” essay will focus on some aspect of you that is separate from your career and not immediately related to your reasons for wanting to be a lawyer. A “professional” essay will focus more on your professional life and your future career goals. The two can blend together, but this must be done carefully; if you try to cram too much into a two-page essay you risk producing a statement that feels vague and/or forced.

Unless a school expressly asks why you’re applying to law school (the most elite schools typically don’t), you don’t need to focus your entire essay specifically on that but it helps to have a link to "why law," usually in the latter half of the essay. Admissions officers have read thousands of sappy essays about why someone desperately wants to go to “X Law School” and save the world as a lawyer. Without this burden, you are free to write a great story that highlights who you are as a person. You want the admissions officers, after reading your personal statement, to say, “I like this person and want to get to know them better.”

If an essay prompt requires you to write about your motivations for going to law school, that’s fine. You should still put a personal touch on your motivations for seeking a law degree– the less clichéd and the less abstract, the better. Don’t write about “The Law” in the abstract; write about yourself, your goals, and how law school fits into what you want to accomplish in your life.

Ultimately, you want to find concrete stories that can serve as metaphors for your life, your values, and your personality. Look for stories with the most emotional appeal, conflict, growth, etc. If there is a story that shows your personal transformation and is distinctive just to you, this might be the one you want to use.

WRITING THE ESSAYS

Like many other parts of the application, the personal statement is definitely something that you want to start early and work on often. You will need to go through multiple drafts until it is perfect– there is no such thing as “good enough” here.

Below are tips for crafting a good essay– try to keep them in mind throughout your writing process:

Have an underlying message.

A great story will have one central theme/take-away that the reader can sum up in a single sentence. Be clear in your mind about what that point is. Make sure everything in your essay (It’s short! You’re not writing Moby Dick) drives towards the message you’re trying to convey. Make every word and every sentence count.

Write a memorable story.

A good essay will tell a memorable story. You achieve resonance by being authentic and avoiding clichés, and by using details rather than abstractions or generalizations. Remember, this isn’t a term paper. You can use the first person, dialogue, humor, and any other devices that make sense. It can be happy or sad. It can be funny or serious or both. Ultimately, it must be genuine and resonate on a personal level in order to be memorable.

Show, don’t tell, your story.

Every time you put a word to paper in your essay, think “Show, Don’t Tell.” One of the biggest mistakes writers make is describing who they are, what they have done, what their values are, etc. Instead, you should show the reader those things through the use of anecdotes. Don’t tell the readers that caring for Wounded Warriors is one of your passions– show them by discussing the fundraiser you led, the volunteering you do on weekends, and time you dedicate to working with Wounded Warriors. It’s about walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

KISS.

Be straightforward in your writing. Just because you’re applying to law school doesn’t mean you need to use fancy, hundred-dollar words. But still hold yourself to a high standard– there is no excuse for grammatical mistakes, typos, and clumsy sentences. Keep your language simple and natural, and avoid unnecessary adjectives and jargon. Make sure to use language everyone (i.e. civilians) can understand. Reread William Zinsser’s On Writing Well.

Don’t use clichés or generalized statements.

For an admissions officer who reads thousands of essays, there is nothing more frustrating than seeing the same cliches over and over again. For veterans, one such cliche is how a combat deployment demonstrated to you that all people really want the same thing from life– freedom and family. Even if that's true, the theme shows no real thought on your part. So don’t just sit at that level of abstraction– dig deeper.

Be strategic about your essays.

Use your personal statement to show a different side of yourself than what is obvious from the rest of the application. Write about something that is not reflected in your resume, GPA, or letters of recommendation. This will help you make sure you hit all of the important parts of your candidacy that you want to get across.

Don’t whine, complain, or exaggerate.

If you are describing a difficult experience you went through, make sure you do not come across as whiny or bitter. Cynicism isn't interesting. And do not exaggerate anything in your essays to make yourself look better. Doing so is dishonest and unbecoming of military veterans, and will also sink your application if you are caught.

Write with energy and passion.

With so many things to keep in mind, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that reading your essay should be an enjoyable and thought-provoking experience for the reader. After you have finished multiple drafts, take a step back and reassess whether you have captured something important about you in those two pages. If not, figure out whether 1) you haven’t picked a topic that distills something important about you, in which case you have to go back to the drawing board, or 2) you have picked the right topic but you need to work some more on the execution.

Engage the reader with a great opening.

Your first paragraph should set the scene for the rest of the essay and capture the reader’s attention. You don’t need to shock the reader, just give them something that will make them want to keep reading. DO NOT use a quotation from a famous person. It’s lazy and overdone.

Don’t finish with a conclusion.

You do not need a tidy, meaningful conclusion for the essay. You don’t need to summarize what you’ve just said, and you also don’t need to end by explaining why you want to go to law school– and/or that school in particular– unless a school expressly asks for that. But you can do this if it makes sense. Your personal statement is about you, so figure out what sort of conclusion/wrap-up feels natural.

Page Limit and Formatting.

If the school does not specify a page or word limit, keep your essay to 2 pages double-spaced, size 11 or 12 Times New Roman font. The margins should be about one inch on all sides. Do not write less than one page or more than three pages, unless a school explicitly invites you to do so. NEVER write over the page limit or alter the font to squeeze extra words in. Admissions officers read thousands of essays and have deliberate guidelines for a reason.

Read your essay out loud.

Your essay will be read very quickly and probably only once, so it's crucial that it flows well and leaves the right impression. Reading your essay out loud will help you figure out if you passed the KISS test and will allow you to get a better sense for the flow of it– which words are not right, which sentences are clunky, which are too hard to follow, etc. You want the essay to sound conversational, not formal. Put yourself in the position of an admissions officer reading/hearing your essay for the first time– is your language crisp, does your structure make sense, are your anecdotes lively, and does the whole package convey what you want it to? Prior to submitting your essay, have someone else read the essay out loud to ensure it is free of typos; the easiest way to jettison an application is to submit an essay riddled with errors.