I must admit that as a child and young person I had this opinion based on my environment and the conversations around me. I went well above the expectations of my job and took the initiative to plan several additional workshops on topics such as public speaking, time management, and confidence building. The author in this essay chooses not to directly address her reasons for wanting to attend law school. Plan not only the structure of your personal statement but its contents. Do you understand the type of content that law school admission essay samples are supposed to write in your request essay? Incredibly important, as should be clear by now!
Josh Mahoney, ’13
The only common thread is sincerity. The authors did not write toward an imagined idea of what an admissions officer might be looking law school admission essay samples they reckoned honestly with formative experiences. The writer of this personal statement matriculated at Georgetown, law school admission essay samples. She was not a URM. When I came to, they were wheeling me away to the ER. That was the last time I went to the hospital for my neurology observership. Back at the drawing board, I reflected on my choices. The first time around, law school admission essay samples, my primary concern was how I could stay in school for the longest amount of time possible. Key factors were left out of my decision: I had no interest in medicine, no aptitude for the natural sciences, and, as it quickly became apparent, no stomach for sick patients.
The second time around, I was honest with myself: I had no idea what I wanted to do. At six months, I was one toothbrush short of living at our office. It was an unapologetic aquatic boot camp—and I law school admission essay samples it. I wanted to swim. I remember my first client emergency. What am I going to do? I have enough confidence to set my aims high and know I can execute on them, law school admission essay samples. In law school admission essay samples course of my advertising career, I have worked with many lawyers to navigate the murky waters of digital media and user privacy.
Whereas most of my co-workers went to great lengths to avoid our legal team, I sought them out. The legal conversations about our daily work intrigued me. How far could we go in negotiating our contracts to reflect changing definitions of an impression? What would happen if the US followed the EU and implemented wide-reaching data-protection laws? Working on the ad tech side of the industry, I had the data to target even the most niche audiences: politically-active Mormon Democrats for a political client; young, low-income pregnant women for a state government; millennials with mental health concerns in a campaign for suicide prevention.
The extent to which digital technology has evolved is astonishing. So is the fact that it has gone largely unregulated. I hope to begin law school admission essay samples next career at the intersection of those two worlds. The writer of this essay was admitted to every T14 law school from Columbia on down and matriculated at a top JD program with a large merit scholarship. Her LSAT score was below the median and her GPA was above the median of each school that accepted her. The firm appeared to be falling apart. The managing partners were suing each other, morale was low, and my boss, in an effort to law school admission essay samples his client base, had instructed me neither to give any information to nor take any orders from other attorneys. I considered myself a competitive person and enjoyed the feeling of victory.
This, though, was the kind of competition in which everyone lost. Although I felt discouraged about the legal field after this experience, law school admission essay samples, I chose not to give up on the profession, and after reading a book that featured the U. Shortly after, I received an offer to work at the office. For my first assignment, I attended a hearing in the federal courthouse. As I entered the magnificent twenty-third-floor courtroom, I felt the gravitas of the issue at hand: the sentencing of a terrorist.
That sense of gravitas never left me, and visiting the courtroom became my favorite part of the job. Sitting in hearings amidst the polished brass fixtures and mahogany walls, watching attorneys in refined suits prosecute terror, cybercrime, and corruption, I felt part of a grand endeavor. The spectacle enthralled me: a trial was like a combination of a theatrical performance and an athletic event. I sat on the edge of my seat and watched to see if good—my side—triumphed over evil—the defense. Every conviction seemed like an unambiguous achievement.
In my very first week, I took the statement of a former high school classmate who had been charged with heroin possession. I did not know him well in high school, but we both recognized one another and made small talk before starting the formal interview. He had fallen into drug abuse and had been convicted of petty theft several months earlier. After finishing the interview, I wished him well. In that court, where hundreds of people trudged through endless paperwork and long lines before they could even see a judge, there were no good guys and bad guys—just people trying to put their lives back together. attorney for the Law school admission essay samples District of New York, and my former boss. As I now plan on entering the legal profession—either as a prosecutor or public defender—I realize that my enthusiasm momentarily overwrote my empathy.
The writer of this essay was offered significant merit aid packages from Cornell, Michigan, and Northwestern, and matriculated at NYU Law. Her LSAT score was below the 25th percentile LSAT score and her GPA matched the median GPA of NYU. I resided in two worlds — one with fast motorcycles, heavy pollution, and the smell of street food lingering in the air; the other with trimmed grass, faint traces of perfume mingling with coffee in the mall, and my mom pressing her hand against my law school admission essay samples as she left for work.
She was the only constant between these two worlds — flying me between Taiwan and America as she struggled to obtain a U. My family reunited for good around my sixth birthday, when we flew back to Taiwan to join my dad. I forgot about the West, acquired a taste for Tangyuan, and became fast friends with the kids in my neighborhood. Other nights, she would turn off the TV, and speak to me about tradition and history — recounting my ancestors, life during the Japanese regime, raising my dad under martial law. Along with the new language, I adopted a different way to dress, new mannerisms, and new tastes, law school admission essay samples, including American pop culture.
Whenever taxi drivers or waitresses asked where I was from, noting that I spoke Chinese with too much of an accent to be native, law school admission essay samples, I told them I was American, law school admission essay samples. At home, I asked my mom to stop packing Taiwanese food for my lunch. The cheap food stalls I once enjoyed now embarrassed me. Instead, I wanted instant mashed potatoes and Kraft mac and cheese. The open atmosphere of my university, law school admission essay samples, where ideas and feelings were law school admission essay samples freely, felt familiar and welcoming, law school admission essay samples, but law school admission essay samples references often escaped me. Unlike them, I missed the sound of motorcycles whizzing by my window on quiet nights.
It was during this time of uncertainty that I found my place through literature, discovering Taiye Selasi, Edward Said, and Primo Levi, whose works about origin and personhood reshaped my conception of my own identity. Their usage of the language of otherness provided me with the vocabulary I had long sought, and revealed that I had too simplistic an understanding of who I was. By idealizing the latter and rejecting the former, I had reduced the richness of my worlds to caricatures. Where I am from, and who I am, is an amalgamation law school admission essay samples my experiences and heritage: I am simultaneously a Mei Guo Ren and Taiwanese.
Just as I once reconciled my Eastern and Western identities, I now seek to reconcile my love of literature with my desire to effect tangible change. I first became interested in law on my study abroad program, when I visited the English courts as a tourist. As I watched the barristers deliver their statements, it occurred to me that law and literature have some similarities: both are a form of criticism that depends on close reading, the synthesis of disparate intellectual frameworks, and careful argumentation. Through my subsequent internships and my current job, I discovered that legal work possessed a tangibility I found lacking in literature. I hope to harness my critical abilities to reach beyond the pages of the books I love and make meaningful change in the real world.
The writer of this essay was admitted to her top choice—a T14 school—with a handwritten note from the dean that praised her personal statement. I had been with Mark the day before he passed, exactly one week before we were both set to move down to Tennessee to start our freshman year of college. I spent Christmas Day trying to act as normally as possible, hiding the news in order not to ruin the holiday for the rest of my family. This pattern of loss compounding loss affected me more than I ever thought law school admission essay samples would.
Eventually, I shut down emotionally and lost interest in the world—stopped attending social gatherings, stopped talking to anyone, and stopped going to many of my classes, as every day was a struggle to get out of bed. I had been interested in bodybuilding since high school, but during this time, the lowest period of my life, it changed from a simple hobby to a necessity and, quite possibly, a lifesaver. The gym was the one place I could escape my own mind, where I could replace feelings of emptiness with the feeling of my heart pounding, lungs exploding, and blood flooding my muscles, where—with sweat pouring off my forehead and calloused palms clenched around cold steel—I could see clearly again.
Not only did my workouts provide me with an outlet for all of my suppressed emotion, but they also became the one aspect of my life where I felt I was still in control. I knew that if it was Monday, no matter what else was going on, I was going to be working out my legs, and I knew exactly what exercises I was going to do, and how many repetitions I was going to perform, and how much weight I was going to use for each repetition. I knew exactly when I would be eating and exactly how many grams of each food source I would ingest. I knew how many calories I would get from each of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. My routine was one thing I could count on.
As I loaded more plates onto the barbell, I grew stronger mentally as well. It was the healing I did there that left me ready to move on. One of the fundamental principles of weightlifting involves progressively overloading the muscles by taking them to complete failure, coming back, and performing past the point where you last failed, law school admission essay samples, consistently making small increases over time. The writer of this essay was accepted to many top law schools and matriculated at Columbia. My rapist was my eighth-grade boyfriend, who was already practicing with the high school football team.
He assaulted me in his suburban house in New Jersey, while his mom cooked us dinner in the next room, in the back of an empty movie theatre, on the couch in my basement. It started when I was thirteen and so excited to have my first real boyfriend. He was a football player from a different school who had a pierced ear and played the guitar. I, a shy, slightly chubby girl with a bad haircut and very few friends, felt wanted, needed, and possibly loved. The abuse—the verbal and physical harassment that eventually turned sexual—was just something that happened in grown-up relationships. This is what good girlfriends do, I thought. They say yes, law school admission essay samples.
Never having had a sex-ed class in my life, it took me several months after my eighth-grade graduation and my entry into high school to realize the full extent of what he did to me. This was something that happened in a Lifetime movie, not in a small town in New Jersey in his childhood twin bed. As I grew older, law school admission essay samples, I was confronted by the fact that rape is not a surreal misfortune or a Lifetime movie. Rape is real. I am beyond tired of the silence.
school uniforms essays
I wanted them to begin to think about larger systemic issues outside of our immediate experience, as I was learning to, and to build confidence in new ways. I petitioned my school to start a Model UN and recruited enough students to populate the club. I began to understand that I cannot force change based on my own mandate, but I must listen attentively to the needs and desires of others in order to support them as they require. While I learned to advocate for myself throughout high school, I also learned to advocate for others. My neighbors, knowing my desire to be a lawyer, would often ask me to advocate on their behalf with small grievances. I would make phone calls, stand in line with them at government offices, and deal with difficult landlords. A woman, Elsa, asked me to review her rental agreement to help her understand why her landlord had rented it to someone else, rather than renewing her lease.
I scoured the rental agreement, highlighted questionable sections, read the Residential Tenancies Act, and developed a strategy for approaching the landlord. Elsa and I sat down with the landlord and, upon seeing my binder complete with indices, he quickly conceded before I could even speak. That day, I understood evidence is the way to justice. My interest in justice grew, and while in university, I sought experiences to solidify my decision to pursue law. As the only pre-law intern, I was given tasks such as reviewing court tapes, verifying documents, and creating a binder with indices. I often went to court with the prosecutors where I learned a great deal about legal proceedings, and was at times horrified by human behavior.
I worked with happy and passionate lawyers whose motivations were pubic service, the safety and well-being of communities, and justice. The moment I realized justice was their true objective, not the number of convictions, was the moment I decided to become a lawyer. I broke from the belief systems I was born into. I did this through education, mentorship, and self-advocacy. There is sadness because in this transition I left people behind, especially as I entered university. However, I am devoted to my home community. I understand the barriers that stand between youth and their success.
As a law student, I will mentor as I was mentored, and as a lawyer, I will be a voice for change. Although the applicant expressed initial reservations about the law generally, the statement tells a compelling story of how the applicant's opinions began to shift and their interest in law began. They use real examples and show how that initial interest, once seeded, grew into dedication and passion. The statement therefore shows adaptability—receptiveness to new information and the ability to change both thought and behavior based on this new information.
The writer describes realizing that they needed to be "in the world" differently! It's hard to convey such a grandiose idea without sounding cliche, but through their captivating and chronological narrative the writer successfully convinces the reader that this is the case with copious examples. This law school personal statement also discusses weighty, relatable challenges that they faced, such as the applicant's original feeling toward law, and the fact that they lost some friends along the way. However, the applicant shows determination to move past these hurdles without self-pity or other forms of navel-gazing.
Check out our video discussing other Law School Personal Statement examples here:. Click here to read this example. This writer opens with rich, vivid description and seamlessly guides the reader into a compelling first-person narrative. Using punchy, attention-grabbing descriptions like these make events immersive, placing readers in the writer's shoes and creating a sense of immediacy. They also do a fantastic job of talking about their achievements, such as interview team lead, program design, etc. Instead, they deliver this information within a cohesive narrative that includes details, anecdotes, and information that shows their perspective in a natural way. Lastly, they invoke their passion for law with humility, discussing their momentary setbacks and frustrations as ultimately positive experiences leading to further growth.
Click here to view the example. Like the third example above, this fourth law school personal statement opens with engaging description and first-person narrative. However, the writer of this personal statement chooses to engage a traumatic aspect of their childhood and discuss how this adversity led them to develop their desire to pursue a career in law. Overcoming adversity is a frequent theme in personal statements for all specialties, but with law school personal statements students are often able to utilize uniquely dramatic, difficult, and pivotal experiences that involved interacting with the law. It may be hard to discuss such emotionally weighty experiences in a short letter but, as this personal statement shows, with care and focus it's possible to sincerely demonstrate how your early struggles paved the way for you to become the person you are now.
It's important to avoid sensationalism, but you shouldn't shy away from opening up to your readers about adverse experiences that have ultimately pointed you in a positive direction. This writer does a fantastic job of incorporating their accomplishments and impact they had on their community without any sense of bragging or conceit. Rather, these accomplishments are related in terms of deep personal investment and a general drive to have a positive impact on those around them—without resorting to the cliches of simply stating "I want to help people. Additionally, they do a great job of explaining the uniqueness of their identity. Being able to express how fundamental aspects of law practice are an integral part of yourself is a hugely helpful tactic in a law school personal statement.
Similar to the writer of personal statement 5, this student utilizes the cultural uniqueness of their childhood to show how their path to law school was both deeply personal and rooted in ideas pervasive in their early years. Unlike the writer of statement 5, this student doesn't shy away from explaining how this distinctiveness was often a source of alienation and difficulty. Yet this adversity is, as they note, ultimately what helped them be an adaptable and driven student, with a clear desire to make a positive impact on the kinds of situations that they witnessed affect their parents. This writer also doesn't shy away from describing their temporary setbacks as both learning experiences and, crucially, springboards for positively informing their plans for the future.
One of the hardest things to accomplish in a personal statement is describing not just early setbacks that are out of your control but early mistakes for which you must take responsibility. The writer of this personal statement opens with descriptions of characteristics that most law schools would find problematic at best. But at the end of this introduction, they successfully utilize an epiphany, a game-changing moment in which they saw something beyond their early pathological aimlessness, to clearly mark the point at which they became focused on law. They clearly describe the path forward from this moment on, showing how they remained focused on earning a law degree, and how they were able to work through successive experiences of confusion to persist in finishing their undergraduate education at a prestigious university.
Of course, you shouldn't brag about such things for their own sake, but this writer makes the point of opening up about the unique feelings of inadequacy that come along with being the first person in their family to attend such a school, and how these feelings were—like their initial aimlessness—mobilized in service of their goal and the well-being of others. Their statement balances discussion of achievement with humility, which is a difficult but impactful tactic when done well. Preparing your law school applications is not easy. We can help! This writer successfully describes not only how they navigated the challenges in their group environments, such as their internship, the debate team, etc. They also avoid placing blame or negatively describing the people in these situations, instead choosing to characterize inherent difficulties in terms neutral to the people around them.
In this way, you can describe extremely challenging environments without coming off as resentful, and identify difficulties without being accusatory or, worse yet, accidentally or indirectly seeming like part of the problem. Expressing privilege as adversity is something that very few students should even attempt, and fewer still can actually pull it off. But the writer of this personal statement does just that in their second paragraph, describing how the ease and comfort of their upbringing could have been a source of laziness or detachment, and often is for particularly well-off students, but instead served as a basis for their ongoing commitment to addressing the inequalities and difficulties of those less comfortable.
In a word: passion. Every step of the way, this student relates their highs and lows, their challenges and successes, to an extremely earnest and sincere set of altruistic values invoked at the very beginning of their statement. This student also successfully elaborates this passion in relation to mature understanding. That is, they make repeated points about their developing understanding of law that sustains their hopefulness and emotional intensity while also incorporating knowledge of the sometimes troubling day-to-day challenges of the profession. Every pre-law student blames their lack of success on the large number of applicants, the heartless admissions committee members, or the high GPA and LSAT score cut offs.
Check out our blog on law school acceptance rates to find out more about the admission statistics for law schools in the US. Having taught more than a thousand students every year, I can tell you the REAL truth about why most students get rejected:. These mistakes put the student in a vicious cycle of self-condemnation and rejection letters. The most savvy and successful students normally escape the rejection letter by:. Assuredly, but this length varies from school to school. Be concise, keep economy of language in mind, and remain direct, without rambling or exhaustive over-explanation of your ideas or experiences. Give them an engaging narrative in your own voice. Admissions committees will already have a strong sense of your academic performance through your transcripts and test scores, so discussing these in your personal statement is generally best avoided.
You can contextualize these things, though—if you have an illuminating or meaningful story about how you came to receive an award, or how you enjoyed or learned from the work that won you the award, then consider discussing it. When you first sit down to begin, cast a wide net. Consider all the many influences and experiences that have led you to where you are. Incredibly important, as should be clear by now! Be mindful of your audience as you speak with them, and treat writing your personal statement as a kind of initial address in what, hopefully, will eventually turn into an ongoing dialogue. Sarah Lynn Kleeb is an admissions expert at BeMo. Kleeb holds a doctorate degree Ph. from the University of Toronto where she examined the connections between Critical Theory and Liberation Theology.
She brings 10 years of experience teaching, advising, and mentoring undergraduate students to her role as an admissions expert, having taught extensively at UofT. Law School Acceptance Rates. Our site uses cookies. By using our website, you agree with our cookie policy. Medicine Residency Law Graduate College Dentistry Other. Blog Resources Scholarship. Who We Are Work With Us Our Culture Our Philosophy Press. Call or Text. Blog Law School. Updated: Oct 13, Article Contents. Law School Personal Statements: More Than Just Following Directions Law School Personal Statement 1 Law School Personal Statement 2 Law School Personal Statement 3 Law School Personal Statement 4 Law School Personal Statement 5 Law School Personal Statement 6 Law School Personal Statement 7 Law School Personal Statement 8 Law School Personal Statement 9 Law School Personal Statement 10 Why Most Students Get Rejected: The Law School Personal Statement FAQ.
Law School Personal Statements: More Than Just Following Directions Students are always asking how to write a personal statement for law school, particularly one that stands out from all the rest. Law School Personal Statement Example: 1 When I was a child, my neighbors, who had arrived in America from Nepal, often seemed stressed. Learn how to show rather than tell in your personal statement in our video: Free Webinar: How to Make Your Law School Application Stand Out ","buttonText":"Register Now! Check out our video discussing other Law School Personal Statement examples here: Would you like us to help you with your law school application? Law School Personal Statement 4 Click here to view the example.
It is your introduction of yourself to the admission committee, the story of your passion for law, and your strong motivation to study at the chosen law school. A perfectly written and clear law admission essay is your chance to impress the admission officers. In the area of free samples, you can see law admission essay examples along with our editors' work with them — see how the text is improved after the editing and proofreading by a professional. How to Write a Resume for Law School Like a Pro Some schools will require you to submit a law… Continue Reading.
For our purposes, concise means precisely what you think it means… unless you think it means angry or purple… in… Continue Reading. Skip to content Tips of using EssayEdge samples. Law School Admission Essay Samples: Why You Require Them Obtaining entry to the best schools is not easy. Law School Admission Essay Template: How to Use Samples Properly Your convenience when looking for student writing template examples is always our priority. Law School Admission Essay Examples: How the Samples Help When it comes to preparing a student application, you may not always have the luxury of time. Make Use of Our Student Template Samples and Achieve Success Crafting an application for law school should not be a challenge to you. Use our free template samples to understand what you should do.
The examples have been prepared by specialists and thus have the right information you need. After using the examples to draft your paper, hire our expert editors to help you refine it. View Document Before Editing View Document Before Editing. View Document After Editing View Document After Editing. Free samples. Sample locked. Unlock Samples. Before After. Need Brilliant Admission Essay? Get the best admission coaching with EssayEdge editors. From initial brainstorm to polished Law Admission Essay drafts in 2 weeks.
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