The personal statement is a written description of one’s interests, achievements, and other important info included as a part of an application for a place at a college or university.
When sending applications to different schools and colleges the chances are high you’ll also have to submit a personal statement. Law school isn’t an exception. Before you get all nervous and frustrated, you should bear in mind that writing personal statements isn’t the most difficult task in the world. Throughout this post, I’m going to show you some law school personal statement examples and provide a few tips that will help you compose your statement easily. Or you can work as proofreader
Stuck on Your Personal Statement?
Check out these example personal statement.
Dos and don’ts
Before you start working on your law grad school personal statement, you have to know what is okay to do and things to avoid. Knowing dos and don’ts helps you shape the personal statement and avoid common mistakes that students usually make when submitting their applications.
DO:
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- Always be yourself. Instead of adding to your personal statement things you think they want to hear, tell the admission board the truth about yourself. Be you!
- Ask someone to edit and proofread the personal statement for you, to make sure you don’t overlook some common mistakes
- Edit and proofread the statement as soon as you finish writing your law school personal statement
- Feel free to talk about personal statement topics with the pre-school advisor or some other individual who’s familiar with the process
- Focus on the first paragraph of the personal statement. Just like with “regular” essays, the first paragraph has to be intriguing and interesting enough to catch reader’s attention and make him/her want to keep reading the paper
- Instead of choosing a broad topic and writing generalities, opt for a narrow topic where you can add specific details. The best thing to do is to focus on a specific experience and the influence it had on you
- Instead of dragging the personal statement to make it appear larger, you should keep it brief and simple. Remember, quality always beats quantity. Generally, personal statements should take 2-3 double-spaced pages
- Make sure the personal statement is interesting and energetic. You don’t want the admission board to yawn while reading it. Tell the story, keep the audience engaged
- Strive to consider the audience. For instance, personal statement law school is usually evaluated by admission board consisting of professors, admission professionals, third-year law students. All these people have been where you are now, you have to write the statement in a manner that will showcase your individuality but impress them at the same time. Your goal is to come across as an interesting classmate, attentive student, and an accomplished individual (or as a person who’s motivated to achieve great things)
- Try enriching personal statement with info from your background, any detail that sets you apart from other students e.g. family, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic factor
- Write in active voice
DON’T
- Play a role of a judge or lawyer when you’re writing a personal statement
- Use jargon or other legal concepts. Remember, you want to enroll into the law school and your admission will be reviewed by individuals who specialize in law. When you use jargon or legal concepts there is always the risk of misusing them Write your entire life story and restate information you’ve already written in the resume. After all, your personal statement should tell the story why you want to study law
- Use cliché phrases, expressions, and stories about the mission to save the world etc. Be honest about your experiences and how you perceive them to emphasize your individuality
- Turn the personal statement as a sort of explanation for weak grades and some other discrepancies in the application. All potential issues should be addressed in an addendum. On the other hand, your personal statement should focus on the positives, rather than negatives
- Advocate a controversial opinion or idea before thinking it through. Yes, lawyers are used to all sorts of ideas and topics, but it doesn’t mean you should promote some radical ideas in content whose purpose is to explain why you want to be a law student. Plus, there’s always the risk of appearing close-minded
How to write a personal statement?
Every educational institution usually releases criteria and requirements along with personal statement prompts to help students understand what they’re looking for. Before you get to see the examples of law school personal statements, I’m going to give you some useful tips that will make it easier for you to start working on your admission. At this point, you’re probably wondering how to start a personal statement and these tips will help you write a killer opening paragraph:
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- Avoid starting the personal statement with long, complicated sentences
- Be enthusiastic and make sure it shows in the very opening paragraph of the personal statement
- Consider it as the chance to introduce yourself
- Depict your interest in the course, the admission board wants to know just how badly you want to study there
- Don’t beat around the bush, get to the point quickly
- Don’t just say you’re interested in law, explain WHY
- Engage the admission board
- with something relevant, interesting, and specific
- Start the personal statement with a short sentence which perfectly captures the main reason you’re interested in studying law
- Write what comes naturally
When it comes to the personal statement format, students are usually asked to follow the format that the educational institution provides. Some students divide the personal statement into smaller subheadings while others simply organize the text into paragraphs. In this case, every paragraph develops and discusses one idea or, in this case, one reason why you want to study there.
As you can see, writing a personal statement isn’t such a difficult task, but there are numerous things to consider when composing the content. To make things even easier for you, here is the rundown of info to include into your personal statement:
Can you demonstrate transferable skills like leadership, problem-solving, teamwork, time management, organizational and listening skills? If so, include them in your personal statement
Demonstrate critical thinking
Describe what you’ve done outside of school and classroom
Describe your long-term career plan Explain reasons you want to study the course
Explain what makes you the ideal student for the course
Reflect on experiences and explain what you’ve learned from them and how they’re relevant to your course
Examples
Now that you know more about these statements and how to write them on your own, these personal statement examples can help you stay on the right track. Below, you can see the collection of personal statement paragraphs that will inspire you:
struggle as possible.
Law is the cornerstone of the society, the engine that makes the world we live in work. Sometimes the engine functions perfectly, but in other instances, it experiences different problems. When law suffers, the entire society suffers too. In my humble opinion, the law is almost like a living organism primarily because it always changes and adapts to different circumstances in the society. The desire to learn more about the way this world functions and to build a career in helping this living organism grow and stay alive inspired me to study law.
I was determined to learn the role of a solicitor after visiting the magistrate’s court and sitting in the public gallery. My visit to the public gallery and the court had the purpose to improve my knowledge about the process. Monitoring the solicitors and the way they approached the case and their clients made me realize it is essential to pay attention to detail and treat the client with respect. For solicitors, it is a must to stay non-judgmental and mature regardless of the case. Solicitors have the tremendous opportunity to help change their clients’ lives, they are making an impact, a career I want to have as well.
The primary reason why I have chosen to study law is that it will enable me to study Criminal and Human Rights Law in a greater depth. The course comes with a theoretical and practical basis which can help expand my knowledge and understand how the law affects the society.
My decision to study Law stems from an appreciation I had for the subject originating in my fathers’ previous and current businesses. My role there revolved around doing secretarial work. Thanks to this role, I gained a much-needed insight into how the law is imposed in a business setting. At the same time, I started wondering about other influences that law has. How does law impact our world? That is the question I constantly ask myself but it will be possible to answer it only when I study and learn more about law and all its impacts on other aspects of life both private and social.
I engage in a wide array of extracurricular activities to complement my academic interests. For instance, I am involved in debating society of my school. Being a member of this team was a great learning experience because it helped me develop my skills, improve writing, and develop critical thinking. Furthermore, I am also involved in a reward experience like the production of the school newspaper. Hobbies are important for every individual, regardless of the job, race, ethnicity, they help us evolve as human beings.
Bottom line
Writing a law school personal statement can be quite frustrating when you don’t know what to do, especially if you’ve never had to write a personal statement before. It all comes down to making the content happy, optimistic, and non-judgmental. Remember, your personal statement should be a perfect reflection of you as you, not someone else.So? if you need personal statement examples, you can use our site!
