need help applying to law school!

[sibley]

I use the top-law-schools forum but they’re all mean.  Actually, most people on most forums are snarky and rude and cruel.  Here everyone’s like “Awwwwww!” all the time.  MUCH better.  I told my boyfriend about how mean all the law school forum people were and he said that’s just how forum people are.  I’m glad that it’s not just law students… so you guys are a lovely, lovely outlier =)

 

So I need help!  I have to write an essay called a Personal Statement, which counts for about 1/3 of my application.  It has to be extraordinarily well-written, round, intriguing, and grasping from the get-go.  It also has to exemplify my personality and my skills.  It can’t restate my resume.  Basically, it has to be a story.

 

I started it but I don’t know…. meh.  This is my intro paragraph.  I had a different intro but the top law school people said it was not enough about me so I tried again (remember it’s super rough… I barely have more than an intro):

I was taken aback.  I had spent months planning this event, had focused on the most minute of details to make it a success.  And, since the incoming international students and their families had filed into the oddly shaped room early that morning, I had been entirely devoted to assuring the program’s success.  I had taken care of any glitches as they had arisen, and I had made sure the hundreds of students had completed their immigration check-in despite the sundry who had forgotten to bring their passports and I-94 cards.  I had no thoughts but those relating to the success of the program.  Normally a talkative person, today I had found no joy in communicating with these people who would, on any other day, intrigue and fascinate me.  Today, they were just numbers.  Lists to be filed through, names to be accounted for and checked off.

The statement will go on to talk about why I’m taken aback (a girl sits down while I’m trying to plan stuff during lunch and I feel obligated to talk to her and the people who followed her over), and then how I find out she’s from Iran and just completed an engineering PhD at Harvard but now she can’t go home since relations between the US and Iran got really bad and it’s dangerous for her and the family she left there and she can’t get a regular visa working here bc she’s from Iran so instead she’s just doing another graduate program with scholarship and living stipend bc it’s the only way she can figure out to take care of herself.  Between that story I’ll be talking about my job, and how her story and my job make me interested in law.

and I MIGHT use her story to segue into a story about me and a health condition I had to semi-overcome and how it was worse in my law class that everything else but I’m still super interested in law, despite the fact that many times I wanted to just not ever go back to class.

 

But is that no good?  Are there better topics I could use?  People talk about difficulties in childhood, getting kicked out of college, being shrewd and bright, etc….

 

thanksss!

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

I know what you mean. I joioned a prevet forum and the people are MEAN!! I posted only ever so carefully. They jumped over someone asking a question about horses-WHY don’t you go work with one, your not stealing our info-garage imho!!

We can totally help you with it. What are the specific requirements-what are they looking for? I wrote my lsat but didn’t pursue further
Give us some paramters and we will totally help!!

[sibley]

1. Admissions committees at top law schools usually consist of professional admissions officers, professors, and students. These are the people who will read your personal statement.
2. Your audience wants to enter into your thoughts and perspective, and they want specific details about you.
3. The ideal effect you want to achieve is personal transformation for the reader. The very best personal statements are the unforgettable handful that move the reader.
3. Anticipate the Committee’s Cross-Examination

Because very few law schools offer interviews, the personal statement functions in an introductory capacity. Thus a good personal statement should implicitly address the questions the committee will ask themselves about you if they had an opportunity. A well-crafted personal statement will not answer the following questions directly, but it will embed the desired answers in the narrative:

1. Will you be a good lawyer?
2. What was your tangible impact on an institution, an organization, or individuals?
3. Have you reached beyond the safety net of college into the real world?
4. Do you have a plan for your goals, or are you a dreamer?
5. Can you put yourself in another subject position in order to see all sides of an issue?
6. What will you bring to our law school?
7. Have you been a pro-active starter in the past? Did you raise money for what you started? Do you know how to organize? Do you follow through on what you began?
8. Have you demonstrated your ability both to work with a team and to delegate?

You have three purposes in your personal statement that demand the art of persuasion:
1. To make your reader believe you should be admitted.
2. To clear away any doubts your reader might have about you.
3. To make your reader act on your behalf.

[hooty22]

I just graduated from law school in June and should be getting my bar results on Friday. I just wanted to prepare you for a cold fact. The people on the law school forum are snarky bc law school is a snarky place.
I’m relatively free spirited and artistic, and this was not compatable with law school at all. I graduated and I did well, and I’m confident I’ll get news that I passed the bar this Friday.
Your introduction sounds good. Of course it doesn’t tell that much about you because it’s an introduction. I know my statement really didn’t tell anything about why I wanted to study law other than it was a way for me to get out of my poor, black hole of a town and a means to make my family proud and be able to provide for them.
My story was set in my make believe future. I was already a success attorney that had managed to organize a small scholarship fund to help get other young girls out of my hometown and show them they don’t have to stay there, marry some jagoff they’ve known since grade school and become a baby factory. (Nothing against that choice in life, moms are awesome, there just wasn’t any expectation for girls to do anything other than that in my town.) I was accepted into every school in which I applied.

Maybe you can take that route. Begin your story in the future, and tell how you got there.

[hooty22]

Also if you’d like any advice or just to talk bc in a few months, once you actually get into school, you’ll be miserable, just message me and I’ll give you my contact info and we can chat. You can ask questions, and wonder if all the people around just seem dumber than you are or if they actually are (they probably actually are.). 🙂

[sibley]

thanks hooty22 =) everyone says law school sucks… my bf’s mom says you don’t have time to breathe your first year but after that it’s okay. all the kids say there’s no way I’ll stay with my bf. They don’t know my priorities, but… I also don’t want to fail ^-^

Your story sounds a little like mine. I’m from a small town and tried to get far away for college. I ended up going to school in the closest city to me (they were the best bang for the buck… gave me like 16k in scholarships), but it was still much better than most of my class, who either didn’t go to college and ended up living in apartments and trailers in the rural areas outside of town and doing whoknowswhat for a living or ended up going straight to the SUNY school in my town (which is known as a continuation of my high school, a place for soontobe gym teachers, and a breeding ground for STDs).

Maybe I should write about that. I don’t know. I actually think I could probably squeeze a paragraph into my essay. I’m ‘taken aback’ because of how hard I worked on the event and how she’s misusing it. And maybe also because how easy hopping to schools is to her compared to the rest of her life, and how hard it is for me…. hmmm.

I took a class with the president of my university (he was dean of Wash U and Arizona and a prof at some other places) taught like a first year law school class. It was 3 hours 1 day a week. The homework took me half of Saturday then from 11am to 1am Sunday, plus an hour or two Monday. I chose law because, even though there was so much work, it was the first time in my life I actually wanted to sit down and do it and do it well. I didn’t get bored and I didn’t think of 8000 things I also needed to do/would do instead. I did find my classmates to be dumbies half the time, and even the president missed the point on occasion =P

[hooty22]

Just remember, first year they scare you to death, second year they work you to death and third year they bore you to death.

It is as hard as everyone says it is. Also it’s high school all over again. A lot of people that choose law school seem to have something vital missing in their personalities, whether it be maturity, kindness or empathy, and they use law school to kind of make up for that lack. I do like the actual profession, but don’t get your hopes up that people will be great intellectuals once you get there.

As long as your bf is understanding, you could stay together, but it is tough, and it’s hard for people that haven’t gone through it to understand. I know when I started studying for the bar exam, I never saw my boyfriend, and we live together! I worked 40+ hours a week, studied as soon as I got home until I went to bed, and studied 12+ hours on the weekends. It’s not necessarily your priorities, its more of how understanding the sig other is.

[hooty22]

Also, as far as your statement is concerned, you don’t want to pile too many story lines in it. You want it to be easy to read and not a novella compacted into a few pages. Legal professor appreciate the ability to be concise and yet get your message across. You also want to stand out by not just writing a I did this, this happened, this is why I love the law, type of story. Tell what you want to accomplish, what you want to do with it and what you’ve overcome that makes you certain you will get there.

[RabbitPam]

Hooty is a great person to be advising you.
I just read your post and had some quick thoughts that I will throw out there anyway.
First, I immediately thought that law school would be snarky as well, so be prepared. These are people competing with you – so try to find the like-minded students that are on a similar track you are. I mean, if you’re doing this to assist the underpriviledged, or change human or animal rights, your motives are entirely different than someone who is out to be a corporate hot-shot. Think through your goal in terms of how and where you truly want to use the law. Is it courtroom based? Document based? (wills, leases, etc.) or civil rights based for example.

I am not crazy about your introducing the whole Iran student line. My first impression was that she would be motivated to be a law student, but where do you fit in? It takes the attention off of you. Blow your own horn here.

I DO like your explanation that begins with a small town. I think that’s exactly what they want to know from the start. That’s a good summary paragraph for expansion. I’d work with that.

And one caution as you go along, but especially in the opening – avoid negatives. That is, a negative, adversarial situation that’s described which you dealt with successfuly is good. But any reference to being tired, not interested, not into it that day, etc. is a big flag that may say to them “she’ll slack off, or not hang in there all day every day, and that’s what we require.” Don’t give them an excuse. Demonstrate how you persistently overcame the daily grind it took to elevate yourself to where you are now.

I hope this helps.

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