I am a reapplicant for this cycle, and I have been struggling with the task of capturing my identity, experiences and goals succinctly within a Personal Statement. As a result, I have written a number of draft Personal Statements (both for this and last cycle) in the hopes that once they are on the page, there will be an obvious standout. Unfortunately, it was not that simple.
Current options include:
An "overcoming difficulties" essay
An essay regarding my passion for a specific field of law
An essay about how my childhood shaped my worldview
A "my values and beliefs" essay that establishes my interest in law
Several essays regarding leadership traits/qualities I gained through various experiences
There are also many others, often with some mixture of the elements above. All of them include personal stories and a description of why I want to go to law school (with room for school specific details to be inserted). I would love advice on how to narrow down to the essay that will be the most effective at persuading an admissions committee that I would be a great candidate.
1 comments
I'm on these message boards in a lot of places suggesting that the main goal of a personal statement is to explain why you want to go to law school and be a lawyer. I'd offer that same advice here, while acknowledging that things can be a bit more complex. But just for the sake of argument, let's just say that you can create an outline that ends with explaining the type of legal job you want. Working backwards, you need to lead your audience to that conclusion. What do you do? You explain the personal, academic, and/or professional experiences that you've had that make your concluding point ("here's what I want to do as a lawyer") make sense.
The other docs that you've written to this point have some aspects of docs that could be a personal statement, but are probably more akin to a statement of perspective (overcoming difficulties, how your childhood shaped your worldview). They can be useful for those kinds of prompts!