Writing your law school personal statement

In my last article, I shared a strategy for overcoming writer’s block. I also mentioned how many students experience this frustrating problem when writing the law school personal statement because they know it’s so important to their future. Here’s another reason students get caught up before they can even begin their law school personal statement: they have too many ideas. I’ve shared some useful tips on how to pick a law school personal statement topic with you in the past. What I haven’t shared yet is the one simple rule you can follow to make the law school personal statement much less complicated and easier to write. It’s all about focus. The one simple rule is to focus on just one aspect of yourself in the law school personal statement. Really, that’s it! Here’s the issue: so many students I work with are overwhelmed by the law school personal statement because they feel like they only have a few hundred words to make a great impression on admission officers. While that’s true, you only need to share one aspect about yourself to win over your readers. But what many students try to do is share all of their best qualities in their law school personal statement. The result is a chaotic law school personal statement that’s hard to follow because it goes all over the place.    If you’re having this problem, it’s an easy fix. Narrow your focus and choose one aspect of yourself to write about. Let’s look at one student I worked with, Rachel. Rachel had many different topics she wanted to write about, ranging from career goals to educational experience. Ultimately, she decided on an entirely different topic, because it had the greatest impact on her life: identifying as Chinese-American. Her law school personal statement shows how she came to appreciate her Chinese heritage, including a story about how she witnessed her father's kindness first-hand during a trip to China. Yet, it still remains focused on her quest to find greater meaning in her Chinese-American identity. By staying focused on just one topic, Rachel writes a law school personal statement that’s concise but thought-provoking. Her law school personal statement also shows how she overcame a challenge: she now knows the stereotypes she’s always heard about Chinese people are simply ignorant remarks made by people who fail to appreciate the value of different perspectives and ethnicities.  So, if you’re struggling with the law school personal statement, it could simply be a result of trying to fit in too many ideas. Choose to highlight one aspect of your identity, and dig deeper until you’ve told a complete story. Until next time, Steve P.S. Any time you feel like you might be veering off in too many different directions, take another look at the topic you’ve chosen. Sometimes, I even encourage my students to print out the topic and tape it somewhere visible so they can keep looking at it while writing their law school personal statement. A good rule of thumb to follow is to take another glance at it after you finish every other paragraph to make sure you’re focusing on the same key idea.

Recommended Resources: 1. Law School Admissions Coaching Get personalized 1-1 help on every aspect of the law school admission process -- or just the law school personal statement. 2. Law School Admissions Guide I've written a concise guide to the law school admission process with tips on completing every aspect of your applications from start to finish. It's a small price to pay for a whole lot of guidance, and it's short enough that you'll actually read the whole thing. 3. Law School Admissions Cheat Sheet Quick-reference guide for the law school personal statement, the "Why X?" essay, and the law school résumé. (You can also get it with the LSAT Cheat Sheets.)

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