Staring at the blank page is always intimidating, no matter the context. But especially when the context is as high stakes as law school admissions, the intimidation can be even more pronounced. I’ve been there and know just how paralyzing staring at the empty page can be.
But getting started on your law school personal statement does not have to be a fear-inducing endeavor! Instead, breaking the process down into concrete steps with clear goals can turn the writing process from one of procrastination and anxiety to a fruitful experience of self-reflection and synthesis.
Part One: Brainstorm
Most law schools require a personal statement or statement of purpose that asks you to discuss something of the following:
What motivates you to pursue law? How does attending law school align with your ambitions, goals, and vision for your future? (Taken from Harvard Law School admissions)
The prompts are intentionally broad to give you ample leeway to construct a narrative around your experiences and motivations related to law school. Though the open-ended nature of the prompt can seem impossible to broach, take the first step as the writing process as what I like to call the ‘word vomit’ stage.
Keep an open, running document to jot down any ideas, vignettes, concepts, or even lines of rhetoric that arise in your mind. I recommend having several brainstorming sessions, each about an hour at a time, to sit down and commit thoughts to paper.
Part Two: Free write your first (of many!) drafts
Once you have a substantive brainstorming document, it’s time to enter the drafting stage. I often find this stage to be the most difficult, but remember that the first draft by no means is your final one. To kickstart the writing, set aside an hour or an hour and a half to sit down and flesh out one of the anecdotes from your brainstorming document and the takeaways from that experience. You want to be sure to tailor these takeaways to respond to the personal statement/statement of purpose prompt. Some questions to think about to do so include:
- How does the role of law fit into the research/internship/work experiences you’ve had and the type of work you aim to do post grad school?
- How did your understanding of a problem or concept deepen across different experiences, and when did your analysis begin to center the role of law?
- How do your experiences and ideas represent certain characteristics about who you are as a person?
One way to approach the structure of a personal statement is to have an anecdote about a work or research or volunteer experience serve as the narrative vehicle for the personal statement. But because there may often be more than one such seminal experience in your personal or professional life, I recommend writing several different versions of your personal statement to play around with different narrative structures.
Part Three: Tinker and Re-Draft
Once you have a first draft (or several versions of a first draft), congrats! That’s a major milestone so take a few days off of writing to give yourself some space from the writing process.
Producing a first draft undoubtedly deserves applause but entering the revision process means that you have to be ready and willing to completely scrap or change the contents of that draft. The fresh eyes from the few days off should help you see gaps in the flow of the narrative, awkward or redundant phrasing, and whether the organization/structure of ideas makes sense. I also tend to have several rough drafts I’m choosing between. The differences between the options may be a matter of structure/organization of the ideas, the anecdotes described, or a paragraph or two. During this tinkering process, if you’ve spent some time on one draft version but you hit a roadblock, turn to another of the options and play around with that option. I recommend aiming to nail the structure and key ideas you’re trying to convey first, and then make more rhetorical and grammatical adjustments from there.
Finally, once you have a draft you feel good about, I recommend sharing it with a few individuals you trust to know you and give constructive feedback. While it may be tempting to ask as many people as possible for feedback, sometimes too much separate feedback can be more confusing than clarifying.
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