How do I even go about starting to write my personal statement?

[saythename]

I decided that I would like to apply to law school for the next cycle despite my extremely poor cGPA (high 2.X; L2/B20 are probably mid 3.X) because honestly, I can't change my year 1-2 grades but I can study my butt off and do well on the LSAT. I was speaking with someone I know who just graduated law school and they advised that I start thinking about my personal statement now because for them it took them a while to bring it together before submission.

Personal statements are meant to be personal, and they're supposed to be your story, but I'm so confused on what I should include, what I should not include, and how to even start this thing!

My grades for my first two years are extremely poor. There was no medical reason, I was honestly just very unhappy with my program and lost my way. Grades became much better after I switched programs in third year, but because I switched programs, these grades do have first year and second year courses mixed in (not sure if that makes a huge difference). I've seen so many people strongly advise against mentioning anything about poor grades unless there was a medical issue or something on record, but if I don't mention anything about my poor grades, does that affect my application at all?

How should I format my personal statement? Is it better to do some story telling or go for an essay-type structure? 

Apologies for the massive question dump, but thank you for any comments/suggestions in advance! 🙂 

[TobyFlenderson]

As you’ve acknowledged, personal statements are personal. Everyone does it a little differently, and I remember struggling to get it started myself.

The best advice I can offer is to just start writing. What are things you think should be included? How might you talk about them? What elements of these things do you feel like are absolutely essential? Once you get words on the page, it’s easier to say “hmm, no, I don’t like how that sounds” or “oh and I gotta mention X too!”, and the ball gets rolling.

Personally, I had three main “pillars” of my statement, each focused on an experience I had. I tied these experiences together and to law school. I wanted to demonstrate how they had prepared me, and how they had shaped my perspectives and the value those perspectives would add to the law school and the legal community.

It’s important that you don’t treat my advice, or any other advice that might be offered here, as a firm rule. Feel free to use it to get ideas on the page, and maybe to initially structure your thoughts, but don’t be surprised if at some point, you come up with a way to organize yourself that suits your writing style and your experiences better. Everyone has their own flavour when they write, and it’s important that your personal statement reflects your flavour, whatever that may be.

[bluebean]

Re poor grades - I've only ever heard people advise to definitely mention it. I also had a 2.X cGPA for the same reasons as you and I made sure to mention it in my PS. For more info, check out this post: 

For your PS format, I don't think there's a 'correct' way of going about it, whether it's storytelling or essay structure (or something else). Choose the style that best shows off your strengths as a writer in which you can most effectively convey why X school should accept you/why you want to do law/why you'd make a good lawyer. Include anything you believe is relevant to answering those questions, and try to be concise. 

Feel free to pm me if you have further questions!

 

Edited July 6, 2021 by samii

[Whist]

As others have indicated, there's no one rule for writing a personal statement (aside from the constraints the law schools put on length or questions they want you to answer). I took all of August last year to write mine. It was about two weeks for the meat of the thing, then another two for editing and altering. I wrote one as a base and then truncated it or altered it where specifications were in place for different schools. 

If you need an idea of where to get started with format, I'll provide mine below. Imagine each bullet as an expanded paragraph. Note that there are many ways to write one, this is just a prompt if you need help getting started. 

• Introduction to my background and how it got me started thinking about law
• Skills I learned from my undergrad major/university in general
• Skills I took away from work experience
• Why I want the JD in particular/how I think I could contribute to the profession and how it could contribute to me
• What kind of lawyer I might want to be, and specific opportunities at X school I'm potentially interested in

I can't give much advice on how to speak about your poor early grades. But if I were in your shoes, I'd use them as a springboard, in the way you just described. You didn't feel right where you were, and the experience got you in gear and headed in the right direction. 

Edited July 6, 2021 by Liavas
clarity

[luckycharm]

45 minutes ago, saythename said:

I decided that I would like to apply to law school for the next cycle despite my extremely poor cGPA (high 2.X; L2/B20 are probably mid 3.X) because honestly, I can't change my year 1-2 grades but I can study my butt off and do well on the LSAT. I was speaking with someone I know who just graduated law school and they advised that I start thinking about my personal statement now because for them it took them a while to bring it together before submission.

Personal statements are meant to be personal, and they're supposed to be your story, but I'm so confused on what I should include, what I should not include, and how to even start this thing!

My grades for my first two years are extremely poor. There was no medical reason, I was honestly just very unhappy with my program and lost my way. Grades became much better after I switched programs in third year, but because I switched programs, these grades do have first year and second year courses mixed in (not sure if that makes a huge difference). I've seen so many people strongly advise against mentioning anything about poor grades unless there was a medical issue or something on record, but if I don't mention anything about my poor grades, does that affect my application at all?

How should I format my personal statement? Is it better to do some story telling or go for an essay-type structure? 

Apologies for the massive question dump, but thank you for any comments/suggestions in advance! 🙂 

Really hard to help you when you posted 2.X and 3.X

Is it 2.1 and 3.1 or 2.9 and 3.9?

 

https://testmaxprep.com/blog/lsat/lets-get-personal-statement?campaignid=12951342925&adgroupid=121010139559&adid=483287817482&gclid=CjwKCAjw_o-HBhAsEiwANqYhp5oJ3kg7kr8NUST_YICyR_jYZzOvQHRivJeZ1xjD5rMggBEAt6SnJBoCxD0QAvD_BwE

 

https://www.shemmassianconsulting.com/blog/law-school-personal-statement

[Hegdis]

With a personal statement it’s the form as well as the substance. Lawyers are masters of communication. It’s not just what you say - it’s how you say it. 

Think of it this way: no one wants to read a condensed resume. That’s what the forms are for.
 

They want a glimpse of who you are, what motivates you, what makes you tick. They want to hear your voice in your words: are you funny? Are you thoughtful? Are you passionate? Can you tell a good, moving story? Did you really reflect on an event in your life? How does this carry forward with you now, what does it mean to you?

Get some one to read your statement for tone. Students often talk “up”: they imagine their readers like a panel of stern judges who need to be mollified by multisyllabic words and flowery metaphors and extra long formagibberish like “and forthwith I considered the plethora of advantages to which a law school education might endow me”. Trust me, it sneaks in. Get a beta reader and ask them if your statement sounds like you or if it sounds like some one stuck a helium pump to your ear and your head exploded. 

[123]

2 hours ago, Hegdis said:

and forthwith I considered the plethora of advantages to which a law school education might endow me

I like lawyers who never learned this lesson. "The moving party to the above noted application, namely, the Applicant (hereinafter referred to as "the Applicant") has filed the within application for the following relief in the case at bar: an order granting their application, setting aside the earlier decision of the prothonotary, and substituting in the decision of this honourable court to allow the retroactive filing of their application for leave, pro nunc tunc". Do they get paid by the word?!

[Hegdis]

You get extra for empty Latin phrases. 

[CheeseToast]

47 minutes ago, realpseudonym said:

I like lawyers who never learned this lesson. "The moving party to the above noted application, namely, the Applicant (hereinafter referred to as "the Applicant") has filed the within application for the following relief in the case at bar: an order granting their application, setting aside the earlier decision of the prothonotary, and substituting in the decision of this honourable court to allow the retroactive filing of their application for leave, pro nunc tunc". Do they get paid by the word?!

Now do what it should look like for us naive 0Ls.

[Parker]

I had a high 2.X cgpa and a mid 3.X gpa and a high LSAT. I ended up applying access but I got the same advice that my personal statement had to be strong. I started by thinking about a couple of things as an applicant with pretty underwhelming stats; what do I want them to know about me - if they take away nothing else, what is the one thing I really want them to know? What am I most proud of? Why do I think I can do this even though my academic record is saying I probably can't? I also read a lot of U of T successful law school PS's to get inspired by different styles. 

For me, after brainstorming, I had a common 'theme' about personal growth and potential. Once I prioritized what it was I wanted my PS to say about me, it became a lot easier to think of the style I wanted to write in, the experiences I wanted to include, the skills I wanted to highlight and how to tie it all to going to law school. 

It took me months to get a PS that I really liked - I had lots of different ones that were rough drafts of my final and some were totally unrelated and read like they were written by a completely different applicant. The best thing to do is just to start getting ideas down and give yourself lots of time. 

[123]

54 minutes ago, CheeseToast said:

Now do what it should look like for us naive 0Ls.

1 hour ago, realpseudonym said:

I like lawyers who never learned this lesson. "The moving party to the above noted application, namely, the Applicant (hereinafter referred to as "the Applicant") has filed the within application for the following relief in the case at bar: an order granting their application, setting aside the earlier decision of the prothonotary, and substituting in the decision of this honourable court to allow the retroactive filing of their application for leave, pro nunc tunc". Do they get paid by the word?!

"The Applicants seek an extension of time."

1 hour ago, Hegdis said:

You get extra for empty Latin phrases. 

Registrars making it rain 

[123]

6 hours ago, saythename said:

I was speaking with someone I know who just graduated law school and they advised that I start thinking about my personal statement now because for them it took them a while to bring it together before submission.

2 hours ago, Parker said:

It took me months to get a PS that I really liked - I had lots of different ones that were rough drafts of my final and some were totally unrelated and read like they were written by a completely different applicant. The best thing to do is just to start getting ideas down and give yourself lots of time. 

I think the time required depends on the person and whether inspiration strikes. If your process is to ruminate, brainstorm, and rewrite multiple times, then great. Nothing wrong with that. Do what works for you. 

But I also don't want readers of this thread to think every applicant needs to spend months on a personal statement. I wrote a draft in an evening. It probably took about an hour and half. I made a couple of edits later and I tweaked it to fit other schools' questions. But it wasn't overly complicated, I knew what I wanted to say, and produced honest writing the first time around. 

You want a thoughtful personal statement. But thoughtful doesn't mean you should overthink. Consider why you're interested in law and your own experiences and qualities. Then write about those things. It doesn't need to be profound. It needs to be you.

For mine, the subject matter was mundane. I literally just talked about essay writing -- about how I liked placing different theories and studies into my own analytical structure, and watching as the written argument unfolds. I found written argument intellectually satisfying. Law offered the promise of that work. But I also liked that when a lawyer argues, it's advocacy, not academia. You get to be someone's voice, and that's what I wanted to try. That's why I said I wanted to go to law school. 

That's not interesting material. But the statement was true to me, and it had a voice. You might take months to find your voice. But if you relax, stop worrying about the statement being important or interesting, and just sit down and write, you might find what you're looking for faster than you think. 

 

[Rashabon]

I wrote my personal statements in the span of a few days before the deadline, and I wrote naturally. I wrote about who I was and why I thought I wanted to go to law school. I spoke about my academic background and success (granted, not applicable here, though you can speak to any positive trends). I spoke to my community engagement, leadership and mentorship. And then why I wanted to pursue law and the particular school. I had a STEM background so I wrote about why law from that angle and explained it since (at the time) it seemed necessary to explain. In fairness, I was also a well rounded candidate (i.e. I wasn't relying on my personal statement to fix issues with my overall application) so I didn't stress about is as much as some might. But it's not all that much different.

In the end, lLaw school Rashabon laughed at 0L Rashabon because I went from writing this naïve bullshit:

"As my fascination with law grew I began to see that it had correlations to my study of science. Science is the study of natural laws and the natural world, and law
is the study of a world constructed artificially by man but no less rigid. I see the study of law as a means of incorporating the methodology and thought processes that I have acquired in my science education and putting those skills to use.

My program itself, though not the prototypical pathway many students take on their way to law school, has helped prepare me considerably for my legal studies. Law is very similar in a way to science in the respect that both may seem esoteric to those who are not schooled in the language used by those two fields. Reading scientific articles and having to research further to understand the core content is a very similar skill to that of reading law reviews and case studies. The skills required to understand the material in a science program, as well as the time a science education requires, demands good study habits which will definitely assist me in my studies in the future."

to writing numerous Honours or A papers with the thesis that either (i) law was basically bullshit, and (ii) judges made (and should make) law and continually make shit up as they go along. Also a little bit purple on the prose side but whatever, I now treating writing as a trade and don't have time for that crap.

 

[saythename]

On 7/6/2021 at 1:44 PM, TobyFlenderson said:

It’s important that you don’t treat my advice, or any other advice that might be offered here, as a firm rule.

Definitely! Thank you so much for your advice. I already have some random sentences or ideas that I thought I'd like to include, and I guess I'll start piecing them together from there!

 

On 7/6/2021 at 1:44 PM, samii said:

Re poor grades - I've only ever heard people advise to definitely mention it. I also had a 2.X cGPA for the same reasons as you and I made sure to mention it in my PS. Feel free to pm me if you have further questions!

Oh wow! This is actually the first time I've ever heard someone say that they've only heard people advise to definitely mention it. Thank you so much for the advice, I'll pm you for sure with some other questions! 

 

On 7/6/2021 at 2:02 PM, Liavas said:

If you need an idea of where to get started with format, I'll provide mine below. Imagine each bullet as an expanded paragraph. Note that there are many ways to write one, this is just a prompt if you need help getting started. 

• Introduction to my background and how it got me started thinking about law
• Skills I learned from my undergrad major/university in general
• Skills I took away from work experience
• Why I want the JD in particular/how I think I could contribute to the profession and how it could contribute to me
• What kind of lawyer I might want to be, and specific opportunities at X school I'm potentially interested in

I can't give much advice on how to speak about your poor early grades. But if I were in your shoes, I'd use them as a springboard, in the way you just described. You didn't feel right where you were, and the experience got you in gear and headed in the right direction. 

I highly appreciate the format and prompts you've shared! Using my early grades as a springboard also sounds like a great way to show that I'm not looking to make excuses about them, thank you for that!

 

On 7/6/2021 at 2:14 PM, Hegdis said:

With a personal statement it’s the form as well as the substance. Lawyers are masters of communication. It’s not just what you say - it’s how you say it. 

Think of it this way: no one wants to read a condensed resume. That’s what the forms are for.

Get some one to read your statement for tone.

This is something I definitely will be looking out for. I feel like it's really easy to start writing out an essay form of your resume, and I guess that's not the worst starting point (since you've got to start somewhere right?) since that's where your experiences may start and you might have many skills you want to describe with work experience as backup. However I think you are absolutely right that no one wants to read a condensed resume because that isn't what the personal statements are for. I'll make sure to be careful and have someone read over my statement, thank you!

 

On 7/6/2021 at 5:26 PM, Parker said:

I had a high 2.X cgpa and a mid 3.X gpa and a high LSAT. I ended up applying access but I got the same advice that my personal statement had to be strong. I started by thinking about a couple of things as an applicant with pretty underwhelming stats; what do I want them to know about me - if they take away nothing else, what is the one thing I really want them to know? What am I most proud of? Why do I think I can do this even though my academic record is saying I probably can't? I also read a lot of U of T successful law school PS's to get inspired by different styles. 

For me, after brainstorming, I had a common 'theme' about personal growth and potential. Once I prioritized what it was I wanted my PS to say about me, it became a lot easier to think of the style I wanted to write in, the experiences I wanted to include, the skills I wanted to highlight and how to tie it all to going to law school. 

It took me months to get a PS that I really liked - I had lots of different ones that were rough drafts of my final and some were totally unrelated and read like they were written by a completely different applicant. The best thing to do is just to start getting ideas down and give yourself lots of time. 

I think it's really difficult to have a firm understanding of what a "strong" personal statement is. Thank you for providing your own story for me to have an understanding of where to start and where I could also go. Much appreciated!

 

On 7/6/2021 at 8:25 PM, realpseudonym said:

You want a thoughtful personal statement. But thoughtful doesn't mean you should overthink. Consider why you're interested in law and your own experiences and qualities. Then write about those things. It doesn't need to be profound. It needs to be you.

For mine, the subject matter was mundane. I literally just talked about essay writing -- about how I liked placing different theories and studies into my own analytical structure, and watching as the written argument unfolds. I found written argument intellectually satisfying. Law offered the promise of that work. But I also liked that when a lawyer argues, it's advocacy, not academia. You get to be someone's voice, and that's what I wanted to try. That's why I said I wanted to go to law school. 

That's not interesting material. But the statement was true to me, and it had a voice. You might take months to find your voice. But if you relax, stop worrying about the statement being important or interesting, and just sit down and write, you might find what you're looking for faster than you think. 

Thank you for this example! What I got out of it was how you really convey the main message you want to get across matters more than any extravagant experiences.

 

 

On 7/6/2021 at 9:35 PM, Rashabon said:

I wrote my personal statements in the span of a few days before the deadline, and I wrote naturally. I wrote about who I was and why I thought I wanted to go to law school. I spoke about my academic background and success (granted, not applicable here, though you can speak to any positive trends). I spoke to my community engagement, leadership and mentorship. And then why I wanted to pursue law and the particular school. I had a STEM background so I wrote about why law from that angle and explained it since (at the time) it seemed necessary to explain. In fairness, I was also a well rounded candidate (i.e. I wasn't relying on my personal statement to fix issues with my overall application) so I didn't stress about is as much as some might. But it's not all that much different.

In the end, lLaw school Rashabon laughed at 0L Rashabon because I went from writing this naïve bullshit:

"As my fascination with law grew I began to see that it had correlations to my study of science. Science is the study of natural laws and the natural world, and law
is the study of a world constructed artificially by man but no less rigid. I see the study of law as a means of incorporating the methodology and thought processes that I have acquired in my science education and putting those skills to use.

My program itself, though not the prototypical pathway many students take on their way to law school, has helped prepare me considerably for my legal studies. Law is very similar in a way to science in the respect that both may seem esoteric to those who are not schooled in the language used by those two fields. Reading scientific articles and having to research further to understand the core content is a very similar skill to that of reading law reviews and case studies. The skills required to understand the material in a science program, as well as the time a science education requires, demands good study habits which will definitely assist me in my studies in the future."

to writing numerous Honours or A papers with the thesis that either (i) law was basically bullshit, and (ii) judges made (and should make) law and continually make shit up as they go along. Also a little bit purple on the prose side but whatever, I now treating writing as a trade and don't have time for that crap.

This was so great to read! Even though I'm not in a similar situation as you were, it helped me get another view at some things that I could go about writing. Thank you!

[GreyDude]

On 7/6/2021 at 4:36 PM, realpseudonym said:

prothonotary

This is my new favourite word. When I looked it up, I first got « Did you actually mean pretender? » and then « originally the chief of the college of recorders of the court of the Byzantine Empire » before arriving at the actual definition. I have a feeling that I have just learned a lot about the law.😁

Edited July 11, 2021 by GreyDude
More cowbell

[SNAILS]

I think you are putting the cart ahead of the horse by worrying about your PS before you have an official LSAT score.

The PS is due in November, and the PS will only matter if you have a decent enough LSAT score that law schools might overlook your low GPA.

Any access/indigenous category decisions really matter as well. 

Oh, and for what it's worth, I submitted 6 different PS's to the six different schools I applied to. Each has different "questions" and different word counts. I still kept the core of each PS the same though.