Interpreting Your Essay Options at Law School

Yale Law School's admissions information says of the personal statement requirement: "Faculty readers look to the required short essay to evaluate your writing, thinking, and editing skills, as well as to learn more about such qualities as your intellectual concerns or passions, your humor, or your ability to think across disciplines." And if you read the fine print in 250 words or less —it is no small feat. With only one or two exceptions, the top law programs in the country require a personal statement from each applicant. The essay offers you the chance to show schools who you really are. Take advantage of this opportunity. Recommenders can show only a part of who you are, since most of them are instructors or employers and have thus seen you in only one context. Many schools do not offer everyone the chance to interview as part of the admissions process. In addition, interviews are not under your control to the same extent as the personal statement, which can be rewritten and reexamined to make sure that the "real you" is presented.


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Your personal statements can and should present a clear picture of you, but they do not need to tell all. Sketching in the main points with appropriate stories will show who you are. In fact, whenever possible, try to tell a story rather than write an essay. The task will seem lighter.

This is your chance to choose which parts of your past and yourself to highlight, and to determine how people should view them. This is a precious opportunity; take full advantage of the chance to color your readers' interpretations.

Choice of Topic

When it comes to the personal statement section of the application, most schools leave the question open-ended. This is Columbia's:

"... a statement may provide the Admissions Committee with information regarding such matters as: personal, family, or educational background; experiences and talents of special interest; one's reasons for applying to law school as they may relate to personal goals and professional expectations; or any other factors which you think should inform the Committee's evaluation of your candidacy for admission."

Often, several topical suggestions will be offered, but even these suggestions will be quite broad, if not exceedingly vague. This open-endedness is both opportunity and trap. The law schools are being deliberately inexplicit. Having left you to make the decisions, they expect those who are insightful about themselves, the process, the competition, and the rest of the relevant factors, to make good use of this freedom. By the same token, they expect the average applicant to be upset by the degree of freedom on offer, just as they expect him or her to flub the opportunity.

So don't. Just because you can discuss every semi-important aspect of your life containing possible relevancy to the study of law does not mean you should. Chicago, which does not require an essay, nevertheless shares this bit of advice in their catalog: "It may be helpful to know that essays having a narrow focus are generally more effective than those attempting to make a broad integration of the law with one's general career or scholarly goals."

Various Essay Topics Analyzed In Detail

It is often easiest to write a personal statement if you feel you are being asked to answer a specific question rather than to fill up a blank page. Consider what question you wish to answer. For example, what are your greatest strengths and weaknesses? Or, why have you chosen law as a career? These questions represent organizing themes for your essay. The following discussion of typical themes will highlight how others will approach the same topic, as well as what you should do to get the most out of your essay.

Describe Your Current Job

The Typical Applicant

Most applicants treat a discussion of their jobs as a matter of simply rehashing their resumes, albeit with full sentences in place of phrases. The context in which they perform is absent, making it difficult to understand the significance of what they have done and what talents were required.

A Better Approach

There are usually numerous elements to a given job. You must figure out and list the many things you do. Next, determine which the most significant parts of your job are and which are most consistent with the position you are attempting to communicate, and then characterize them as favorably as possible. The following should help you with this process.

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Is your job important'? Most people would say so only if they are egotists or are making a lot of money and enjoying a very impressive title (Senior Executive President for Marketing and Strategy, perhaps).

Assuming you are not in this situation, does this mean your job is unimportant and you will have to be apologizing for it? No, of course not. A job is of real importance under a number of different circumstances. In particular, work gains significance whenever two things are true about it. First, the degree of uncertainty (regarding which course of action would be best) is high, and second, the potential impact upon the firm's success is great. In other words, is there a fair likelihood that an average-quality performer in your job would make a hash of things? If so, would that really affect your firm's performance, or that of one of its components? If the answer to both of these questions is yes, then your job certainly is of importance.

What must you do to perform successfully! In other words, what challenges do you face? For example, if you are an analyst in a consulting firm, you probably work on two different teams. The managers of each team act as if you are meant to devote 100 percent of your time to their respective teams, leaving you to work around the clock or fight the time allocation battle. You are also probably asked to do work that has never been thoroughly explained to you, and for which no formal training was provided, which requires that you seek out the experiences of others who have suffered before you to learn the essentials of what you are meant to do. Thus, in addition to having to do serious analytical work—which might range from in-depth financial analysis to developing sociograms to understand an organization's political dynamics—you have to master the internal politics of your own organization.

Perhaps you are an engineer in a matrix structure, reporting to the regional manager and an engineering director. Your greatest challenge may be satisfying two different bosses with two completely different agendas. The regional manager is probably concerned with making money today, and wants everyone to work as a team without regard to functional specialties. The engineering boss, on the other hand, wants her people to maintain their specialized skills and the prestige of the engineering department. Working on cross-functional teams without taking time out for updating technical skills may strike the former as standard practice and the latter as anathema. To perform your job well may require balancing these conflicting desires.

Or you may be a paralegal in your first job who is effectively being asked to work as the "second chair" in a case that started before you even joined the firm. Not only do you have to learn what a second chair does in litigation, you also have to get up to speed on an involved case—as well as integrate into the firm and learn how to deal with the partner handling this case, who has no time to babysit you as you acclimate.

If the last two occupants of your position were fired, say so. This will make your performance look all the more impressive. On the other hand, the positive fate of prior occupants of your job may be relevant. If the last occupants were promoted high in the organization, the job will appear to be one given to highfliers, thereby increasing its significance. The more senior the person you report to, the more important a job will look.

What is the nature of your work? There are many different types of work. A market researcher is generally doing analytical work. A financial analyst generally does quantitative analysis, although the position may also call for doing extensive write-ups, such as those an equity analyst provides the financial community. A brand manager is likely to be doing a combination of analytical work and influence work insofar as she must analyze the factors for the brand's relative success or failure in different markets and competitive conditions in her country, and then try to influence the manufacturing, packaging, or whatever department, to take the action she wants in order to address these factors.
 

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She typically will have no power over these departments and will have to rely on her influence skills (personality, reasoning, expertise, etc.) instead. A restaurant manager will probably be most concerned with managing people, whereas a technical manager may be most concerned with the management of physical processes. An administrative assistant to a senator will have to manage the boss's calendar as well as juggle the competing interests of various constituents, lobbyists, campaign workers, other legislators, the senator's family, and so on.

Many other aspects of your work can also be characterized. Is your job like being in the army: crushing boredom interspersed with brief moments of sheer terror? Are you expected to perform at a steady pace to a predictable schedule or do you work like a tax accountant, 50 percent of whose work may take place in ten weeks of the year? Are you supposed to be the steadying hand for a bunch of youngsters? Are you supposed to be a creative type who will respond flexibly to each new situation rather than simply refer to the corporate manual?

Do you supervise anyone? How many people, of what type, are under your supervision? What does this supervision consist of? For example, are you in charge of direct marketing activities, necessitating that you monitor the phone calls of your direct reports and also analyze their performance versus budget and various economic and industry factors?

Do you have control of a budget? If so, what is the amount you control, and what amount do you influence?

What results have you achieved? Results can be looked at from many different perspectives. From a strategic perspective, what have you achieved regarding the market, customers, and competitors? From a financial perspective, what have you done regarding costs, revenues, and profits (not to mention assets employed, etc.)? From an operational perspective, what have you done regarding productivity of your unit, or of your direct reports, or of yourself? What have you done regarding the percentage of items rejected, or bids that fail, and so on? Similarly, from an organizational perspective, have you taken steps such as altering the formal organization or introducing new integration or coordination mechanisms? Provide numbers and tangible details whenever possible to buttress your claims.

How has your career evolved? Did you have a career plan in place before graduating from college or university or soon thereafter? If so, did you pursue it wholeheartedly? Did it include a focus on developing your skills and responsibilities? What, if anything, has altered your original plan? What was your reaction to events that altered or affirmed this plan? When dealing with the development of your job with a given employer, be sure to note the employer's reasons for promoting, transferring, rewarding, or praising you as well as the fact of these things.

Advantages of This Approach

Your past and current jobs are of inherent interest to law schools. They will want to know what you have done (and are doing), and with what success, because that suggests a great deal about your talents and interests, and the way your employer views your talents and attitude. Taking a broad view of your job enables you to put the best light on your responsibilities and performance.

Describe Your Career to Date

The Typical Applicant

Most applicants simply list what they have done in the past without showing what has driven their career choices and changes. The result is a list in which the elements appear nearly unrelated to one another. This is what admissions directors term the "resume" approach.

One possible approach is as follows. Find a theme that unites the elements of your job history. For instance, you show how you responded to challenges that were initially daunting. You tried hard and learned how to do what was required. You started to take more initiative as you learned better how to do the job. In fact, once you mastered your initial responsibilities, you understood them in a broader context. Having done so, you moved up to the next level of responsibility. The telling of your career story should focus upon where you have come from and where you are now headed. If you have changed your direction, explain what happened to change your direction. If you have had your decisions reaffirmed by experience, describe them and how they convinced you that you were on the right track.
(This essay is closely related to the "Reasons for Getting a Law Degree" essay.)

Advantages of This Approach

Telling stories that focus on obstacles and the attempt to overcome them makes this essay interesting to read. Focusing on your personal development in response to challenges is well aimed for an audience of educators. They are preconditioned to appreciate your developmental capabilities. This approach also sets up your need for a law degree. You have been overcoming obstacles by learning how to perform new jobs, and you have acquired new skills and knowledge; now you need to take another step up.

What Are Your Strengths And Weaknesses?

This question is meant to elicit your opinion of yourself. Modest people, and people from cultures less egocentric than that of the United States, have a hard time responding because it apparently asks you to brag a little. Less self-assured applicants find it hard to be honest and to mention their shortcomings. This topic provides a good gauge of how self confident (or arrogant), accomplished (or boastful), decent (or manipulative), mature, self-aware, and honest you are.

The Typical Applicant

Most applicants list a large number of strengths and no weaknesses. If they do include a weakness, it is generally a strength dressed up as a weakness ("I am too much of a perfectionist." "I work too hard,").

A Better Approach

Start by choosing two or three primary strengths. Use these to organize your essay by grouping other strengths around them. For example, if you claim you are very determined, you might discuss your patience in working hard for a long time in order to achieve something important as related to this determination.

The problem is not generally finding something good to say about yourself. Usually the problem is limiting yourself to a manageable number of strengths. You want to have few enough that you can discuss them in a persuasive fashion rather than just list them. Using two or three as central organizing devices (i.e. themes) helps to achieve this.

Remember that simply listing strengths is a very weak way of writing. Use illustrations to make your strengths credible and memorable. Instead of bragging about being determined, note your five-year battle to overcome childhood leukemia.

The bigger problem, however, is deciding which weakness to discuss. Simply calling a particular strength a weakness is not sufficient. This tactic is used by countless applicants, and its insincerity is nearly guaranteed to repel those reading your essays. Instead, discuss an actual weakness that will make your discussion of your strengths more believable, show you to be mature enough to admit your lack of perfection, or present you with an opportunity to show how you have worked to reduce the impact of that weakness or eliminate it altogether. (Do not carry a good thing too far, though, and discuss huge flaws such as your drug addictions.)

Allocate space on a three- or four-to-one basis, strengths to weakness.

You want to describe yourself as having numerous strengths that relate well to your positioning effort, without sounding arrogant.

Advantages of This Approach

Grouping your strengths in an organized fashion will give you the chance to cover a lot of ground without taking a scattershot approach. Emphasizing strengths is obviously appropriate, but discussing a weakness may be a good idea, too. Writing with appropriate illustrations will make your strengths memorable; this will also make your claims realistic rather than boastful.

What Are Your Most Substantial Accomplishments?

This obviously gives you a chance to "blow your own horn." You can brag a bit about what you have accomplished in life. Moreover, you have the chance to put your own spin on what you have done. A particular accomplishment is all the more impressive when you explain the obstacles you had to overcome in order to succeed.

The topic also allows schools to learn more about you insofar as you discuss why you consider something to have been a substantial accomplishment. Some accomplishments are of obvious significance. Winning the American Book Award for History is obviously significant; you probably do not need to elaborate on the fact of having won it. Other accomplishments are much more personal. For example, if you had stuttered as a youth and finally ended your stuttering in your twenties, this might be an extremely significant accomplishment for you personally. You have probably done things that have had more impact upon the rest of the world, but for you this accomplishment looms larger.

You may well want to talk about it as an example of your determination and desire to improve yourself.

This topic gives you an opportunity to discuss matters that are unlikely to be listed on your data sheets or mentioned by your recommenders. Even if you just discuss accomplishments of a more public nature, you can personalize them in a way in which just listing them on a data sheet (or having a recommender talk about them) does not do.

The Typical Applicant

Most applicants use the whole of their personal statement to demonstrate that their accomplishments are impressive; they focus on their accomplishments and not on themselves. Another mistaken tendency is to list a string of things rather than to explain one or two in detail.

A Better Approach

The first step is to determine which accomplishments you will discuss. Your criteria for choosing appropriate accomplishments will be familiar. Which ones will help your positioning effort? Which will be unusual and interesting for admissions committees to read about? Was this accomplishment truly important to you?

The following criteria are also helpful guides:
 

• You had to overcome major obstacles, showing real determination in doing so.
• You learned more about yourself.
• You came to understand the need for further skill development and thus, perhaps, a JD.
• You used real initiative, perhaps by pushing a bureaucracy to respond or bypassing one altogether.
• Your success was unexpected.
• You worked extremely hard toward a clear goal.
• Your impact can be clearly seen (i.e., you were not simply tagging along with someone else who did the real work).

If you are trying to show that you have had relevant real-world experience despite being only 23, you will probably want one (or preferably more) of these accomplishments to concern your post-college life, especially your professional life. Not every accomplishment will fulfill all of our criteria, but you should be able to include most of them in the course of the full essay.

In writing the essay, go into sufficient detail to bring the events to life, but do not stop there. Discuss why you consider this a substantial achievement, why you take pride in it, and what you learned from it. Did you change and grow as a result of this? Did you find that you approached other matters differently after accomplishing this?

The admissions committee will read this for more than a brief description of the items you list on your data sheet. It will want to learn more about these and the private you, if you discuss significant accomplishments of a personal nature here. It will want to know what motivates you and what you value. It will also want to see how you have developed as a person and as a professional.

Advantages of This Approach

This topic gives you a lot of latitude, as our criteria suggests. Using it to show more of the real you will help you to avoid the usual problems people create for themselves on this essay. You do not want to restate the facts you have already listed on your data sheet; you want to show that you have been ready to face challenges, determined to overcome obstacles, and able to accomplish things that have mattered to you.

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