You are invited to inform the Committee of achievements and qualities not otherwise revealed by the application. [Chicago-Kent]
Some law schools find it necessary to remind you that you are not involved in an impersonal literary enterprise:
We seek information about you; essays on the place of law or lawyers in our society typically will not be useful. [Case Western Reserve]
Don't confuse your application essay, which must be about yourself, with the term papers or publications I encourage you to submit as writing samples, which can be about anything.
Be specific. Write about events and activities. Tell stories. Describe something that happened or an incident in which you took part. Perhaps the best application essay topic is a description of some incident or activity which led you to the study of law.
Others have discussed in their essays what they've learned from college jobs, from teaching, or from serving in the Peace Corps. Young women have written about the changes that came with child-birth. "I have to make the world safe for may children," one woman wrote. "Law is part of that."
Emphasize your own uniqueness. Boykin Curry's Essays that Worked-For Law School (Memphis, Tenn.: Mustang Publishing Co., 1988) provides model essays, taken from successful applications to prestigious law schools that you can study for inspiration. (You should also read whatever essays you can obtain from successful law students.) Curry emphasizes that an essay must be lively and gripping in order to stand out, and his sources suggest that you concentrate on revealing a coherent and interesting personality.
One caution: the essays in the Curry book are meant to stimulate your thought, not to serve as models to copy or imitate. I've avoided presenting sample essays here because I detect a tendency among otherwise capable applicants to imitate models too closely, or to worry if their essays do not resemble the models they've studied. Avoid the sin of imitation. Top law schools, which receive thousands of essays each year, tend to discount as uncreative essays that seem to be nothing but copies of commonly available models. If you're going to convince the reader of your uniqueness and depth, you'll have to find a topic that reveals your own character. It's unlikely to be more than casually similar to the topic that another individual would choose.
You may not think of yourself as unusual in any way. Perhaps you've spent so much of your time on your grades that you haven't been involved in activities that add diversity to your personality. I recommend that you take some time to search for an incident or anecdote in your past that helped to shape your character, or contributed to your interest in law, or is simply interesting in its own right. Ask your parents or siblings if they remember anything. One successful applicant wrote about organizing a surprise birthday party for his brother. It wasn't an earthshaking accomplishment, but he was only four years old when he did it.
You can write about some unusual feature of your education. If your major is untypical for prelaw students, you can explain how you expect it to contribute to your legal education and career.
Or you can find an interesting way to write about some feature of your personality. One successful applicant wrote about how his health improved when he became a vegetarian. Another wrote about the healthy sense of excitement that came over her whenever she finished her social sciences and humanities homework and was free to turn to the mathematics problems that she loved.
Now here are some things to avoid:
Don't choose a topic that makes you seem immature or of questionable character. Law schools know that youth includes risk-taking and a certain amount of hedonism 1 and they're familiar with undergraduate excesses. But it's best not to dwell on things done only by the young and immature. You can write a very interesting essay about what you learned while you were supporting yourself through college by playing in a band without mentioning how many times you were ticketed for violating the local noise pollution laws. If you were social chairman of your fraternity, you can talk about your skill at organizing the homecoming weekend festivities without mentioning the award the fraternity council gave you for consuming the most alcoholic beverages within a 24-hour period. It's also not a good idea to talk about activities that raise ethical questions. Don't, for example, describe how you earned money for tuition by peddling a device you invented for cheating on exams.
You should also avoid talking about yourself in the abstract. Law schools receive many essays which sound like the personals ads in magazines:
Divorced man, tall, attractive, intelligent, hardworking, athletic. Likes legal concepts, debate, politics, long walks on beach. Can write well. Seeks compatible law school.
What can you infer if someone describes herself as, say, intelligent without giving examples or details? And what kinds of things are covered by words like athletic? An English teacher would mark the ad vague; it simply doesn't say very much. I find the same problem in essays that undergraduates write. They often describe themselves as being cheerful or persistent or likeable without giving any evidence. Don't simply say you are a leader; describe some event or incident in which you exercised leadership skills. Don't say you are persistent. Show the reader persistence by describing a success that followed several failures:
I knew it was going to be difficult to get my short story published. But I never imagined that I would accumulate seventeen rejection slips before I found an editor who was interested in it. . . .
Avoid emphasizing negatives. You may be tempted to use your essay to comment on shortcomings and to try to explain away poor grades or LSAT scores. But you can't display a positive and attractive personality while you are dwelling on negatives. Try to focus your essay on positives. Talk about what you've learned, not about how your grades were lower than those of other students. Keep the reader's attention on what is attractive in your personality, and avoid reminding him or her that you are not the ideal law school prospect.
