Essays That Worked for Law Schools 40 Essays from Successful Applications to the Nation's Top Law Schools

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AN INTERVIEW with an ADMISSIONS OFFICER Although different schools attach different levels of importance to the application essays, and although each school may be looking for a slightly different type of student, admissions officers have surprisingly similar desires. They want brevity. They want sincerity. They want mature enthusiasm. And a little humorwhen it's truly humorousdoesn't hurt. But as we pondered the application question and tried to compose our own "personal statement," we found ourselves asking a number of questions. How "lawyer-like" should we be? How much can we joke around? Can we relax and be the readers' chum, or should we treat them as clients? Should we tell them what we think they want to hear, or should we be totally honest, even at the risk of being dull? We asked these and other questions to dozens of admissions officers at almost every major law school in the country. The following is a condensed version of those interviews, along with relevant comments from admissions people whom we interviewed earlier at business schools and colleges: What's the difference between application essays for law school and the essays we wrote to get into college? The main difference is the way the author presents himself. What we ask of a college graduate is much more difficult than what colleges ask of a high school senior. And it should be. We don't want applicants to simply give a self-absorbed description of themselves, as they did for their college application. Rather, we want them to describe the world they see around them and their place in it. An analogy we like to use around here is that with the essay, a student fashions a lens for us to view the world. From looking at the quality of that lens, we hope to judge the quality of its maker. We also expect more maturity for law school. That's partly a function of age but it's also an issue of direction. Undergraduates are coming to school to explore. It's hard to justify giving one of a few spots to someone who is not pretty committed to a law career. I used your undergraduate book for a talk I gave on the application essay, but I had to warn everyone that this is not high school any more. Some of the essays in your first book would have been fine, but others are way too cutesy for us. Essays about socks and pets and Oreos [Essays That Worked for College Applications] would be a real detriment to a law school application. Do you want a description of a person or just a prose listing of accomplishments? We want an essay that brings the whole set of numbers into a coherent form. We want inconsistencies explained, and we want to see diverse activities as different facets of a single personality. We'd like to be able to say, "Oh, he did that, yeah, that makes sense. That fits with what we have." Both the performer and his track record should be discussed, so that we can know the person underneath all the accomplishments, and also how those activities affected that person. Nine times out of ten, people who write a really good personal statement don't have the supporting facts to back it up. A student will say he wants to be a lawyer to stop racial injustice, but then he'll write an essay about "learning to scuba dive helped me overcome my fear of water" or something. Tell me about your legal aid work, or your work in the Big Brother program, or something like that. Inconsistency knocks an applicant down quite a few pegs in my judgment. Are there any hackneyed topics that applicants should avoid? "Why I want to be a public defender . . ." or "I have always wanted to be a lawyer since I was ten. My daddy was a lawyer and he took me to court