Write about yourself. Do it now. Thanks!

The abrupt nature of this demand combined with a lack of practice will usually result in bad writing. From miniature autobiographies to abstract musings on current events, such topics typically obliterate a personal statement’s relevance, cohesiveness, and flow.

Whether for academic or professional purposes, we rarely discuss our personal narratives. The unfortunate reality is that most people have not had practice writing about themselves in years if ever—resulting in ineffective and inappropriate personal statement topics. To put it simply, you’re not alone! And that’s why we’re here to help.

In the following article, we will discuss tendencies to avoid when writing your law school personal statement. We will also provide critical guidelines for effective writing that you can use in all of your application documents.

1) Have One Theme and Discuss One to Three Experiences That Support It

As previously mentioned, avoid writing your life story in your personal statement. Firstly, there is just not enough room to do so. The typical law school personal statement has a two-page limit double-spaced (See Law School Personal Statement Formatting: What You Need To Know for specifics on format). Trying to cram all the interesting tales from your life into these two pages is impossible. Conform your writing to the limited space provided by the format.

Choose relevant experiences you have had that can fit together cohesively and convey the value you will bring to a law school’s student body. Be concise and get straight to the point. Sometimes, this means cutting out certain parts of your story that do not fit or do not support your underlying theme.

Whether overcoming adversity, pursuing your passion, or the next logical step in your career, you should have a single solid theme. It should encompass all the experiences you describe in your personal statement’s story. This is not an exhaustive list of theme types, but you can click here for more help with personal statement ideas.

Your theme will usually develop as you begin to discuss your experiences. One to three exemplary and/or touching experiences are really all that are needed to provide the body content of your personal statement. More than this can start to sound like a rehashing of your resume, a list of accomplishments, or just a description of how bad you’ve had it up to this point in your life. None of which will sound appealing to the admissions committee members reading your essay. To catch their attention, maintain it, and hopefully garner some respect from the people deciding your law school fate, keep it simple. Use one theme and up to three experiences as examples to support it.

2) Stay Professional; Don’t Take It Personally

Certain topics you may discuss in your application documents, especially for personal statements, diversity statements, and addendums, can evoke powerful emotions. It is vital that you are able to discuss these issues in a professional manner. Taking something personally, demonizing a specific person or group of people, or just having an overly negative tone can turn off the reader(s) to your writing whether they agree with you or not.

For this reason, avoid the following things that can make you sound informal:

• Writing as if you are making a journal entry
• Coming off as desperate, facetious, or sarcastic
• Being overly emotional
• Discussing intimate details of your personal life
• Being overly negative
• Harping on feuds between you and another person or group
• Describing situations and events with generalizations rather than facts
• Making assumptions, especially about the law or the legal field
• Expressing your unsupported opinions on controversial topics
• Being self-aggrandizing
• Boasting about your achievements or expressing arrogant behavior

Be realistic with your experiences. The sentiment among popular culture to constantly promote one’s self at the expense of others is not appropriate for an application document. Being humble sounds more realistic, and sounding more realistic will make you more believable as a candidate anyway.

Gaining the trust of admission committee members is key. The personal statement is usually the most prominent and sometimes the only document in your application that can create that trust. Cut out anything that may sound conceited whether you meant it to sound that way or not. We can help you with this.

3) Keep It Simple—Sentence Structure, Punctuation, and Grammar

While I write this blog article with impunity to formal criticism for my use of contractions, colloquialisms, informal use of prepositions, liberal use of commas and subordinating conjunctions, lengthy introductory clauses, sentences exceeding three full lines, and series and lists that never seem to end, you don’t have the same discretion if your application documents are being evaluated by admissions committees, which they will be.

As with other Gradvocates editors, I would very much like to split that previous sentence into more concise, easier-to-read phrases. I know that it would be more digestible for the reader. Alas, it is a perfect example of the informality we see in many applicants’ writing—both in what it describes and how it’s written. To lessen confusion, we strive to prevent unnecessary complexity in sentence structure at Gradvocates. You may feel the urge to squeeze every idea you have into one big, ugly, compound, run-on mess, but brevity is almost always preferred.

Here are some simple guidelines you can use to evaluate the structure of your sentences:

• Try to keep your sentences under two full lines max.
• Avoid colloquialisms, clichés, slang, and popular sayings as they are not professional or original.
• Don’t over-complicate your punctuation. This is law school—not a graduate English program.
• Avoid common wording errors that experienced writers notice .
• Use a comma before and if you are going to list out things in a series—American English prefers it, and legal writing requires it 99% of the time to avoid confusion.
• Don’t use contractions. We can because this blog is not an application document!
• Keep your introductory phrases short and under control, or it could get confusing.
• Don’t end a sentence with a preposition. Use the preposition and which instead.
• Don’t use words with which you are not familiar. Admission Committee Members can tell. This is especially true for legal terminology. You are not a lawyer yet, so be particularly careful when trying to utilize legal terms in your personal statement. We suggest against it unless you have had firsthand experience in a legal position or with that area of the law in your current profession. Otherwise, you can sound foolish at best or mistakenly admit to the unauthorized practice of law at worst.
• Keep your verb tense consistent. Only change it when necessary.
• Use active voice rather than passive where possible. This shows that you are confident about your decision-making.

Quality formal writing relies on using simple, straight-forward sentences. Succinct phrases that demonstrate your experiences and how they make you a great candidate are all it takes structurally. Your content is a different story and a different blog article.

4) Cohesiveness: The Importance of Transitions

Your personal statement needs to read as if it is one cohesive story. This means your theme should be consistent throughout your paper. The experiences you detail should support your theme and bolster your argument for why you are an exceptional candidate.

The introductory phrases and prepositions between paragraphs and sentences should help demonstrate how your experiences are connected. They should allow the reader to understand how all these ideas are related and set forth a logical flow to your story. If a transition from one part of your essay to the next seems disjointed, you can lose the reader’s attention.

Good transitions help strengthen the plausibility of your theme, which helps build trust with your reader. This is why you need to be sure that your experiences fit together under the theme you’ve chosen. If you are unable to effectively transition from one part of your essay to the next, you may want to consider revising or eliminating the experience that does not currently fit with your overall theme. You can always substitute it with another experience or go more in depth into current topics in your essay.

Read over your personal statement several times. Have others read it to get more than one opinion. Be sure to ask whether they think the story is strong and cohesive or if any idea or aspect should be altered or left out. It’s good to get this out of the way early on in the writing process—on your first or second draft, as having to rewrite a large portion of a disjointed personal statement is no fun, especially when you believe you’re almost finished.

5) Remember Your Audience and Tailor Your Document to Them

Again, you are writing to get into law school. The law is all about wording and language. The absence or addition of a single comma can change the entire meaning of a clause in a contract—leading to major legal battles. Therefore, punctuation and grammar are very important in this document. It’s the reader’s preview of how you think and write. Be aware of this, and review your personal statement several times before submitting it along with your application.

The rule with legal writing is that less is more. Lawyers write for meaning and understanding. They do not try to embellish their words. Be direct and succinct. Make your point in as few words as necessary to convey the meaning you intend to communicate—no more and no less.

Obviously, your writing should meet professional standards grammatically, as we talked about previously in this article. But be mindful that even though you are applying to law school, you are not expected to know the law. Don’t feel compelled to try to explain it to professors and senior faculty that obviously know it better than you do at this point. Your personal statement is not only a story, but it is a list of qualities conveyed through a narrative that you have actually lived. These tangible qualities portrayed through your experiences are what admissions committee members are looking to see, not your legal acumen.

Finally, remember to change your institution-specific information in each version of your personal statement if you are applying to multiple law schools. You do not need to rewrite your entire personal statement from scratch unless a school has a very specific prompt that you’re required to address. However, be sure to change the school and program names at the very least.

If a law school has a specific program that you are interested in, be sure to mention it in that version of your personal statement. If there are certain extra-curricular activities or organizations at a school that spark your interest, include them where relevant. The point is to try to customize your personal statement to make it more relevant for each school without rewriting it entirely.

6) Use Concrete Examples. Limit Abstractions.

A major problem for law school applicants is the use of abstractions in their personal statements. You should not be discussing legal theory or other complex topics in depth in your personal statement. The reasons are twofold. You can get into trouble by misinterpreting legal concepts, let alone complex terminology in other fields of study. More importantly, any room used to discuss theoretical circumstances is not room being used to discuss you and your experiences. It is your personal statement after all; it should focus on you and what you have done—less so on things you plan to do in the future or that may never occur.

Applicants tend to fall into this trap because they feel like their current experiences aren’t good enough for a law school personal statement. This usually isn’t true. Although there are limitations on what law school admissions want to see content-wise in your personal statement, such as unexceptional activities from high school and before, pretty much anything else can be used as a valid experience. You just have to convey how it made you a better person. As long as you demonstrate your efforts using tangible examples of your experiences, you’re set. Debating the merits of topics with which you have no real-world experience should be avoided.

Talk about your passions, profession, extra-curricular activities, leadership roles, civic and volunteer involvement, your work and internship experience, how you became interested in law, how you are unique, your perspective and what led to it, your skillsets and technical knowledge, etc. There are plenty of topics you can weave together to form your story. Just be sure to do it in an engaging manner that puts the reader on your side and shows your value as a potential law school student.

Some Final Thoughts:

Writing about yourself in a professionally appropriate manner can be difficult at first. This important document needs to discuss personal details of your life concisely and thoughtfully to an admissions committee looking for reasons to deny people. It is not always clear what can be seen as informal. This makes getting a second opinion on your work a must.

Read over your personal statement several times. If you ever get stuck, sleep on it and come back to it later. Sometimes, taking a break for a day or two can help you see your writing from a new angle. This can help you generate new ideas on how to develop it further.

Finally, always have your writing reviewed. More opinions are always better than just your own. As with any formal application document, get your personal statement reviewed and edited by a professional. This is where Gradvocates can help. Let our experienced personal statement editors help you perfect your law school personal statement.

For even more helpful tips, see: How to Write a Great Personal Statement.

Let us know your thoughts by commenting below, and feel free to share this article with those who may find it helpful.

If you were wondering how to format your law school personal statement, this is how it should be done. Please note that we are using Microsoft Office’s Word 2010 to make our formatting adjustments, so if you have a different version of Word or are using another word processor, the procedure may be slightly different. However, the end result should be the same.

Format Guidelines

Your law school personal statement should abide by the following formatting guidelines:

• 0.5 inch indentations
• 0 pt space Before each line
• 0 pt space After each line
• Line spacing should be Double
• Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style
• 1.0 inch margins on all sides
• 12 pt Times New Roman font
• Justified Alignment (Optional)

Header Format

As we discussed previously in our Personal Statement Header Format article, your document should contain a header in the upper-right corner of every page. It should include:

• Your Last Name, First Name right-aligned
• Page Numbers on each page
• Your LSAC Account Number
• Document Type (Personal Statement)
• Finally, leave a line blank below your header to create a space between it and your body text on the proceeding lines.

Step-by-Step Formatting Walkthrough

First, you are going to want to right-click in the body of your document (i.e. you should no longer be in your header). Then select Paragraph to open up the paragraph formatting options screen.

Make sure you are on the Indents and Spacing tab. You will be changing the defaults for four options on this screen.

First, under Indentation, click where it says (none) under Special. Select the option called First line. This will automatically indent the first line of every paragraph by a half inch. If it does not default to 0.5″ under By:, then use the down or up arrow to adjust until the indent is set to 0.5 inches.

Next, under Spacing, click the down arrow next to After: until you reach 0 pt. This will get rid of any space that would automatically be added after each line of text in your body paragraphs. Make sure that both Before: and After: are set to 0 pt, as you do not want any extra space before or after each line.

Under Line Spacing, click the dropdown arrow and select Double. This will make your body paragraphs double-spaced.

Then, click the check box to Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style. Click OK to accept all changes thus far.

Next, click the Page Layout tab. Click the Margins box, and select Normal, which should be one-inch margins on all sides. Otherwise, go down to the bottom of that menu and click Custom Margins. There, you can manually change each side to one inch.

Click the Home tab. Select the font option and click on Times New Roman. You may have to scroll down a bit in order to see this if Times New Roman isn’t in your Recently Used Fonts box.

Next, click the font size box. Select 12 pt.

Finally, we suggest changing your text alignment to Justify. Although not required, we believe justified body paragraphs look better and are easier to read. This last step is optional however. Left-alignment is on by default if you choose not to make this change.

We suggest adjusting your document’s formatting first before you begin writing your essay. This way, you will be more aware of how much space you have for your story from the beginning. This is important as being able to accurately determine how long your story will be with the correct formatting will allow you to focus on refining your story without wasting extra time and energy later. Otherwise, you can spend hours writing more or less than you should be—only to find out later that you have to delete or add large parts of your story in order to match your formatting after you’ve already finished writing! Don’t do this. Format first!

After you have your formatting completed, remember to keep your writing within the page limits set in your law school’s application document requirements. Keep this in mind as you write your essay, as it will allow you to focus your ideas and stay concise. Page limits will differ from law school to law school. Typically, your personal statement should be about two-pages double-spaced. However, be sure to check with each law school’s website to which you are applying and always cross-reference this information with what appears on the Law School Data Assembly Service (LSDAS) on the LSAC website (LSAC.org). The information contained on LSAC’s Credential Assembly Service (CAS) should have the most up-to-date information for each school.

Gradvocates Law School Personal Statement Editing

We make sure you have a proper formatting when we thoroughly review and edit your personal statement document. Click here to learn more about Gradvocates law school personal statement editing services, and check out the rest of our blog for tips and relevant information to help you throughout the application process.

If you need assistance with making any of your other law school application documents the best they can be, check out our law school application document editing services or contact us if the document you need help with is not listed on our website.

We hope this information was helpful. Feel free to share and link to this article, and be sure to join the discussion below.

Much of the application process now takes place online. Some schools have you submit your personal statement in a web form directly, which would negate the need for a header. However, when required to upload a Word file of your personal statement or send a paper copy with your application documents, be sure to include a proper header.

To Insert a Header in Word

Click on the Insert tab.

Select the Header drop-down menu.

Once selected, scroll down to the bottom and click on Edit Header.

Click the Right-Align button to right-justify your header text. Now you are ready to type in your header information, which we will discuss below.

Also note that you may want to insert your page number first before entering any other information. Inserting a page number using the Insert Tab will hide any current information in your header. We discuss how to insert a page number later on in this blog article.

The following are a few general guidelines for what you should have in your law school personal statement header.

Leave Out a Title

A title for your personal statement is unnecessary, as it is not a short story you would write for an English literature class. It is your personal story crafted specifically for law school, which happens to be in a narrative style. For this reason, refrain from including a pithy title even though it might feel so right.

Include Your Full Proper Name

Your personal statement should contain your full legal name in the top-right-hand corner of each page. We suggest using the Last Name, First Name format, as it can make candidate identification easier when being reviewed by Law School Admission Committee Members.

Cut or Copy this so that you can reinsert it once you have added page numbers to your header.

Include Page Numbers

Typically, personal statements are limited to two pages. Some schools will allow for longer personal statements. As long as an application document is more than one page, page numbers should be used. Put your page number to the right of your name. Your entire header should be right-aligned. Because we read right-to-left and stapled documents are stapled in the upper left corner, we suggest right-aligned headers for easy visibility. If you have a long name or prefer your page numbers to appear somewhere else, you can place your page identifier in the center of your document footer.

To Insert Page Numbers in Word

Select the Page Number drop-down menu. Click Top of Page. This should display various page number formats and alignments. As we previously mentioned, you may want to do this first before adding your name or any other information to your header as doing so will clear out this information anyway.

Click on the right-aligned Plain Number 3 option.

This should insert a page number on all pages of your document using your standard document font. Typically, Times New Roman font should be used for writing your personal statement. Change your header and page number font to Times New Roman if they are not already. You can paste your full name as described in the previous section back into your header at this point. Leave a space between the page number and your name.

Include Your LSAC Account Number

Use the line below your name in your header to include your LSAC number.

You will most likely submit your document through the LSAC website. As mentioned here: http://www.lsac.org/jd/apply/lsac-account-number.asp, the LSAC prefers that your LSAC account number appear on all documents and correspondence with them and in your application. Many schools like to see applicants’ LSAC numbers on documents for easy candidate identification as well.

Identify the Document Type

You may be submitting several essays, a resume or CV, along with other documents in your application. We suggest indicating the type of document (Personal Statement) in your header under your LSAC number if you have room.

If running short on room in your document, this part of the header can be eliminated to save space for more important story content.

For information on overall personal statement formatting, see our Guide to Law School Personal Statement Formatting. Also, be sure to check with each school’s respective website and application instructions on the LSAC’s Credential Assembly Service for specific details on document formatting requirements. The LSAC website should be the most up-to-date resource for each school’s application instructions. If there happens to be a discrepancy between the application instructions on the school’s website and www.lsac.org, contact the school’s admissions department to clarify before submitting your application.

Gradvocates Law School Personal Statement Editing

We make sure you have a proper header when we analyze and thoroughly review your personal statement document. Click here for more information on our law school personal statement editing service, and check out the rest of our blog for helpful tips and interesting stories.

If you need assistance with making any of your other law school application documents the best they can be, check out our law school application document editing service or contact us if the document you need help with is not listed on our website.

We hope this article was helpful. Please share your comments with us below.

Join the Crowd

You’re reading this article because you have absolutely no idea what to write your law school personal statement about. Take a deep breath and relax—you are not alone.

For example, take a look at the following tweets about law school personal statements:

• “This Personal Statement for Law School apps is killing me.”
• “Writing my law school personal statement for the third time.”
• “My personal statement is [expletive]. I don’t have any work experience in law firms . . . like other people.”
• “Personal statement for law school is harder than I thought.”
• “This personal statement might be the death of me… I hate law school already.”
• “This law school personal statement will be the death of me. Hands down the most ambiguous two pages I’ve ever written.”

As you can see, for many applicants, the hardest part about applying to law school is coming up with a personal statement topic. It’s hard to write about yourself—we get it.

But if we asked you to tell us what makes your best friend unique and interesting, you would be able to respond without hesitation.

• “He traveled the world for six months and loves learning about new cultures.”
• “She volunteers all of her spare time at the local homeless shelter.”
• “He is hilarious and can always cheer me up when I’m feeling sad.”

So what’s the problem with writing about yourself?

Why You Are Having Difficulty

Applicants who have a hard time coming up with a personal statement idea generally fall into two categories:

In the first category are the people who have spent their whole lives doing things that improve their resume. Jobs, research assistant positions, clubs, fraternities/sororities, volunteer activities, study abroad trips, etc. You name it, they have done it. These applicants face the “paradox of choice.” Because they have so many great experiences to choose from, they are overwhelmed and do not know where to begin.

In the second category are the people who have few experiences. Quality instead of quantity. A person in this category may be a student who put him or herself through college while working a full-time job in a service position, such as a waiter or bartender. Maybe someone in this category graduated from college several years ago and has since been working in a full-time position to earn a living. These applicants are full of self-doubt because they believe that their experiences are not impressive enough for law school.

Applicants in both categories also face another problem. They think that they must conform themselves to what other applicants are doing. They don’t want to choose the wrong topic. But when it comes to personal statements, there is no right or wrong answer. There is only good execution and poor execution. It is better to choose a sincere and genuine topic than a random topic chosen only because you think that you should write about it.

Legal Experience

The good news is that working in a legal profession is not a prerequisite to attending law school. That’s right—you don’t need to have worked in any legal capacity to get into law school.

Most law school admission committee members know that most applicants have no legal experience. In fact, many law school graduates do not even have legal experience. Get this out of your head right now. Eliminate your self-doubt.

The Goals of the Personal Statement

Although we could write pages about the goals of the personal statement, this article is about choosing a personal statement topic. Therefore, we will limit our advice to two short tips:

Your first goal, if possible, is to be as unique as you can. Make yourself standout from the thousands of applicants.

Your second goal should be to tell a good story that makes the reader like, respect, or admire you. You do this by only writing about one or two interesting experiences. You do not do this by simply retyping your entire resume.

For more personal statement tips, read: How to Write a Great Personal Statement.

Law School Personal Statement Ideas

Gradvocates has compiled a list of personal statement ideas. Please note that some topics won’t be applicable to you. For example, if you have absolutely zero interest in public-interest law, then do not write about how you want to get a law degree to help make the world a better place.

Spark and solidification: This topic involves writing about what sparked your interest in becoming a lawyer. Explain the steps that you took to explore that interest. Put particular emphasis on the event that solidified your desire to attend law school.

Desirable Qualities: This topic involves writing about one or two of your best qualities and then providing examples of these qualities through one or two experiences. For example, if you assert that you are “hardworking,” then you could write about how you worked and went to school full time during college. If your quality is “a desire to serve your community,” then you can write about specific things that you accomplished that show that quality. The quality you talk about should have some sort of connection to the practice of law. For example: hardworking, perseverance, serving your community, or leadership.

Overcoming Difficulty: This topic involves writing about difficulties that you have overcome in your life. If you choose this topic, you must make it clear that the experience fostered specific qualities in you that make you a good fit for law school.

First-hand injustice: This topic involves writing about an injustice that you witnessed or experienced and how it made you want to become a lawyer, so you can help change the status quo. Be careful, as this topic can come across as extremely cliché. If you choose this topic, then it is not sufficient to just explain the injustice and how you want to advocate for those affected by it. Make it clear why specifically becoming a lawyer, as opposed to a counselor or volunteer, is necessary to help out. You must also realize that this is a personal statement, and so you cannot just write an essay on a social problem. Be sure to include your own thoughts and feelings.

Change of Careers: This topic is for older applicants who have been working in a different career for several years before realizing that they want to attend law school. Write about what your previous career involved and what exactly made you want to pursue law instead. For example, applicants in this category may be scientists who want to practice intellectual-property law, or a teacher who wants to work to reform the education system (this latter example overlaps with “First-hand injustice” discussed above). Another real example involves a firefighter who decided to obtain a law degree after successfully representing himself in a multi-million dollar lawsuit against his municipality for employment discrimination.

Still Stuck? Gradvocates Can Help

The Gradvocates Editing team can help you pick your topic. Every purchase of Law School Personal Statement Editing comes with unlimited email interaction with our editing team. After purchasing personal statement editing, send us an email so we can help you come up with a great topic for your personal statement. You can then submit it for editing whenever you are ready.

If You Will Apply Next Cycle…

If you will not apply to law school for another cycle, please be sure to read: Engineering Your Personal Statement Topic: Do Something Worth Writing. That article explains that if you absolutely do not have anything to write about, you can actually use the time from now until you apply to law school to choose impressive experiences that you will write your personal statement around. You can essentially come up with a great personal statement idea and make it happen, so you don’t find yourself in this situation when you are ready to apply.

We hope that his article has served as a great starting point for writing your law school personal statement. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can help you in any way.

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
-Benjamin Franklin

Saturday Morning Crisis: “What Should I Write My Personal Statement About?”

My phone rings suspiciously early on a Saturday morning.  After reeling in my Blackberry by its power cord, I finally find the courage to confront the blinding light of the phone’s screen.  Caller I.D. reveals that it is my cousin.  As a junior in college, he is in the process of studying for the LSAT so that he can apply to law school next fall.  I have a feeling that I know exactly why he is calling.

“Mike, I know it’s early, but can I ask you a question?”

“Is it about the LSAT or applying to law school?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

He proceeded to ask me what he should write his law school personal statement about.  He explained that he believed that his work experience wasn’t impressive enough, especially because he had never worked in any legal capacity.  All he had was a strong interest in criminal law, one year of mock trial experience, and a handful of undergraduate “pre-law” courses.

I tried to help him brainstorm ideas; however, he was convinced that he didn’t have enough to write about.  But with over nine months left before he had to submit his law school applications, I knew exactly what advice I should give him.

You’re the Hero of the Story! Choose From 40 Possible Endings.

Many clients tell us that they have nothing interesting to write about.  This is usually not true, and we have had great success with helping applicants realize how they can use their existing experience to write an excellent personal statement.  This is the “write something worth reading” part of Benjamin Franklin’s quote above.

But what if you really feel that you have absolutely nothing interesting or relevant to write about?  This is where the “do something worth writing” part of the quote comes in.

You may remember choose-your-own-adventure books from your childhood.  The idea behind these books was that you were the hero of the story.  While reading, you could, in a sense, write the rest of the story.  You were in control of your own fate as the story progressed.

This concept of controlling your own fate applies equally to writing your personal statement.  Your personal statement is not limited to your past experience.  In fact, it can be whatever you want it to be.  If you have a few months before you have to submit your applications, then you can “choose your own adventure” by using this time to gain additional experience that you can write about in your personal statement.

Finding Something Worth Writing About

Step One: Develop a Theme

You have decided to seek additional experience to write about in your personal statement.  Before you can do this, it is critical that you develop a theme that connects your future experience to your desire to gain admission to college, graduate school, or law school.

For example, after brainstorming with my cousin, we were able to come up with an excellent theme that connected his past experience, his future experience, and his desire to attend law school.

Here is the outline of his personal statement:

• Our uncle is a police officer, which piqued his interest in criminal justice.
• For this reason, he pursued a criminal justice major in college with the intention to ultimately become a police officer.
• While taking criminal law classes at college, he became extremely interested in the legal side of criminal justice.
• He joined his school’s mock trial team, which he had a natural talent for.
• Future Experience: he will obtain an internship with his county’s prosecutor’s office or a local criminal defense attorney, which will tie all of his past experience together and undoubtedly explain why he wants to attend law school.

Here are other examples of themes and their corresponding future experience:

• Want to write about why you want to pursue public interest law?  Spend one day per week for the next six months volunteering at a free legal clinic.  Share a story about one particular client’s legal problems, how the clinic improved his life, and how this solidified your desire to help others.
• Want to write about why you want to go to business school?  Start a simple business and then write about how that experience gave you unique insight into the challenges and rewards of being an entrepreneur.
• Want to write about why you want to study journalism in college?  Volunteer to write for your local independent newspaper.

Step Two: Realize that Your Theme Isn’t Binding

Although my cousin is currently passionate about studying criminal law, he asked me what would happen if he later changed his mind about his preferred area of law.

The secret is that, as long as your experiences are legitimate, no one will ever hold you to what you write in your personal statement.  If you change your mind about your career, major, or area of specialty, no one will ever say, “Wait a minute, he wrote about being interested in criminal law, but now he is interested in employment law?  Rescind his law school admission!”

You have the right to change your mind.  Pick a good, plausible theme that makes sense, even if you have doubts that it will be your ultimate passion.

Step Three: Get the Experience

Experiences must, of course, be legitimate and listed on your resume.  So how do you go about getting the internship, job, or volunteer position that you need to complete your personal statement?  You can start by mailing out physical mailings with a cover letter, resume, and a list of references.

There are two things true about most professionals:  1) they love to mentor those who are interested in their career, and 2) they love free help.

After mailing these items out, it is imperative that you follow up with a phone call asking if they received your resume.  If there are no paid positions available, state your desire to volunteer one day per week to gain experience.

You should also use your network to try to find your desired position.  Are you still in college?  Contact your school’s career counseling center.  Are you in any professional clubs?  See if any members know of anyone whom you can work for.  Did you do well in any relevant courses?  Ask that professor if he or she can help you out.

Capitalize on Other Benefits

In addition to providing you with something to write about in your personal statement, gaining more experience can benefit you in other ways.  You can list the experience on your resume, and you can also get a letter of recommendation from the person who supervised or hired you.

More importantly, you will have made professional contacts in the field that you may ultimately work in.  These people can serve as mentors as you pursue your degree.  They may also be able to help you secure summer or post-graduation employment.

Hopefully this article has provided you with a plan of attack if you have absolutely no clue what to write about.  Remember that there is still time and that your personal statement can be whatever you want it to be.  And if you need help along the way, Gradvocates is here to help.

The Gradvocates Editing Team was surprised to find that over 75% of the personal statements that we have edited had at least one of following errors in it. Accordingly, we decided to write a blog post to inform the rest of you of what to avoid.

Please note that all of the “incorrect” words or phrases below are not actually incorrect in everyday use. Most dictionaries will even tell you that it is acceptable to use them in the way that we are telling you not to use them.

So you might ask, “Why even read this article then?” Two important reasons:

1) Although they might be correct in everyday use, they are incorrect in academic writing. As you probably know, your personal statement should be as formal as possible.

2) The audience for your personal statement is composed of, in part, highly educated professors who spend a significant amount of their time writing scholarly pieces. They will easily spot grammatical errors, which may negatively affect how your personal statement is received.

“Although” versus “While”

• Incorrect: While you may be right on the first issue, you are wrong on the second issue.
• Correct: Although you may be right on the first issue, you are wrong on the second issue.
• Proper usage of “while”: While he was on the phone, he missed an important phone call.

If you couldn’t tell from the examples, “while” is a temporal word, meaning that it relates to a length of time. Specifically, it should be used to describe concurrent events—things that are happening at the same time.

In this context, “although” is for giving concessions, and it is the word that you should use.

“Because” versus “Since”

• Incorrect: Since he needed money, he asked the bank for a loan.
• Correct: Because he needed money, he asked the bank for a loan.
• Proper usage of “since”: He hasn’t gone to the library since last week.

As demonstrated by the examples, “since” is a temporal word used to indicate the passage of time.

“Because” is used to introduce a reason why something is a certain way or why something happened. In this context, it should be used instead of “since.”

Bonus: the phrase “due to” should generally be avoided when “because” can be used.

“To” versus “In Order To”

• Incorrect: He reviewed the course book in order to determine what classes he had to take.
• Correct: He reviewed the course book to determine what classes he had to take.
• Proper usage of “in order”: They were lined up in order from shortest to tallest.

The words “in order” are redundant. Simply omitting them gets you a concise and formally correct sentence. As we have indicated in the above example, “in order” should generally be used for sequential or grouping purposes

Hopefully this article has shed some light on these common writing mistakes. Avoid them! Although they are not incorrect, they can undermine your credibility as a writer.

Make a Good First Impression by Hooking the Reader’s Attention

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
—Source Unknown

Members of admission committees are charged with the responsibility of reading thousands of personal statements. This is both a daunting and boring task. You can, however, use this to your advantage by hooking the reader’s attention with an extremely interesting and well-written introduction. After reading dozens of mediocre personal statements, your exciting introduction will be a refreshing treat and will induce the reader to read the rest of your personal statement with enthusiasm.

Do Not Start or End with a Quote or Cliché

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
—Judy Garland

We are aware that we started this section with a quote; however, we are not writing a personal statement. Admission committee members do not want to hear wise words of wisdom from some author, politician, or celebrity, and using such a quote does nothing to tell the reader about you. This is a personal statement; as such, it is critical that you write your own story in your own words. Furthermore, many schools impose word limits of 500 words or two pages. Do not waste valuable words with a quote that says nothing about you and that will only make the reader roll their eyes.

Be as Interesting and Unique as Possible

It’s pretty damn hard to bring your uniqueness into actual being if you’re always doing the same things as a lot of other people.
—Brendan Francis

This point is best demonstrated by two examples:

A friend asked us to read her personal statement, which was about how a role model inspired her to attend graduate school to pursue international relations. After reading her personal statement, we were perplexed at her topic choice. We asked her why she would write such a dull essay, which wasn’t even really about her, when she has spent much of her life living abroad in Europe and South America. She rewrote her essay, detailing her exciting experiences abroad and integrated them with her desire to study international relations.

Another example involves a client of ours when we were still operating under SimuGator Editing. She wrote a law school personal statement that rehashed her resume and only briefly mentioned that she had worked as a secretary at a law firm. Upon further inquiry, it turned out that she had worked at the law firm for two years where she gained invaluable experience in communicating with clients, handling discovery issues, and researching case law for motions. After advising her that she should write her personal statement about her job at the law firm, the experience that she gained, and why it compelled her to attend law school, our client took our advice and ended up with an impressive personal statement.

Don’t Ignore Word Limits or Write Too Much

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
—Thomas Jefferson

At most schools, word limits are not a suggestion. In addition to showing that you can follow basic rules, obeying the word limit will show that you can write succinctly and effectively. Ignoring word limits needlessly puts your application at risk.

Along the same lines, if your essay’s limit is two pages, then you should not change font size, spacing, or margins to bring your essay into compliance. Such manipulations are incredibly obvious and should be avoided.

Essays can be edited down to comply with the word requirement. It just takes a little creativity and an acceptance that every word you write is not golden.

Don’t Write Your Autobiography; Do Summarize Its Most Interesting Chapter

An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life, and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.
—Roald Dahl

One of the top personal statement problems occurs when applicants rewrite their resumes or try to summarize every one of their life experiences. Doing this is like trying to squeeze your entire autobiography into a short essay. We are sure that admission committee members would love to read your autobiography after you graduate from their school and become highly successful; however, now is not the time for that.

Trying to account for every life experience in a temporal manner is highly ineffective. Admission committee members already have your resume and transcript, which they have most likely looked at before turning to your personal statement. Instead of summarizing what they already know, take the opportunity to impress them with a story that is interesting and exciting to read, and then relate it back to why you would be a great student or good fit for the school that you are applying to.

Get a Professional Opinion

Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.
—David Ogilvy

Your personal statement is one of the most difficult and important pieces of writing you will ever produce. It needs to be absolutely perfect. If you are unsure of whether it is, in fact, perfect, then you need to get a professional opinion as to its content, grammar, and writing style. Because family and friends are too willing to please, their advice will only take you so far.

If you want your personal statement to be perfect, then let us help by purchasing our law school personal statement editing package. We guarantee that we will not stop until your personal statement is truly remarkable.