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Personal Statement Examples - Sample Law School Personal Statements

It requires a lot of effort and thought to write a personal statement that effectively captures your greatest qualities and stands out to admissions committees. While we have an entire article on writing personal statements, one of the best ways to assist and inspire your writing is reading and learning from several personal statement samples. Although writing personal statements requires that you reflect upon what is unique and exemplary about your background, the following personal statement samples will provide insight into how other applicants have successfully crafted their statement. Below are several personal statement examples, which also have sections on why these personal statement samples are strong and also how they could have been improved upon. More personal statement samples can be found at www.essayedge.com.

Sample Personal Statement 1 - Minimalist

I am a thinker, but not one to think out loud. I love myself, but am not in love with the sound of my own voice. I want to be loved, but not at the cost of not loving myself. I want to know everything, but realize that nothing can ever be known for sure. I believe that nothing is absolute, but I can absolutely defend my beliefs. I understand that chance is prevalent in all aspects of life, but never leave anything important to chance. I am skeptical about everything, but realistic in the face of my skepticism. I base everything on probability, but so does nature...probably.

I believe that all our actions are determined, but feel completely free to do as I choose. I do not believe in anything resembling a God, but would never profess omniscience with regard to such issues. I have faith in nothing, but trust that my family and friends will always be faithful. I feel that religion is among the greatest problems in the world, but also understand that it is perhaps the ultimate solution. I recognize that many people derive their morals from religion, but I insist that religion is not the only fountainhead of morality. I respect the intimate connection between morality and law, but do not believe that either should unquestioningly respect the other.

I want to study the law and become a lawyer, but I do not want to study the law just because I want to become a lawyer. I am aware that the law and economics cannot always be studied in conjunction, but I do not feel that either one can be properly studied without an awareness of the other. I recognize there is more to the law than efficiency, but believe the law should recognize the importance of efficiency more than it does. I love reading about law and philosophy, but not nearly as much as I love having a good conversation about the two. I know that logic makes an argument sound, but also know that passion makes an argument sound logical. I have philosophical beliefs informed by economics and economic beliefs informed by philosophy, but I have lost track of which beliefs came first. I know it was the egg though.

I always think very practically, but do not always like to think about the practical. I have wanted to be a scientist for a while now, but it took me two undergraduate years to figure out that being a scientist does not necessarily entail working in a laboratory. I play the saxophone almost every day, but feel most like an artist when deduction is my instrument. I spent one year at a college where I did not belong and two years taking classes irrelevant for my major, but I have no regrets about my undergraduate experience. I am incredibly passionate about my interests, but cannot imagine being interested in only one passion for an entire lifetime.

I love the Yankees, but do not hate the Red Sox. I love sports, but hate the accompanying anti-intellectual culture. I may read the newspaper starting from the back, but I always make my way to the front eventually. I am liberal on some issues and conservative on others, but reasonable about all of them. I will always be politically active, but will never be a political activist. I think everything through completely, but I am never through thinking about anything.

I can get along with almost anyone, but there are very few people without whom I could not get along. I am giving of my time, but not to the point of forgetting its value. I live for each moment, but not as much as I worry about the next. I consider ambition to be of the utmost importance, but realize that it is useless without the support of hard work. I am a very competitive person, but only when competing with myself. I have a million dreams, but I am more than just a dreamer. I am usually content, but never satisfied.

I am a study in contradiction, but there is not an inconsistency to be found.

Commentary 1:  Minimalist

Structure: Personal Narrative
Topic:  Self-portrait
Thesis:  I am a clever risk-taker.
Elements of Style: Literary play with contradiction and a variety of verbal punning
Committee Appeal:  Intellectual Excellence, Multiple Perspectives
Success Rating:  A-/8

What’s Strong:
This personal statement is constructed like a poem:  there is a rhythm to it that draws the reader in; there is also verbal play and the construction of a somewhat mysterious self-portrait.   This applicant had an impressive 4.0 GPA and 178 LSAT, so he could be a risk-taker with the personal statement.  This essay stands out because it is more artfully designed than other statements.  This is a good strategy if you are sure of your standardized scores or if you are applying to a reach school and so are trying to get yourself noticed.  An experimental personal statement such as this is just as likely to succeed as to flop, because some admissions committee members value creativity while others will be put off by the lack of specific details.  In its uniqueness, it is unclear how difficult this statement was to write; most admissions committee members will probably give the candidate the benefit of the doubt and see it as highly original rather than a series of clichés. 

This statement works by a clever rhetorical trick:  The author will repeat a word in the same sentence but shift the meaning to a different, often contrary, usage.  For example, the author writes, “I believe that nothing is absolute, but I can absolutely defend my beliefs.”  Most of the sentences are linked in a daisy chain of associative ideas.  For example, the first paragraph moves through the author’s views on thinking, loving, and doubting.  The author then gestures towards interests in philosophy, morality, law, economics, music, sports, and politics.  In the third paragraph, the applicant tells us he is good at synthesizing diverse information.  The admissions committee will like this ability, as well as the humor that concludes the paragraph with the chicken-and-egg joke.  The statement ends with a character sketch indicating the author is friendly but ambitious and complex.  And finally, there is an important punch when the piece ends:  “I am a study in contradiction, but there is not an inconsistency to be found.”  This statement worked for the applicant because this person was accepted everywhere, including Yale and Stanford, and was offered a $63,000 scholarship to NYU.

What’s Wrong:
Although this statement is put together like a poem, it lacks the internal logic and consistency that would make it an outstanding example of the personal statement genre.   The author starts out very well, linking each sentence to the previous one, but upon close analysis, the chain link falls apart rather quickly.  In the first paragraph, talking connects quiet thinking to self-respect, and then love connects self-respect to healthy relationships, but after this, the author enters stream-of-consciousness mode.  We learn the author is not religious.  He or she writes, “I know that logic makes an argument sound, but also know that passion makes an argument sound logical.”  The problem with a sentence like this is that it does not give the reader specific evidence that this person is either logical or passionate.   This personal statement encases the author behind a rhetorical wall that does not allow his personality to emerge.  We do not have a sense of whether this person is trustworthy because we have no specific stories or examples to evaluate for the author’s ethical appeal.

The fourth paragraph is somewhat damaging to the author when we learn, “I spent one year at a college where I did not belong and two years taking classes irrelevant for my major.”  The admissions committee will wonder:  Why didn’t you belong at that college?  Why did you take random classes for two years? Can you be trusted to maintain your focus in law school?  The word play at this point waffles between clever and stale.  This statement would do better to begin and end with the verbal play, but to have a solid paragraph or two in the middle of personal narrative, in which the admissions committee really get to know the person behind this rhetorical show. 

Sample Personal Statement #2  - Silicon Valley Start-Up 

Eighteen months ago, I was sitting at my computer, wedged between a dripping coffee maker to my left and the company’s CFO five feet to my right. Every keystroke shook the flimsy foldout card table that served as my desk, on loan to the company from another employee’s garage. We were packed in the largest of three rooms in a 2,500 square foot space baking in the heat generated by ten co-workers in close quarters, fifteen running computers, and an abnormally warm summer. On the glass doorway was etched the ghostly lettering of the former company occupying the space, serving as a grim reminder of the ever-present possibility of failure.

Two weeks earlier, I had been in my company’s small conference room sitting at the table surrounded by familiar faces from my last employer. Silicon Valley is incestuous: teams migrate from one company to the next, so I was not surprised to find myself recruited to join my old boss’s newest project. They were selling another David versus Goliath story, featuring a small rag-tag team of engineers defeating a seemingly insurmountable industry leader. Despite my skepticism, I still had a free-running imagination fed with nostalgic thoughts of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard working on their first audio oscillator in a Palo Alto garage. But at my last start-up company, we had challenged a corporation for a piece of the industry pie, and nine years and $330 million dollars later, the company was a hollow shell doing mostly engineering contractor work. I was lucky enough to join that company late in the game and sell my stock options early, but many others spent a significant portion of their career at a company that came close to glory but ultimately fell short: Goliath 1, David 0.

This time they were telling me it was going to be different; they were always saying this time would be different. I asked them how a small, poorly funded start-up company could go against a giant corporation, which was also the undisputed king of our market, with nearly $400 million in quarterly revenue. After signing a non-disclosure agreement, I was let in on the big secret, the meaning of the “C” in the company name: we were going to use recent innovations in carbon nano-tubes to revolutionize the industry. These nano-scopic cylindrical fibers that allow unparalleled circuit density would be David’s tiny, secret sling.

With the financial incentive of stock options and the confidence gained by working with a crack technical team, everyone was working at full capacity. There were scribbled drawings with names and dates taped up on a wall. These were the jotted ideas from our team of electrical engineers and physicists with M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from schools like Harvard, Stanford, and M.I.T. One posting was my recent workings of a carbon nano-tube electro-mechanical configuration bit, an idea that a co-worker and I had developed that I would write up and the company would push through the patent process. By packing a dozen well-caffeinated physics and electronics geniuses into a pathetic three-room rental that resembled a low-budget movie studio, we had created the primordial soup of intellectual invention. As a result of our collective ideas, our seasoned team, our innovative ideas, and nano-technology being the latest buzzword in investment, we were soon funded by venture capitalists for $10 million. It was immensely exciting to be the tenth employee in a growing start-up company that would have to upgrade offices and dramatically expand staff in an up-scaling war against the industry titan.
The increased design responsibility and unbounded architectural creativity that comes with working for a start-up is unparalleled. However, the necessity of sidestepping our competitor’s patented intellectual property, which covered all aspects of our design, from manufacturing to testing, placed a heavy burden on the design team. This danger was extremely real, as a similar start-up had collapsed following an infringement lawsuit related to unauthorized reproduction of a bit stream. As the designer of three different components, I examined our competition’s sixteen patents related to the memory aspect of the device.  It was immensely satisfying to study, absorb, and then circumvent patent claims as I designed a conceptually similar but un-patented version of three memory blocks.

I am interested in serving as general counsel for a corporation focused on advanced semiconductor technology. My diverse work experience and master’s degree provide a perfect foundation to tackle the issues faced by a general counsel. I am drawn to the challenges I will find at the intersection of intellectual property, product liability, and corporate law. At this juncture in my life, I seek more challenge and personal growth in a field that calls on my written skills, attention to detail, and love of technology. My background in nano-technology will bring a unique perspective to the NYU classroom and will make me extremely marketable upon graduation. By pursuing a law degree, I intend to enter a profession that aligns with the interests and aptitudes I have discovered and developed through real work experience. It is through deep personal reflection that I have decided that law is the natural extension of my training, personality, and talents.

Commentary 2:  Silicon Valley Start-Up

Structure: Personal Narrative
Topic:  Internet Start-Up
Thesis:  I led a multi-million dollar design team; I can succeed in law school.
Elements of Style:  Comparison to David & Goliath
Committee Appeal: Tangible Impact, Real World Experience, Pro-Active Starter, Good Leader
Success Rating:  A/9

What’s Strong:
This is an excellent personal statement because it shows this candidate has had a tangible impact on organizations, and probably on the global economy.  The statement keeps the reader engaged by giving a meaningful story with background, context, conflict, and resolution.  It also provides a peek into the mysterious and increasingly legendary world of Silicon Valley start-ups.  This is a good model for someone who has been out of college for a while, but who hasn’t been working in a law firm.  The essay is focused on career goals, with career history to back up the writer’s plans.  This person is a doer, not a dreamer.  The writer shows a depth of technical knowledge and strong analytic reasoning skills that go far beyond linear thinking, especially in the description of finding new solutions to highly technical problems that do not violate patents.  The statement creates desire in the admissions committee to admit this person because other companies seek to hire the applicant and venture capitalists are willing to support the applicant with substantial funds.  This statement will inspire members of the admissions committee to act on the applicant’s behalf because he has successfully reached beyond the safety net of college. 

This applicant demonstrated his strong written communication skills by writing a compelling statement that uses several kinds of rhetorical appeals.  Logic is used to show how his analytical ability helps to keep the company afloat in the same waters where others have foundered.  He uses touches of pathos when he describes the “primordial soup of intellectual invention” inside the cramped office.  The analogy in which he compares his small start-up and the industry leader to David and Goliath uses both pathos and mythos to excellent effect: The story is one everyone knows, and so just by invoking the names, the writer brings a powerful story into his narrative without using valuable space.  This mythic story becomes a theme woven throughout the essay.  It is a rhetorical device that establishes a connection in the reader’s mind between this candidate and David, a leader known for his compassionate ethos. This writer has also composed the statement so that he comes across as an authoritative, competent, thoughtful, and honest leader. This statement helped earn the applicant acceptance to NYU and Columbia Law Schools.

What’s Wrong:
This essay is too focused on the details of the story and fails to give sufficient evidence for why this person is a good candidate for law school.  This essay is structured as a personal narrative, and the topic is the applicant’s professional experience.  The first paragraph is well written but is wholly descriptive prose that has very little to do with why this person is a good candidate for law school.  The first paragraph lacks a thesis or a direction for the essay.  Ideally, the reader should find a microcosm of the essay in the first paragraph.

The second-to-last paragraph packs in the most value to the admissions committee for the space used, but the background story is important for this paragraph to be so powerful.  To make the background story do more work for him, the writer could plant more indicators of his positive qualities and characteristics in the early part of the essay.  For example, he could mention how he used his oral communication skills to communicate with his design team and supervisors, so that the admissions committee knows he feels that mastery of oral communication skills is important.

The last paragraph is where the applicant draws together his themes with his self-assessment and goals.  He should mention what his master’s degree is in.  This writer commits the common error of throwing in the name of the school receiving this statement as a token.  Any law school program could fill that place.  The writer doesn’t appear to have done research about the law program at NYU.  Does the applicant feel that being in New York City will put him in contact with East Coast technology specialists who will give him an edge up in his career?  Or, is the applicant focusing upon NYU because of their strength in intellectual property law? The writer needs to persuade the NYU admissions committee that NYU is the only school for him, and he can do this by interpreting how the school’s particular strengths will advance his goals.  Despite these quibbles, though, this is overall a fantastic personal statement.

Sample Personal Statement #3 - South Dakota

Home for me is a small, sturdy town in West River South Dakota—whose conflation with the comparatively gentrified and green farmland east of the Missouri River is to be made only at the risk of rough correction by residents of both bank sides. My mother, however, draws her roots from Omaha, Nebraska, a location that earned its place on my personal map as the site of my school holidays. Although separated by a length of exactly six hours seated in the right-hand backseat of the family car, it is in the overlap of these two places that I have found two of my most important resources, curiosity and determination, with which I confront obstacles and opportunities.

When in Omaha, I would often explore the childhood bedrooms of my mother’s eight siblings. These old rooms with their shelves and closets filled by books became for me miniature, delightfully idiosyncratic libraries. Tucked away from the cheerful din of the waves of kith and kin washing through my grandmother’s doorway, I pilfered these goldmines and in doing so discovered the vista of my mind’s eye—a landscape that would powerfully influence my intellectual world to come. Through the course of countless Thanksgivings and winter breaks, I gobbled down stretches of Nancy Drew adventures (including every mystery solved by that titian haired sleuth before 1979). Eventually I passed from Nancy Drew to de Quincy and Dickens.

I brought my fascination with literature home as a hobby to Winner, South Dakota, where people seemed to be most seriously interested in reclaiming that 1996 state football championship and whether it would rain enough for the sunflowers to get ahead of the weeds.  Although I never did get a very tight grasp on football’s finer points, the capacity for persistence that I gained while growing up in Winner formed the foundation on which I later laid academic pursuits. Of what I have accomplished in my areas of study, very little can be credited to miraculous flair or native instinct. The bulk of my academic personality may be defined by “try”—the word people in rodeo stands use when they refer to the rider who is jumping over the arena fence, trampled hat in hand after a particularly valiant, if unsuccessful ride. The word is, of course, just another way (ungrammatical at that) to refer to passion and hardihood. Still, the noun form of “try” has been in my lexicon since childhood, and it is thanks to the special circumstances of my modern-day rural upbringing in the Midwest that I developed my sense of steady perseverance. The many ranching and farming friends and family who daily confront both natural obstacles and, increasingly, upheavals in the very structure of the agricultural way of life have shown me the worth of working, and working hard.

Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, another signal six-hour drive brought me to Nebraska’s small capital city, where I enrolled in the state’s flagship university. A short distance from the scene of my childhood holidays, I now had the resources of the region’s largest university at hand. No longer confined to the book collections of my aunts’ younger days and the even less complete collection found in the old local library, I learned to abide by an old maxim. Rather than pull books off shelves according to the talent of their cover artists or slavishly follow titian-haired sleuths across multiple authors and decades, I have learned to pursue rational trains of inquiry.  I anticipate with pleasure the further developments of my intellectual capabilities that the study of law will bring.

Commentary 3:  South Dakota

Structure: Personal Narrative
Topic:  Growing up in the Midwest
Thesis:  I am observant and shrewd.
Elements of Style:  A literary statement, showing the applicant is a reader and a great writer.
Committee Appeal:  Intellectual Excellence, Regional Uniqueness
Success Rating:  B/6

What’s Strong:
This essay has a powerful regional voice and brilliant local color.  The author writes with such comic charm of Midwestern towns that the piece is irresistibly pleasant to read.  From the description of her hometown as “sturdy” in the first sentence to the comic suspense about whether the sunflowers will “get ahead of the weeds,” the author shows she is an extremely talented, and highly-trained, creative writer.  It might be hard for the untrained eye to notice the subtleties that make this essay a work of art, but they are there, and because of this, the author releases herself from some of the conventions of the law school personal essay.  She’s therefore free to let her regionalism seem to get ahead of her ambitions, when all the while she is showing off her rhetorical prowess.  This author uses doublespeak to both present herself as an innocent from South Dakota and turn a keen and comic eye on the places of her youth and the idiosyncrasies of the residents, including her own family.  She is effectively winking at admissions committee members at top law schools on the coasts, and giving them a delightful Willa Cather-like release from the tedium of law school personal statements.  This candidate has a personality and intelligence that comes through loud and clear in her writing.

What’s Wrong:
The applicant does not tell us anything about her accomplishments in college; we don’t even learn her major!  Nor do we have any indication that she is even interested in the law, much less a compelling sense of why she should be chosen over other articulate—and law-loving—applicants.  She should keep the hilarious paragraph on the rodeo, but if there is enough space, she should give the reader another chapter of her personal narrative about what happens when she gets to college, with new characters and new comic, shrewd observations.  Perhaps there was one creative writing professor who took her under his or her wing but who ended up fostering not a future M.F.A. student but a scholar with a passion to pursue the J.D.  Without being too obvious, this would encourage the admissions committee members who were reading fast, woe betide them, to take another look.

This applicant was accepted at Cornell, Georgetown and several other top law schools.

Sample Personal Statement #4 - Senior Design

Senior Design—the year-long capstone course and college-wide competition that engineering students learn about on their first day and do not stop thinking about until their last. It forces them to draw from all they have learned. It is a test of perseverance, creativity, and technical knowledge. It was also, rather unexpectedly, the catalyst in my decision to study law.

The philosophy of the Senior Design course was to foster a spirit of entrepreneurship. To that extent, we had to conceptualize, design, build, and test our project considering real-world constraints such as time, cost, and technical feasibility. Finally, we had to “sell” it to a panel of industry judges during a poster presentation.

My team agreed to implement an idea I had for years but didn’t have the know-how or resources to build. We designed a point-of-sale (POS) system for restaurants where customers could place their own orders and pay directly from their tables. It consisted of a graphical touch-screen display unit at the table, pager units for wait staff, and a kitchen unit where all orders would be displayed and managed. All communication was wireless, using state-of-the-art Bluetooth technology. We dubbed it TruePOS.

The professor feared our project was too ambitious. Even now, it is difficult to say if this was true. My team meshed together well, but like any fabric, there were bound to be rips. We were almost torn to shreds the last few weeks: sleepless nights, arguments piling up, parts not working, and families tested to the limits of their patience. But our sacrifice paid off. Among 21 teams from civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering, as a whole considered to be the best group in the history of the competition, we won the grand prize. At the awards banquet, almost every professor, student, and industry invitee told us that we should get a patent as soon as possible.

As we stood on the stage accepting our award, I could tell we were feeling many of the same emotions: elation, relief, and gratitude. As I looked at my teammates, with their earnest, eye-scrunching smiles, I came to a realization. I was not the same person I was a year ago. It was as if Senior Design was a glowing, red-hot crucible, and I was a placed inside, melted down, and tempered in a new mold. My basic substance was the same, but I had taken a different shape. I had grown complacent, but I now felt a renewed fervor. Although I hadn’t given it much consideration earlier, I knew the next step in my life: we would get that patent.

My teammates and I met with the Director of the Office of Technology Transfer, Ken Sherman, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Ken explained the basic patent process including the concept of prior art and asked us to do a patent search on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website. As I conducted this search, I realized that, to my own shock, I enjoyed it. I found myself wondering what it would be like to sit down with the engineers and scientists behind many patents, hashing out the technical details and helping them draft the document that would secure their intellectual property. Most inventors lack the necessary skills to protect themselves. I would be good at helping them, I thought.

My interest in patent law, and now the law in general, has only continued to grow. I have been devouring information on law school, and I cannot wait for the challenge. I believe that Columbia Law School presents the best opportunity for my legal education and is undoubtedly my first choice. I have contacted several students and alumni who attest to the challenging, yet rewarding experience Columbia provides. Many of my friends and most of my family live in New York, many just minutes away via train. I have always relied on a strong support network, and Columbia would allow me to not only continue this habit, but also strengthen it. My plan is to practice law in New York; Columbia’s placement history would help me realize this goal.

My decision to study law came from an unlikely source. My strong academic record and background as an electrical engineer provide a pragmatic foundation for my success in law school. I feel prepared to study law at Columbia University, and I feel that I can offer Columbia something in return. I look forward to beginning my legal career at Columbia. 

Commentary 4:  Senior Design

Structure:  Personal Narrative
Topic: Design patent
Thesis:  I designed an ingenious device and want to learn about patent law.
Elements of Style:  Modern feel and technologically incisive.
Committee Appeal:  Intellectual Excellence, Pro-Active Starter, Good Leadership Skills
Success Rating:  A-/8

What’s Strong:
This essay has all the best elements of an exceptional law school essay.  It has enthusiasm, building excitement, and triumph.  The applicant gives the reader an “ah ha!” moment when he announces his idea for the Senior Design competition.  The invention, TruePOS, strikes the reader as a great idea, promising benefits to customers and restaurant owners alike.  This candidate has achieved greatness, and he offers great promise to achieve it again through creativity, technical knowledge, and drive that makes him willingly stay up all night to accomplish his goals.  He has a reason for wanting to go to law school:  to learn about patent law, because he is sitting on a patent that could potentially make him millions of dollars.  This applicant has worked with a team, and more than that, he is naturally both the leader and the glue for the teams he organizes.  He gets passionate about what he is working on.  He is motivated, ambitious and clever.  He has substantial intellectual and analytical abilities.  This statement is a pleasure to read.  It uses the description of one key event to showcase the applicant’s array of talents.

What’s Wrong:
While this essay tells a great story, it conveys it through language that is at times clunky and unvarnished.  The essay starts with a sentence fragment, and the first paragraph contains a somewhat inexplicable shift from present to past tense.  These are not trivial questions of pedantry; the law depends upon the precise use of language, and so these errors could signal to the admissions committee that the writer’s verbal acumen is not equal to his technical expertise.  The author’s metaphors—of fabric and crucible—do not bring the language to life or help the reader visualize the scene.

The last two paragraphs are not as strong as the previous paragraphs.  The applicant needs to capitalize on his ability to understand the language of engineers, and to make an argument for why people with his background are needed as patent lawyers.  He needs to create as much desire as he can in the Columbia admissions committee to want him as part of their class.  If possible and/or plausible, he should compare the Senior Design competition at his university to one at MIT, or some other well-known university, so the committee has a clear frame of reference for his great achievement.  The committee would like to think they are getting one of the best and brightest engineers in the country.  When describing the design process, the applicant might want to say which parts he was responsible for creating.  He also might be able to look up how many patents came out of this program, and use that number to his advantage. Even with these flaws, the statement is a good statement and the applicant was accepted to law school at Columbia and Michigan.

Sample Personal Statement #5 -  Mormon Conflict

People of faith are often told to “be in the world, but not of the world.” Unfortunately, no one ever specifies which world. For me, there have always been two. The Mormon world and the world outside seem ever in conflict, and I’ve lived caught between them. My fight to inhabit both worlds without being defined by either has made me who I am today and set me on the path to law school.

My struggle with the Mormon world began on my first Friday in kindergarten with five words from a particularly reverent six-year-old named Matt Hansen. My dad was finally taking me to the zoo’s new shark exhibit that weekend, and I just couldn’t hold in the news. “I’m going to the see the sharks,” I practically shouted as my class gathered in a circle for large group. My teacher asked when I’d be going, and I enthusiastically replied, “The day after tomorrow!” Enter Matt Hansen, sitting cross-legged at the opposite end of a circle that included nearly every acquaintance I’d made in my short life. As a now familiar look of dismay played slowly across his face, he offered his five-word condemnation: “But Daniel, that’s a Sunday.”

So began my alienation from and struggle with the Mormon world. I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in name but not necessarily in spirit. My mother raised me in the church, while my agnostic but supportive father encouraged me to form my own beliefs. My beliefs did not prohibit me from visiting the zoo with him on the Sabbath, while my classmates’ fathers--both heavenly and earthly--forbade it.

My actions clashed with those of more devout Utahans many more times in my childhood. Sometimes these clashes were humorous, as when I found myself defending Darwin’s theory of evolution against widespread ridicule from a lunch table full of high school classmates who subscribed only to the six-day theory. More often, they were tragic.

The most harrowing experience I’ve ever endured was explaining to my ecclesiastical leader who was also my grandfather that I would not be serving a mission for his church (as all nineteen-year-old Mormon males are expected to do), but would instead be continuing my education at the University of Virginia. After years of struggling against a culture that desperately wanted me to share its beliefs, I had finally decided to take my father’s advice and seek out my own. Knowing I couldn’t do this in Bountiful (yes, it’s really called “Bountiful”) under constant pressure to fully convert, I disappointed my friends, my congregation, my grandfather/bishop, and half of my family by forgoing a mission and leaving Utah in search of what we used to call the “real” world.

I came face to face with that world on my first Friday of college as I watched my particularly irreverent roommate named Simon Williams pour three beers down his throat through a funnel. An impressive feat, to be sure, but not one I hoped to emulate. I had left Utah in search of a place where one’s faith need not define him and where differences are embraced. As I became ever more immersed in college’s culture of celebrated cretinism, I realized that such places don’t really exist.

I was as much at odds with the “real world” as I had been with the Mormon world. I didn’t drink or smoke, I thought it was a good idea to stave off sex until marriage, and my idea of a “party” was viewing all three Back to the Future movies in a row while a rousing game of Scrabble raged on in another room. Though the University preached a message of understanding and acceptance, my personal mores were as much under fire there as my doctrinal edicts had been in Bountiful. Making the difficult daily decisions to forgo alcohol and resist the hook-up culture, I once again found myself estranged from the world I inhabited.

This Friday, as I sit in my Charlottesville law office, overlooking the colonial outpost’s historic downtown, I realize that it’s only thanks to my struggles against those two worlds that I am now able to live in my own. The obviousness of my differing values forced me to maintain them without apology. Others eventually came to respect that, and, while I never truly felt a part of either culture, I learned to thrive in both. I graduated Bountiful High School as a popular student body vice president with good friends who had stopped trying to convert me. I finished college (after just three years of identity crises!) with good grades, a strong sense of self, and a core group of friends who understand and respect my beliefs. Though difficult at times, my perpetual isolation from a cultural identity forced me to form my own and taught me to stay true to it.

It also made me fall in love with law for the most visceral of reasons. In law, my problems do not exist. There are no Mormons and no agnostics in law. There is no culture and no doctrine. Law concerns itself only with blind justice and the maintenance of a fair system. As someone who had always been defined by his faith or lack thereof, I’ve longed to work in a field where it is not an issue. More importantly, my social alienation has taught me what it’s like to be the one against many. I know how it feels to defend a harmless zoo trip to a room full of hostile kindergartners, to espouse Darwin against fundamentalist teenagers, and to be the only guy holding a root beer at a frat party. I know what it’s like to stand alone against an unfriendly system, and I find it truly inspiring that Americans are never forced to do so. Instead, the accused faces the system with an advocate legally bound to be as infinitely trustworthy as he is loyal. I can think of nothing nobler or for which my life has better prepared me than to spend my career as that advocate, against whatever world my client and I face next.

Commentary 5:  Mormon Conflict

Structure:  Personal Narrative
Topic:  Identity Crisis
Thesis:  I stay true to my values.
Style:  Ethical Appeal
Committee Appeal:  Uniqueness
Success Rating:  B/6

What’s Strong:
The wise tone of this statement suggests the applicant is grounded and knows himself well.  His tendency to observe situations and weigh options makes him seem prudent. His story of “escaping” a repressive Mormon upbringing is memorable, likeable, and at times comic.  The story acts as an allegory, showing the reader that this applicant is not afraid to stand up for what he believes in.  He is kind-hearted, but he is not a people-pleaser.  He will be able to stand up for his beliefs against those who disagree with him, whether those are colleagues in law school, in a law firm, or on the bench.  He makes plans and follows through with them.
 
What’s Wrong:
The biggest problem with this personal statement is that the reader does not learn about the author’s academic credentials.  He focuses too much on his childhood and describing his extracurricular experiences in college.  These sections need to be trimmed down in order to provide more space for describing his intellectual achievements, work-related impact on others, or real-world experience related to leadership or problem-solving.  The author needs to be aware that when he describes himself as observant, the admissions committee will also assume that he is tentative and unsure about swift decisions.  He needs to include an example that assures the committee he has matured beyond that indicator of insecurity.  Another problem with this essay is the author’s idea that law is completely objective. By saying, “In law, my problems do not exist….There is no culture and no doctrine,” he comes across as idealistic and naïve.  He needs to admit that law is not without cultural influences.  In his own example of Charles Darwin and natural selection, law confronted religion face to face.  Mentioning the Scopes Trial or the Kitzmiller intelligent design case would add a much-needed boost to the author’s academic credentials.  He might rephrase his concluding paragraph to praise law as a field studying human rights.

Even with its flaws, this personal statement establishes the author’s ability to confidently think for himself.  The author was granted admission to Berkeley and the U. of Virginia with a 168 LSAT score and a 3.46 GPA, well below Berkeley’s median GPA of 3.80.

Sample Personal Statement #6 - Seven Impossible Things

Spending much of my childhood in casinos has certainly been a formative experience. For one, I didn’t know the entire arcade floor of Circus Circus, known as the Midway, closes at midnight on weekends. For another, it is illegal for a ten-year-old child to be walking through the casino gambling area with his eight-year-old sister in tow. Fortunately, the casino employees were very helpful once I explained to them that I was looking for my father. It was not very surprising then, years later in my freshmen year at college, my parents divorced, and I was told the family was bankrupted, mired in gambling debt. After all, the time I spent in casinos has taught me more than the operating hours of Circus Circus or the Nevada state laws. It has prepared me for the details of my father’s gambling and, oddly enough, it has prepared me for law school as well.

Most Saturdays, my father would leave my sister in my care at the Midway with twenty dollars each for the arcade. Although the money was for entertainment, in a family where the financial tension is palpable, money becomes sacrosanct and the desire to save is very strong. On one hand, there was the guilt of spending. On the other hand, however, I was usually left at the arcades for eight hours or more. I may have been the only child to methodically apply a risk-return analysis to every arcade game at Circus Circus. My solution was to excel in skill-based games because those games awarded good players with continuous play. A game that allows players to compete against each other with the winner continuing indefinitely was perfect for my budget. As it turns out, this is very conducive to cooperative learning. The arcade is a very friendly atmosphere and opponents are always helping and teaching each other. It is ironic that my father unwittingly fostered a love of collaborative learning by leaving his children by themselves.

My preference for collaborative learning is largely the result of my time at the casino - I have constantly sought to understand myself in an effort to avoid the same mistakes as my father. I avoid drinking, smoking and gambling because I may be predisposed to addictive behavior. According to Black, the oldest child in an addictive family is labeled the family hero and behaves as “the little adult.”   The child is responsible and typically very intelligent, the mediator, the perfectionist and the caretaker. It was painful to realize that a complete stranger could describe aspects of my personality so accurately with a turn of a phrase, but I have learned to leverage and appreciate the traits that arose from my unique experiences. I have been the family negotiator, translator and mediator since I was ten. My parents did not speak English so I was the de-facto conduit between my family and the Western world. I was also the caretaker. I watched over my sister whether we were at the casino or at home, and since I graduated, I visit my mother every week and give part of my salary to her every month. Caring for my family has nurtured a desire to serve in a boarder context.

I have always held a fascination with the implications of technology on our laws and conversely our laws on technology. Today, the law is seen as a barrier to technology and innovation. More often, instead of “the law and technology,” the attitude in the media and the forums of technical communities has been “the law against technology.” The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is almost universally hated in the technology world. Understandably, incidents such as when the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) censored Princeton Professor Edward Felten under the DMCA contribute to the outcry of academics and technologists. These incidents and controversial patents such as Amazon’s 1-Click patent have raised many concerns. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has declared itself under siege, unable to stem the workload crisis. Critics argue the current system is stifling innovation with too many vested interests to affect real change. Undoubtedly, the rabbit hole goes quite deep. As a technologist, I may only be able to sympathize with the plight of Professor Felton, but as lawyer I will be able to understand our legal system and participate in the reform.

I am inspired by the humor and energy that exudes from Berkeley’s faculty, from Dean Berring’s quip on how he may hold a record as one of the few students to transfer out of Harvard Law School to Robert P. Mergers’ jab at the government when he wrote, “My proposals are directed primarily at the PTO, the courts, and Congress. Because there is very little chance that any of these entities will act on them, I can be bold.”  The humor and energy is also evident in Berkeley’s balance between strong education and relaxed quality of life. Dean Berring’s remark on how he throws out his notes each year to ensure that he thinks about the issues afresh with the students and to explore them as a group, is a testimonial to this balance. Furthermore, I am passionate about the public interest and constitutional implications of emerging technologies, such as the explosive growth of Internet gambling. The Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, the Berkeley Technology Law Journal and the student group at boalt.org are ideal institutions to explore the ethical advancement of technology. These institutions will also allow me to help others explore their passions and work toward the school’s success - ultimately, it is a symbiotic relationship, and I can only take as much as I’m willing to give.

According to Freakonomics the following three factors correlate with higher test scores: the parents are highly educated, the parents speak English in the home and the parents are involved in the Parent Teacher Association (PTA).  My parents did not finish high school nor did they speak English in the home. My parents did not participate in their children’s lives, much less in the PTA. But it is because of these factors, and not in spite of them, that I was valedictorian of my high school, graduated from college in the top eight percent of my class while working twenty hours a week, and improved my LSAT from the 48th percentile to the 95th percentile with three months of preparation. In his essay on business concepts and patent system reform, Robert P. Merges references the White Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There:

"Now I’ll give you something to believe[" the White Queen remarked.] "I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day."
"I can’t believe that!" said Alice.
"Can’t you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again, draw a long breath and shut your eyes."
Alice laughed. "There’s no use trying," she said, "one can’t believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven’t had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

The Midway was my prelude to Berkeley’s collaborative atmosphere. It may seem impossible to believe that Circus Circus is a breeding ground for Berkeley Law students, but perhaps if I was admitted, the White Queen will make time for seven impossible things before breakfast.

Commentary 6:  Seven Impossible Things

Structure:  Quote, Personal Narrative, Overcoming Adversity, Analogy
Topic:  Casino life
Thesis:  I overcame economic disadvantage to excel academically.
Elements of Style:  Literary reference to Lewis Carroll
Committee Appeal:  Good Law School Fit
Success Rating:  B+/7

What’s Strong:
This applicant chooses to structure his personal statement as a combination of a personal narrative of overcoming odds and a meaningful quote.  There is also a light undercurrent of problem-solution analysis, which could be made more palpable.  This is a great structure, but the three elements need to be melded together into one organic whole.  The main topic is how the applicant made the best of growing up in the Las Vegas casino Circus Circus—potentially a wonderfully unique topic.  It is excellent that this applicant researched UC Berkeley School of Law and gives specific reasons for why he has chosen Berkeley.  This statement has a strong conclusion in which the applicant discovers the theme of his essay, which he has been setting up all along the way:  In the final sentence, the audience learns the full meaning of the title, Seven Impossible Things, which is about daring to achieve seemingly impossible goals, including getting into a top law school.  The conclusion pulls together all aspects of the essay and ends with a rhetorical flourish that leaves the reader smiling with comprehension at the clever rhetoric.

What’s Wrong:
All the elements of a good personal statement are here, but they need to be supported by more academic accomplishments, and the rhetorical links between the elements need to be strengthened.  Nearly half of the personal statement presents the memories of a ten-year-old, and the central quote comes from a children’s book.  These aspects raise a red warning flag for the admissions committee, who might wonder if the applicant has made the transition to mature adulthood, or if he has had trouble moving beyond the abandonment he experienced in the casino as a child.  So, the applicant must clear away the doubt in the reader’s mind, and to do this, he can cut back on the amount of space given to descriptions of the casino and use more evidence from his adult life in college and beyond to demonstrate that he has all the mature qualities law schools value. 

The story the applicant tells is, at its heart, a sad one.  That sadness is best balanced by humorous and witty rhetoric, so that the audience experiences both joyful playfulness and poignancy.  The applicant’s choice to compare himself to the White Queen in Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass employs mythos because everyone knows the basic story of Alice in Wonderland.  The White Queen sees possibilities where everyone else sees impossibilities.  She is both ridiculous and wise in Through the Looking Glass.  The applicant quotes one of her wiser comments to Alice just before the White Queen turns into a sheep: “Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”  For the White Queen’s powerful quote to link the beginning, middle, and end of the essay, though, the White Queen’s quote needs to be connected to Las Vegas.  One way to do this would be simply to use the word “impossible” in the introduction, since that is the keyword in the essay.  For example, the writer could describe Las Vegas as, in some sense, an impossible city, a city of larger-than-life illusion and enthralling spectacle, where many gamblers want to believe they will beat impossible odds. 

If the White Queen took her belief system to Las Vegas, she would probably bankrupt herself before breakfast.  The author, on the contrary, would not, because he knows the difference between the impossible that is worth fighting for and the impossible that is not.  To make this more evident, the applicant might structure his essay around six impossibly difficult circumstances he has overcome in his life; for example, (1) neglect, (2) gambling debt, (3) a language barrier, (4) no educational precedents, and (5, 6) two other circumstances he overcame in college, such as uniting a diverse group of people for a common academic goal, or solving a difficult technology problem by using analytical skills and thinking outside the box.  Each of these problems should be given a paragraph, with specific evidence showing that each was solved, and with each solution came the development of valuable qualities, including intellectual ability, analytic ability, imagination, motivation, maturity, organization, teamwork, leadership, self-confidence, and oral and written communication skills.  The seventh impossible thing he currently believes will come to pass is, of course, that he will be admitted to UC Berkeley School of Law.

As the personal statement stands now, the applicant seems to be a loner.  Law school admissions committees would like to see more evidence that he can both work with a team and delegate.  He explains that he developed collaborative learning skills from being abandoned in the arcade, but he needs to give a specific example of how he has used his skills in collaborative learning as an adult.    

The fourth paragraph is not integrated into the personal statement, and it is not personal.  It should be integrated into the paragraph on some “impossible” aspect of technology the applicant has overcome.  The applicant needs to explain what relationship he has had with patent law as a technologist, and what makes him desire to reform the laws.  It’s great, however, that he described the quagmire of “law against technology” as “the rabbit hole,” because this choice of words continues to pave the way for the White Queen.  This would be a good paragraph to expand on future goals.  For example, while the applicant likely sees himself as a patent lawyer, this needs to be explicitly discussed.

Also, the author should eliminate the mention of his first scoring a 148 on the LSAT.  While his improvement is impressive, the negative to having the admissions committee associate him with a 148 score outweighs the positive aspects of his improvement.

Note that this essay was geared towards and submitted to Berkeley, which has a generous 4 page limit on their personal statement.  For other law schools this essay length is too long, but works well for Berkeley, which puts a heavy emphasis upon the personal statement.  This applicant was accepted to Berkeley, in large part due to his ability to effectively showcase his interest in the law school and illustrating why his skill set is a good match with the law school’s excellence in intellectual property law.

We hope that the following free personal statement samples with critique assist you with creating your masterpiece. But for more direction on how to write a personal statement please read our article on Writing Personal Statements. While that article conveys information on personal statements for law school, it can also apply to other graduate programs. For even more free personal statement examples, visit Essay Edge or the personal statement forum with over 200 personal statement samples.

Just how important is effectively writing personal statements? So critical that the personal statement is the first item in an application that is read by Ed Tom, the Dean of Admissions at U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. In our exclusive interview, Dean Tom states that “[P]utting together an entering class is like organizing a choir; we want distinct voices. There are hundreds of similar applicants, but only one of you; so take the opportunity provided by the personal statement to let us hear your voice.”

What else did Dean Tom say about how to write a personal statement? “Personal statements for law school are the applicant’s opportunity to distinguish himself from hundreds of other applicants who have the same numbers, and the same major, and come from a similar school. The personal statement is an applicant’s opportunity to describe the distance they’ve come in their lives.”
“Most everyone is a very different person now than they were in high school and along that journey they develop a voice that they will be bringing into the classroom. I want to learn about the journey that developed that voice, and to the decision to apply to law school. We are looking for intellectually curious people, and we are looking for people with a diverse array of experiences. So, the ideal personal statement would bring all of that out.”

For editing of your personal statement, you can either swap your statement with someone on the personal statement forum for free or pay to have your statement edited by Essay Edge or Revision Editing.