TIPS ON STATEMENT FO PURPOSE
Question: I want to start working on my law school essays so that I'm ready to submit my applications in the fall, but I'm stumped. What do admissions officers want me to write about?
Part II: The Statement of Purpose
In my last column, I offered advice on techniques for writing effective personal statements. Here, I'll be discussing how to write a good statement of purpose, which is how I refer to essays that answer why you want a law degree. Unlike the personal statement, which is largely descriptive and designed to offer a snapshot of you as a person, the statement of purpose asks you to answer a narrow question: why you want a law degree. An effective statement of purpose is not descriptive. Rather, it constructs an argument designed to persuade in that way, this essay approximates much more closely the kind of writing you'll be doing as a lawyer. Admissions officers pay attention to the coherence and strength of your argument, both to make sure you have good reasons for going to law school, and also to get a sense of your potential as a legal writer.
In my experience, most applicants have terrible reasons for applying to law school, and that's why they have such a difficult time writing a good statement of purpose. Many people apply because:
None of these approaches results in a good statement of purpose. Instead, applicants should construct an argument that paints a trajectory with both backward and forward-looking components: what is your background, what are your future goals, and why do you need a law degree to connect the two?
The problem with scenarios 1), 2), and 3) is that you may be able to talk about your background, but you can't articulate concrete career goals. And if you don't know where you're headed (and why), you can't explain why you need a law degree to get there. The impression you don't want to give is that you woke up one day and decided a law degree would be really prestigious and cool, and that you want to spend three years and up to $150,000 (plus lost income) to figure out what it is you really want to do.
The problem with scenarios 4) and 5) is that while you might have a concrete goal, nothing in your background necessarily makes that goal a logical, well-informed, or credible one. If you don't have a track record in public interest work, for example, why should an admissions officer believe that you know what you're getting yourself into? Or even that you're sincere? Maybe you really are pure of heart and do want to save the world, but people will say all kinds of things to make themselves sound better in their applications, and the absence of a track record can make you sound self-serving and disingenuous.
Those kinds of essays also end up sounding very naïve. Public interest work involves long hours, little pay, and (if you go to law school) crushing debt, and most law students who intend to go into public interest law end up joining the private sector instead. Public interest law is a very hard way to go, and your argument will sound facile if you can't demonstrate an understanding of the real challenges and trade-offs. Admissions officers are very cynical about applicants who proclaim their devotion to public interest without any meaningful experience in that world.
As for international law, 90% of applicants who say they want to go into international law have no idea what that means, and their essays confirm their ignorance. As one of my admissions officer buddies likes to say, If you want to see the world, be a flight attendant. Why? Because most people who practice international law spend most of their time in windowless conference rooms, and windowless conference rooms look exactly the same whether you're in
Contrast the following career trajectories, which sound a lot more credible:
What if you don't have a compelling reason to go to law school? Go experience legal practice from the inside. If you've worked with lawyers as an intern, paralegal, or case assistant, you'll have much more credibility when you explain what it is about the practice of law that appeals to you. Maybe you enjoy the analytical thinking, the fast pace, and the attention to detail. Or maybe there's a particular area of law that you've seen up close (Superfund litigation? 10K filings? Juvenile law? Tort claims?), and you want to leverage that experience.
Whatever your situation may be, your job is to make a compelling case to an admissions officer, and that usually ends up sounding quite different from the reasons you contemplate when you're counting sheep or arguing with your parents or daydreaming about ways to escape your horrible boss. A great statement of purpose demonstrates that you are in control of your destiny, not that you'll be happy to land wherever the tide takes you.
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