Law School Essays

Law School Essays

One of the first things you need to know before writing a law school essay is that most law schools prefer that you write on topics that are open-ended. It is up to you to ensure that this elbow room works to your advantage and not disadvantage. So here is a look at what the admission officers are on the look out for when they ask you to write law school essays.

Good law school essays should focus primarily on the plus points and qualities that will enable you to be a good lawyer. In that sense you would do well to write a persuasive essay as this will enable to argue for or against a point in the most convincing way possible. The ultimate goal of law school essays is to show you up as an interesting and promising candidate for admission

Points to ponder

While writing law school essays you need to focus on two main ideas:

1. What draws me to a legal profession
2. How do my qualifications and qualities equip me to be a lawyer?

While answering these two key questions in the shortest and most interesting way here are some common setbacks that you would do better to avoid:

• Do NOT begin your essay with the line, “There is nothing I would like more than to be a lawyer and then follow it up with a laundry list of banal reasons
• You do not want to say that you have decided to become a lawyer because either of your parents is in the legal profession. This will show that you have a lack of individuality.
• Don’t write in clichés by saying that you want to become a lawyer to rescue people – if you are more honest with yourself it is probably because lawyers are well paid-but you don’t want to mention that either.
• You would rather say that you are taking up a career in law to help in upholding the rights of women and disadvantaged children and then give an appropriate reason or incident that has inspired you to move in your chosen direction. If you have any work experience with these sections it can add credibility to your claim.

Keep your law school essays well structured and to point and do not unnecessarily fill your law school essays with verbose legal language that could put off the admission officer.