Law school applicants are in a precarious position.
With their future careers on the line, they are desperate for guidance as they put together the most important application of their lives. What should they write their personal statements about? What tone should they use? What stories should they tell? How detailed should they be?
You’ll hear all kinds of conflicting advice from friends, professors, self help books…even your English major roommate. When you have so much riding on your decisions, how do you know whom to trust? It can be confusing and frustrating. We empathize. We were there once ourselves.
Let us give you a word of warning, based on experience: there is a lot of well-intentioned advice out there that will lead you down the wrong paths.
Don’t misunderstand; it can certainly be helpful to get feedback on your essay. But bear in mind that most people you approach for help have written exactly one law school personal statement in their life, if that. Even if they went to law school, there’s no guarantee that their essay was a significant helping factor. The fact is, most people’s personal statements are generic, formulaic, and forgettable, and play little role in getting them into school.
Remember, too, that the more people who give you feedback on your statement, the more contradictory advice you’re likely to get. One of the worst things you can do in revision is to try to please a dozen different readers. If you do that, two things will happen. First, the essay will start to feel like what we call a “patchwork” piece, dozens of ideas and opinions all cobbled together into an incoherent mess. Second, it will feel less and less like your authentic voice as you bleach out every trace of your personality just because some reader feared it might be objectionable or wanted you to say something else.
So what about professional editing? Is it better to get help from a pro?
Yes!
And no!
See, back in 2000 when we started Admission Statements, there were basically two kinds of online editing companies offering help with law school personal statements. Both kinds were taking advantage of law school applicants and their vulnerable situation.
The first (cheaper) kind of editing companies tended to set up credible-looking websites and put a great deal of time into attracting clients, but they gave far less attention to the clients who came to them for help. The typical business model was for a tutor (often some English student) to read over a client’s draft and give some generic, superficial advice like “Explain what you mean here” or “Be more concrete.” They might suggest trimming a few sentences and fixing any obvious punctuation, grammar or usage errors. Basically, they charged a hundred dollars for help that was easily available for free from any school’s Writing Center.
The second type of company would gather a little information about you from a questionnaire or a phone call and then basically ghost-write the essay for you! Apart from the sketchy ethics of that situation, it’s simply a bad idea to leave your personal statement to someone who barely knows you.
Unfortunately, not much has changed over the years. Most companies that offer help with law school essays are still either overpriced proofreaders or glorified ghost-writers. So…before you invest in advice from any online company, we suggest you do a little research and find out what the company actually does. Do they take the time to talk to you, get to know you through your stories, show you how to get your material onto the page, read dozens of your drafts, work with you to find the right story for your essay, and stay with you until it’s done? How much time, on average, do they spend with an individual client? Do they spend 15-20 hours like Admission Statement editors typically do? Or are they an essay-factory designed to move clients in and out the door in a couple of hours?
Also, look at samples of essays they’ve helped past clients write. Compare them to other examples and ask yourself some questions:
- Does this essay accomplish the purpose of a law school personal statement, which is to show the committee a genuine, unique person behind the application? Or does it feel like the applicant is trying to appear impressive, trying to “sell” you something?
- If you were on the committee, did the essay give you the information you most wanted to know? Do you come away feeling like you know the applicant well, and are you confident that you could predict what kind of law student/lawyer she will be?
- Is this story told in an engaging, personal voice? Does it feel natural and effortless? Or does it feel pretentious, deliberate, or wordy?
- Does the essay leave you excited to meeting the writer? Do you immediately want to pick up the phone and give this person a call?
- If you read a stack of fifty personal essays, is this the one that would stick out in your mind? Would you remember details of this essay weeks later?
If a company’s sample essays—the examples they hold up as their best work—don’t accomplish what a statement should do, how much help do you expect that company will be to you?
We invite you to read sample outstanding essays from past ASLLC clients and compare them to essay samples offered anywhere else. Look at what our clients have said about their experiences, the quality of help they received, and their startling results. Then contact us, sign up, and let us help you put together an effective application with a truly unique, powerful personal statement.