It’s that time of year—personal statement time. Whether you’re in the brainstorming, drafting or revising stage, there are some great rules of thumb when it comes to writing your law school personal statement, rules that can help you stay on track to submitting a dazzling one.

Over at jdMission, I’ve been reviewing actual personal statements each week, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, and discussing what lessons can be learned from them. Here are the most recent tips for making your personal statement sparkle, with links to the essays and reviews if you want to read more!

1. Tie the pieces of your story together.

A good personal statement has a narrative. You best convey who you are through story, and you choose to include certain stories because they say something about who you are—something significant. They illustrate the quality or qualities that you want the admissions committee to know about you. If stories don’t do this, well, they don’t belong in your essay. Odds are, you tell more than one story in your essay. You tell a few. They may or may not be in chronological order, but it is essential that they fit together, that collectively, they support what you are trying to say. If a story seems like it isn’t adding much or doesn’t fit, consider cutting it, or ask yourself if you can tell the story differently so that it is a better thematic fit. Read an example essay and review here.

2. In the climax of your essay (the big transition), avoid vagueness. Use concrete language instead.

If you are going to walk the reader through a rough patch in your life in order to demonstrate how you came out on the other side of it stronger, GREAT! Transition stories can be very powerful. They also, in order to be well told, need to zoom in on the moment of transition; it isn’t a part you can breeze over or tell from a bird’s eye view. For example, if you are writing that financial stress caused by a foreclosure in which you didn’t have an attorney drove you to illness, don’t say that you “experienced hardship” or that it  “took a toll” on your health. What was the hardship? What was the toll? Specific, concrete details give transition moments their power. Read an example essay and review here.

3. Avoid bad beginnings and generalities.

I know this one is a generality (what’s a “bad beginning?”), but see why it’s so problematic? It’s hard to know what to do with it! One beginning that I would call categorically “bad” is the one that starts with you apologizing for who you are. Maybe it concerns you that the admissions committee wouldn’t want to admit someone who didn’t go to a liberal arts college and has worked her whole life to become a ballet dancer, and that’s a reasonable concern; you will need to demonstrate that you are up to the rigors of graduate-level academic work. Do not, however, begin your essay with, “I know you probably don’t think I can handle law school, being a dancer and all…” Start with the positive, with reasons why you should be admitted. Draw their attention to what about you makes you worth admitting, not to your weak spots. Read an example essay and review here.

4. Although your essay may be 90% there, the 10% may be most important. 

Sometimes, I will read an essay that is so compelling, so well-written and engaging and believable and uplifting, that I forget I’m reading a personal statement. This sounds ideal, right? It would seem you should aspire to give this experience to the admissions officer who reviews your application. Yes, that is true, but: It can still fail in an essential way, even if it’s that good. It must still connect the dots between the Most Amazing Story Of All Time and why you’re a good fit for law school. I may not be able to put down The Hunger Games, but if I read it as part of Katniss’s law school application, I’d finish it thinking, “That was great!” and then I’d pause. “Oh…wait, why is she applying to law school?” Don’t forget what you writing, and why you’re writing it. Read an example essay and review here.

1. #whereisthesun #Ibrokemypencilsharpener #dreamedaboutanaloguewatchescomingtolifeandbitingme

2. Do lawyers put colorful balls in buckets in 8 min increments? #justcurious

3. Told my BF all the assumptions in his argument. He said assuming makes an ass of u and me. I said that has assumptions too #whatsbecomeofme

4. Don’t use webMD while studying for the LSAT. #hives #cancerorjustanxiety?

5. The individuals who construct standardized tests are called psychometricians. The psycho part fits.

6. My life has come down to a test that makes me crazy. #notmymarriage

7. Is it too late to be a doctor?

8. Dear Friends: I miss you. #waitforme #onedaywillhavealifeagain

9. I now read and respond to emails in 1 minute, 20 seconds or am filled with shame. #LSATsymptoms

10. Maybe there are some good logic games tactics in this pint of mint chocolate chip?

11. “How’s studying going?” If I get asked it again I am going to break a non-mechanical pencil.

12. Which argument is parallel to the parallel zits on my upper lip due to stress? #cannot

13. Some people cry when they fall in love. I just did my first logic game without missing any and cried. #nerdlife

14. I wish I had a nickel for every time I have said “practice test” in the last 3 months.

15. Good morning everyone else up at 7am on Sat. to take the LSAT. Let’s do this y’all. #EXPERIMENTAL SECTION #PLEASEDONTBEREADINGCOMP

It’s almost mid-August, and that means the application season for 2015 matriculation is gearing up. At this time of year, I always get asked a lot about timeline. When should you be working on your personal statement? When should you ask your recommenders for letters of recommendation, and what deadlines should you give them? Can you plan to take the LSAT in December, or should you cram for October (if you haven’t already begun studying)?

Here we go—a thorough guide to the timing of law school application season, by category!

The LSAT

At the front of most people’s minds is the LSAT, and rightly so; it’s the most important part of your application along with GPA. If you don’t have an LSAT score yet (or don’t have one you plan to rely on to get into law school, yet) but plan to apply for admission in 2015, that means you’re either looking at the September or December exam. Notice I didn’t say February. If you plan to apply to start in 2015, do not plan to take the February LSAT exam because (1) some schools don’t take it, and (2) even for the schools that do, you’ll be at a disadvantage due to the rolling nature of admissions.

Which brings me to the next question—to take September or December? Almost across the board I am going to recommend taking September. Again, rolling admissions means aiming for the December test not only puts you at a disadvantage, time-wise (no law school is going to review your application until the entire thing is in, LSAT score and all), but it also only gives you one shot to get the score right. Taking September, on the other hand, means that if something goes wrong, you aren’t completely out of the running for fall 2015 entry. You can still take the December test.

So who doesn’t this apply to? Right now, there are about six weeks left before the fall LSAT. If you can’tstart studying pretty hardcore ASAP—and I mean tomorrow—you have two options. Either you sit down and take a practice test and you are scoring within 1-2 points of where you hope to score, in which case, you don’t need to hardcore study between now and then. Or you sit down and take a practice test and you need to improve more than 5 points to be happy with your score. For you, the person who needs 5+ points but doesn’t have the time to study between now and the end of September—I suggest applying next year. As a second, less ideal option, you could also study this fall and take December and apply, but again, for the reasons I mentioned above, understand that you will be at a disadvantage.

Personal Statement

This is something that will take you a couple of weeks to get right, most likely, and that’s including drafts that you have others read and that you revise until it’s working. Not to mention, many schools offer the option of writing the secondary essay (often a “diversity” essay) and/or include in their applications other questions to be answered, as well. Starting now is a good idea if you don’t need to devote 100% of your free time to getting a good LSAT score. If LSAT study does need to remain your sole focus, however, keep it that way—save essay-writing for the 3 weeks after you’ve taken the test before you’ve gotten your score back.

This is also true for any addenda you may want to write (explaining away a bad semester, grade-wise, for example, or a criminal conviction or disciplinary action).

Letters of Recommendation

Ask for them yesterday. Recommenders like to have time for these, not because they actually plan to spend two months writing, but because their schedules invariably fill up like wildfire come fall when school resumes. You call follow up with them occasionally (every few weeks or so) to politely check in if they haven’t submitted the letters. And as for what deadline to give them, well, since admissions are rolling, I’m entirely comfortable asking them to have the letter in by whenever you plan to have your application in for optimal consideration. That could be as soon as you get your September LSAT score, or it could be the first day applications are accepted. As long as you give the recommender ample notice, this is unlikely to be a problem.

The Rest of Your Application

The rest of the application—resume, transcript, score reports—are either out of your hands or shouldn’t take a great deal of time to perfect. Most of you have drafted resumes with the help of your college’s career counseling office, for example—but if not, absolutely get some advice and review, even if it’s just online, of proper resume drafting for law school applications.

When to Submit

Again, because of the nature of rolling admissions, you are best off applying as early as possible. This means you should check when the schools to which you are applying begin accepting applications and submit yours as close to that date as possible. Of course, you are going to be restricted by the release date of your LSAT score if you haven’t already taken it. That’s fine. Just have everything ready to go so that as soon as your score is available, you can promptly submit your full application.

Hang in there, be systematic, and it’ll all be over before you know it!

Manhattan LSAT

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Last week I wrote about how to negate extreme answer choices, and this week we’re going to talk about mild statements that appear in answer choices.

The key with mild statements is, just like it was with extreme statements, to make them untrue but without seeking their polar opposite.
An example of a mild statement: “There’s some milk on the floor.”
How would we make this untrue? We’d say there’s no milk on the floor. There was some, and now there’s none. We mopped it up.
Mop up this:
“There might be a chance of rain tomorrow.”
How do you mop up that chance of rain?
There’s no chance of rain tomorrow.
Notice what I’m doing here? Think about it.
If I negate extreme statements by poking a hole in them, then it makes sense that you would negate mild statements by the inverse, that is, by using extreme language to mop them up. Try a few below and then check your answers. (And, as with all rules of thumb when it comes to the LSAT, please understand this a guideline only—as a way of thinking about negation—and not a hard-and-fast rule that will get you to 180. High scores don’t come by simply memorizing and applying rules; they come from learning the strategies, techniques, and concepts that enable you actually understand, analyze, and apply logic. Now I’ll get off my soapbox.)

Practice negating:

1. Jackson Pollock may be one of the best painters that ever lived.

2. On occasion, Jillian will take a nap between 3 and 5 or sometimes 3 and 6.

3. Often, but not always, Jim likes to take pictures of rainbows.

4. The early bird sometimes gets the worm.

Answers:

1. Jackson Pollock is not one of the best painters that ever lived.

2. Jillian never takes a nap between 3 and 6. [Notice this covers the 3-5 period.]

3. Jim either never likes to take pictures of rainbows or always does.

4. The early bird never gets the worm.

Bonus Round:

What if we wanted to negate just the standard saying, “The early bird gets the worm.” Would we say, “The early bird never gets the worm?” Think about it for a moment before reading on.
Done?
Okay, if you answered no, you’re correct. “The early bird gets the worm” is an “extreme” statement in the sense that we interpret it to mean the early bird always gets the worm. So, harking back to the last post, we poke a hole in it: The early bird sometimes doesn’t get the worm.
For much more in-depth explanation and practice, turn to the negation section of the Manhattan LSAT Logical Reasoning Strategy Guide.

This past week, some really interesting articles about the legal profession, its present and its future, made their way to me. I thought I’d share them here on the blog, since they will also probably interest all you future lawyers! Here they are, in no particular order:

Will computers replace humans as lawyers?

(And will it be this cryptic start-up?  More on it here)

How to fix the justice gap: A controversial suggestion

And more on access to justice:

A futuristic infographic on what’s to come…by a paralegal:

Good news! Lawyers can still act human, and even be fun ones:

A lawyer dad applauds a son’s decision not to become one, too.

Happy Halloween everyone! We hope you’re not too wrapped up in the LSAT prep work to dress up and celebrate. We posted these awesome legal-themed costume ideas last year and we thought they were so great that we needed to do a repost this year–we’ve even added a few new ones. The best part is that most are very easy to create, and, well, since today is Halloween you don’t have too much time to waste!

1. Colonial Lawyer:  Take the traditional route and pop on a black robe and white collar and wig.
2. My Cousin Vinny: Plenty of options for this one. You could go with the all black ensemble (black pants, leather jacket, and silver belt and chain) or you could spice it up with a brown/orange suit, complete with a matching bowtie, white button-down, and heavy New York accent.
3. A Lawsuit: Wear a suit and attach legal documents all over it (Amendments of the Constitution, the UCC, Restatement of Torts) .
4. The Second Amendment: Wear a sleeveless shirt.
5. The Socratic Method: Get a white sheet from the linen closet and style a Greek toga. Sling a colored sash around your shoulder with the word “method” written across it.
6. “A Salt” with a Deadly Weapon– Dress in all white with a grey hat. Poke a few holes in the top of the hat to mimic a salt shaker. Carry around a toy gun/sword/knife or water gun of some sort. You can even get a pal to be a bloody pepper shaker.
7. Judge: A white, curly wig, pair of glasses, white turtleneck, and a black robe should do the trick. Add some pizzazz by adopting a New York accent and calling yourself Judy.
8. Elle Woods: Bring out anything and everything pink. Pink dress, skirt, shirt, heels, and hat. If you’re not a natural blonde, grab a wig, as this is a pretty essential part of the costume. Don’t forget to pick up a Chihuahua and dress him in a matching pink outfit.
9. The Lazy Lawyer: For those who want something more subtle or are just too lazy to put a complete costume together, throw on the shirt pictured above from Zazzle.com.
10. Yourself: If you don’t fancy the whole costume idea, just go as the studious LSAT student that you are. Accessorize with you’re pencils, stopwatch, and Manhattan LSAT Strategy guides.

Already have your costume picked out and ready to go? We’d love to hear what you’re going as! Leave a comment below or shoot us a tweet @manhattanLSAT.

It seems everyone is ranking law schools these days. This year was the first that three institutions put their hats in the ring: Above the Law, Tipping the Scales, and to an extent although it prefers not to use the term “rankings” but Score Reports, Law School Transparency. Below is a look at the differences between them.

*HERE is more info on US News’ Quality Assessment

*Law School Transparency allows you to compare schools on a variety of metrics and makes clear that this list of employment scores shouldn’t actually be viewed as rankings: “Treating the Score Reports like rankings may produce bad decisions. For example, sorting schools by Employment Score on a state Score Report will not provide a quick answer as to the school with the best outcomes in that particular state.”

A few things interested me about these comparisons. First, why does Tipping the Scales rank Stanford over Yale?
Read more

Last week, Obama surprised everyone a little by explicitly agreeing with those who have argued for years now that law school should be two years instead of three. The President and Harvard Law grad is in good company, including Samuel Estreicher at NYU Law, who has been a vocal advocate for the expendable third year. Law School Transparency’s suggested new models for legal education reform draw heavily on the same idea of trimming length to save costs.

Indeed, criticism of Obama for making the controversial (or not?) statement seemed to come from one direction: not from people who disagreed with him that law school should be shorter, but from those who thought he didn’t go far enough: instead of “talking” about changing the structure of legal education he should actually “do something.” And why not go further and make law school one year like the Brits? It all left me wondering–is stripping the third year so widely accepted now that it’s not controversial at all? Is there anyone arguing in favor of it?

I went in search of third year supporters. And guess who is one. Martha Nussbaum–University of Chicago Law professor and one of the most renowned legal scholars on the planet. Nussbaum and Charles Wolf, also from Chicago, argue essentially that such reforms risk making bad lawyers:

Electives typically are taken in the second and third years. Given the general courses that an accredited legal education must include, dropping the third year offers no time for interdisciplinary electives. The new wisdom is that this would be no loss … But lawyers who join firms also need to understand how society works if they aspire to be independent thoughtful leaders of their chosen profession, rather than passive followers of custom. In the life of the firm, a deferential model of lawyering (doing it because that is how it has been done) will further erode professional standards.

I’m not persuaded. The argument assumes that somehow the third year of law school is where one learns to become “independent” and “thoughtful” rather than “passive.” To me, these are the kinds of qualities that are instilled over time through interactions with teachers who teach these qualities through and in spite of whatever substantive material is being transmitted; there’s no reason one cannot learn from a torts professor to be an independent thinker but could from a professor in an environmental law clinic.

I’m curious what those of you who will soon be entering law school think.

Happy Friday! Here is a roundup of some of our favorite news articles and law school tips from the week:

Harvard’s Still Hard to Get Into, Law School Promises (The Wall Street Journal Law Blog)

Students wondering whether to take the plunge into law school may want to consider this: the evaporating pool of applicants could boost their chances of getting into Harvard.

LSAT Sanity: Stop Taking So Many Practice Tests! (Part 2) (jdMission)

What are the Do’s and Don’ts of getting the most out of your practice tests? Here is Part 2 of jdMission’s series.

Are Fully Online Programs a Viable Choice for Law Schools? (Lawyerist)

As everything has raced towards the virtual, including getting a degree online, law has unsurprisingly lagged behind.

LSAT Scores at Top Law Schools Hold Steady Amid Applicant Plunge (The Wall Street Journal Law Blog)

Given that the most competitive undergraduate schools are pumping out fewer prospective lawyers, you might assume that the nation’s top law schools are enrolling less competitive students.

Should The Obama Rankings Be Applied To Law Schools? (Above the Law)

Obama hopes to tie the Obama Rankings to federal financial aid: schools that perform well will have a larger pool of federal money to dole out to students, while schools that perform poorly will have less.

Did we miss your favorite article from the week? Let us know what you have been reading in the comments or tweet @ManhattanLSAT.

Happy Friday! Here is a roundup of some of our favorite news articles and law school tips from the week:

Weigh the Benefits, The Risk of Attending a New Law School (U.S. News Education)

Some new law schools are experimenting with new curriculums that allow students to have concentrations. But what are the risks?

Law Schools Devise Debt-Free Path to Degree (Politico)

Some law schools are exploiting the loophole that could lead to billions of dollars in written-off federal student debt.

A Life Outside Law School—Just Breath (Ms. JD)

Next week law school classes start up again, so this week is 1L Orientation. Here are some great tips for making it through that first week.

Which Law Schools Have the Best Return on Investment (Above the Law)

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the value of a law degree and ATL shares why degrees from some law schools are worth more than others.

Off the Beaten Path: First Lady Michelle Obama (jdMission)

Becoming a lawyer is not the only path you can take after graduating from law school. JdMission takes a closer look at Michelle Obama’s career path.

Did we miss your favorite article from the week? Let us know what you have been reading in the comments or tweet @ManhattanLSAT.