Critique my law school personal statement (please)

Grey_area · September 15, 2011, 10:25am

This is only my first draft and I would especially appreciate comments on tone or appropriateness. If it’s too detail-heavy perhaps. THANKS IN ADVANCED!
(background: I have a really really bad GPA(2.7) but decent LSAT(167), which I plan to take again december for a theoretically higher score. I also plan to write a diversity statement for schools that take them. Or use this as my diversity statement. Hmm…)

January, 2009, Cheorwon, South Korea.  I stood naked in line among a dozen other men, waiting my turn to get splashed with a bucket of cold water, then to quickly soap up and move to back of the line to splash off the soap.  Due to the number of recruits that month, the 6th Division Recruit Training Battalion was running low on water but a small outbreak of meningitis made hygiene a top priority.  Located in the northernmost part of South Korea, the 6th Infantry Division of the Republic of Korea Army guards a portion the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that divides the Korean Peninsula between the North and South.  Wrought with both glory and defeat, the 6th Division is among Korea’s oldest, and due its location and history, has a well-deserved reputation as being one of the roughest.
By law, it is required that all able-bodied South Korean men serve in the military for approximately two years. Though the military experience is varied, depending largely on where one is stationed and one’s position, it is rarely looked forward to. I chose to serve after completing school, the obligation looming over me for much of my college career. In hindsight, my experiences in the military have inexorably changed me for the better and I deeply regret not having served much sooner, after completing my second year of college, as is typical in Korea. I thought having spent most of my life moving from country to country as the son of diplomat would have prepared me for most anything. I realized quickly that I was wrong.
After the six weeks of basic training, I was assigned to Alpha Battery of the 77th Field Artillery Battalion.  The battalion maintained eighteen 101A1 towed-howitzers (six per battery) an unsightly piece of machinery, first put to service in the Second World War. The two and a half ton gun required at least five men to lay and fire, everything done manually.  The battery consisted of roughly 70 men, few of them college educated, three of the five assigned the battery with me being high school dropouts.  The Battery garrison was a one-story building consisting of two long rooms, housing about 35 men each, with an elevated floor where the men lived and slept.  Not much was permitted in terms of personal goods. Cell phones, computers and outside clothing were all considered contraband, books and toiletries about the only personal items allowed.  The only source of contact with the outside world was letters, a few pay phones and a half-broken TV.  Initially, adjusting the rigid hierarchy of the Korean Army was somewhat difficult, my unique background being source of much attention, positive and otherwise.  I recall writing in my journal as a Private 2nd Class that this was my “baptism by fire”.  
The usual work day consisted of standing post and maintaining the base, which included weeding, cleaning, repairing facilities and keeping the guns in running order. As the Korean Army very rarely contract outside labor, the majority of the manual work was done by the men. Every other month or so there were field exercises, where we would spend several days on field, towing the guns from one position to another (sometimes firing live rounds), setting up perimeters and camp. We would joke that at base we would miss home but on the field, we miss the base. But the one thing from these field exercises that I will never forget is the cold. Spending several days outdoors in temperature ranging from -20 to -30 degrees Celsius is not something to be taken lightly. At points the cold is no longer cold, but becomes so painful and one is met with a morbid desire to cut off one’s digits.
But despite the hardships or because of them rather, the army has permanently changed my perspective. Eating, sleeping, living with men of all backgrounds taught me how truly blessed my upbringing had been. Though my days of manual labor had an end, I realized some men, very possibly many serving in my battery, would spend their whole lives doing similar work. With this came the painful realization that most of my failures were self-inflicted and all the opportunities that I had thrown away were ones never offered to many. I realized that I had been a spoiled, self-absorbed brat.

The person that was conscripted on January 2009 was not the same person that was discharged November 2010. My experiences in the Korean Army have taught me humility, perseverance, and discipline that I might have never known. Gone are the days of self-pity and excuses. With my newfound confidence and outlook I want to become everything that I have the potential to be, and I believe through XXX school of law, I will acquire the crucial skills necessary to make that a reality.

Grey_area · September 16, 2011, 1:18pm

That bad huh?

AK84 · September 16, 2011, 1:31pm

It reads like an extract from a memoir, which is not a personal statement.

Hello_Again · September 16, 2011, 1:32pm

It’s about 90% a factual statement, and 10% a personal statement. It’s an interesting and different life experience, but you don’t powerfully make the connection to how it changed your perspective. You just say it did. You also only allude to poor undergraduate grades. Don’t be evasive. Come right out and say you had bad grades in college. That’s a jumping off point to explaining how you changed your perspective.

It also doesn’t say why you want to go to law school. Why DO you want to go to law school? Unless you truly feel a calling to the law, or get a very substantial scholarship, I would advise against law school at this time. Are you aware that employment prospects are very poor for new graduates?

That said, it’s not really that important. Law schools look at LSATs overwhelmingly over every other factor, no matter what they say. Your scores are on the mark for schools in the lower end of the top 25. What schools are you considering?

BetsQ · September 16, 2011, 3:10pm

I’d echo what Hello Again says. Why do you want to go to law school? Can you draw a direct connection between the experiences you describe in what you’ve written and how those experiences will help you achieve your goals as an attorney?

Also, I don’t know how it is for law school, but I only applied to two Ph.D. programs, so my personal statements for each program were quite different and more tailored to the specific programs. Can you add some details that will show the admissions committee that you understand the unique features of that program and that you will be a good fit for the program?

Oakminster · September 16, 2011, 3:18pm

The first paragraph reads more like the opening of a novel.

I think your personal statement should focus more on why you want to go to law school. I really like the first two sentences of the last paragraph. If you can tie those concepts into a burning desire to practice law, I think you’ll have a stronger essay.

even_sven · September 16, 2011, 3:19pm

I found it focused far too much on the technical side of what you did in the military, as opposed to who you are as a person. They don’t want to know what kind of equipment you were using or what kind of living arrangements you had, they want to know what drives you, why you want to go to law school, what kind of personality you have, etc. Your personal statement is your one chance to get in a word about Grey area the person as opposed to Grey area the statistic. Use this to paint a little picture for them, not just recite facts. Spend no more than a few sentences on the details of your service, and use the most of it to tell a little story about who you are.

With a low GPA, this is also your chance to explain your low GPA, how you’ve changed, and why you won’t get a low GPA in law school.

Finally, if you are applying to US schools, keep in mind you are going to be up against people writing their statements about being Afghanistan watching their best friends get blown into a pulp. “It was cold at night and the TV was a bit wonky” is not going to look good next to people who have just returned from active combat. There are a lot of wars going on right now, so unless your military tale is amazing, you are going to need more than that.

A (not great, but you’ll get the idea) example might be:

January, 2009, Cheorwon, South Korea. I stood naked in line among a dozen other men, waiting my turn to get splashed with a bucket of cold water, then to quickly soap up and move to back of the line to splash off the soap. Next to me was my best friend, Sunny Park. By law, it is required that all able-bodied South Korean men serve in the military for approximately two years. Where you end up and what you do is left to chance. Sunny and I both found ourselves assigned to the same bunkbed in a unit, which, to our dismay, was one of the toughest in the country.

When I first arrived, as I’d drift off to my four hours of sleep, I’d reminisce about my life to my bunkmate. I wove stories of my life as the son of a diplomat- how much I loved my nannies, the time I stole the riding lawnmower, and of course my exploits in college. Having grown up with all my needs attended to, I didn’t go in to my 20s with much focus or discipline, and I mostly spent college taking long ski vacations. I laughing recounted my wacky adventures with my eccentric friends.

Night after night, I talked. To my shame, it wasn’t until two months in to our service that I noticed Sunny responded in one-word phrases. Embarrassed to break the routine, I kept going. Finally, after another month, I screwed up the courage to ask Sunny what was wrong. He told me his story. He was the son of a chicken salesman in a tiny mountain village. Sunny had never grown up with electricity or running water. His parents were murdered when he was 8, and he spent the rest of his life raising his fourteen brothers and sisters on his own. This military service- which I saw as a temporary inconvenience- represented his best chance to improve his life. Here, he had three hot meals and a (cold, brief) shower every day. It was luxury he had spent his life only imagining. But every night, as he drifted to sleep, he thought about his brothers and sisters starving and struggling without him.

That was the night I realized how fortunate I am. I’ve been given many privileges in life, and for most of my life I’ve taken them for granted. While Sunny was slaving away in the coal mines to feed his family, I was dancing the hula with swimsuit models. It was hard to come to terms with how I wasted so much opportunity in college, and how much good fortune I let slop by. But eventually, I discovered than all kinds of learning is a process, and sometimes you have to make mistakes before you can make use of what you have.

My service lasted a year and a half longer, and Sunny and I became fast friends. I got to know all of the people in my unit, all of which had a different story. Despite our different backgrounds, we found ourselves sharing our hopes, fears, and dreams with each other. I used my time in the service to develop my discipline- volunteering for the hardest assignments and taking on a role as camp potato-peeling lead supervisor. I joined the voluntary Swahili language program, and completed it with high honors.
I also used this time to clarify what I wanted out of life- which I’ve realized is to fight for social justice. People like Sunny don’t have access to legal recourse. When Sunny’s parents were murdered, all they got was laughter from the police. Man after man in my unit had a similar story. I discovered there is a great need for people to represent impoverished chicken sellers in mountain villages- and the program at School University is world renown for it’s work in that area. I’m especially interested in working with the Mountain Village Justice League and submitting pieces to the Chicken Seller Law Review. Eventually i hope to work with the new Mountain Law division of the Department of justice, crafting policy for these areas. Your classes- especially the Chicken Dance class- will prepare me to take a leadership role in this area.

I’m standing here on the edge of a great opportunity. I still think about Sunny and all of the others in my unit, most of whom are still doing the same manual labor that they were doing when I completed my service. We still keep in touch. This time, when I return to school, I return as a disciplined, focused young man. I will return this gift that they have given me- the gift of drive and moral clarity- and School University will take me there.

Hello_Again · September 16, 2011, 3:59pm

Eh, yeah, he’ll be up against peope who saw their buddies get blown up by IEDs… and even more people who have never done shit. He’s above the middle of the pack life-experience prior-to-law-school-wise.

And as to the question posed by BetsQ, aside from fairly trivial differences, all law schools offer basically the same program, especially in the first year. You go to the most prestigious one that accepts you, or the cheapest one, or the most convenient one, or whatever criteria means something to you. The curriculum rarely varies much. If there is some professor you’re honestly excited about, great. If not, don’t make up some bullshit (I heard your first year torts class is better than ALL the other first year torts classes! = bad)

No_umlaut_for_U · September 16, 2011, 4:02pm

Just my opinion, but unless you know for certain that the people reviewing your statement are pro-military, you really run into a problem of turning the reviewer off. My eyes glazed over by the second unit description.
You do write well.

Kimmy_Gibbler · September 16, 2011, 4:53pm

Hello Again has already given a good analysis. But I want to harp on this point. First, I think law schools look to your LSAT and UGPA, everything else is a very distant third. Among non-LSAT and non-UGPA characteristics, I think the quality of your undergrad institution and pre-law school employment is the next tier of consideration. As for the personal statement, I think it is among the least important elements of your application and is even evaluated for your ability to write a persuasive narrative, rather than the life experiences documented therein.

Outside of ensuring high scores and selectivity in order to preserve their USNWR ranking, law schools want the kind of nose-to-the-grindstone bright and driven students who will flourish in school and in (BigLaw) practice, donating money and raising the profile of the school.

In my experience, a mediocre LSAT and a high UGPA augurs much more law school and job placement success than the reverse.

Lawyers deal with bad facts all the time. One really big bad fact in your case is your very low UGPA. What evidence do you have, beyond “I did a year of obligatory military service in a position that I once felt was beneath me (and still kind of feel was beneath me, that’s why I’m telling it in this story-of-redemption sort of way), and now I’m sure next time I’m a student will be different!”, that you will in fact be able to sustain the self-discipline, particularly against students who have excellent LSAT scores and UGPAs, required to thrive in law school? That is what your personal statement needs to relay.

BetsQ · September 16, 2011, 5:31pm

Suggestion withdrawn, in that case!

Spoons · September 16, 2011, 7:29pm

I agree. I’ll add that the essay might also state what the OP can bring to the law school. Even sven touched on this in her sample rewrite where she said:

This is what the OP wants to bring to the school, and what he hopes to take away from the school. Of course, there can be other things the OP wants to bring in order to add to the academic life of the school–a desire to join a mooting team, for example–but it seems to me that the essay would be stronger if the OP also mentioned, even as briefly as even sven did, what he can offer the school.

lavenderviolet · September 16, 2011, 9:26pm

I do feel that the military experience is a useful experience to talk about but I would definitely agree with the idea to try to flesh out the reasons you think it is relevant to law school some more. The law schools aren’t really going to be interested in exactly what battalion you were in, but they will want to know about what you learned from it and why you think it will make you a good lawyer, so that is what you need to go into detail about.

If you are planning to apply to law school in America I do want to make sure that you are aware of the issue with the American legal market being oversaturated with too many law school graduates for the number of good lawyer jobs out there.
Nowadays many people recommend that it is not worth going to law school unless you can get into a top ranked school.
Here are some places to read more about that if you wish:

This is a forum where many unhappy JDs who have had problems finding jobs post if you want to talk to people who have been through it firsthand: http://www.qfora.com/jdu/forum.php

Grey_area · September 17, 2011, 5:56am

Thanks for the great feedback everyone! (Hello Again especially)
So let me try to organize the suggestions.

*Too impersonal (“you went to the army, why should we care?”)
-Not enough connection to why I want to go to law school and why I would do well.
*Too detail-heavy (2+1/2 ton m101a1 105mm towed-zzzzzzzz)
*Too whiny? Self-satisfied perhaps. (“I shoveled shit with peasants but I really missed my purebred ponies”) Just to clear any misconceptions, diplomat families are decidedly middle class by American standards.

Another option is to write another PS from a different angle, emphasizing why I want to go law school and why I would be a good fit, while using my army stuff (after some revision) as a diversity statement. Maybe that would be wiser (?)
I also plan to acknowledge my poor undergraduate performance in an addendum, talking about depression, directionlessness and so on. Would that be wise? Would saying I was depressed just make me look more like a slacker?

Until I take the test again Dec, top 20~30 is just the range I’m considering. But with my GPA, everywhere I apply is a crapshoot so I really feel the pressure to wow them with my personal statement. Of course there’s no guarantee I’ll get a higher score Dec, but I’m optimistic.

I’m hoping not too many vets apply to the schools I do. No IEDs but a kid in bravo got his hand blown off by a bad fuze. Does that help maybe?

Lochdale · September 17, 2011, 3:42pm

Why do you want to go to law school? I can’t tell from your statement.

Why do you want to go? Employment prospects are dim and it is a tough way to make a living.