Let’s Get Personal
Jelena & Branden offer advice on crafting your law school personal statement, honing your voice, and even what to avoid.
Jelena & Branden offer advice on crafting your law school personal statement, honing your voice, and even what to avoid.
Sure, the LSAT is tough, but the real torture comes after your test, when you’re forced to distill everything interesting, unique, and extraordinary about yourself into a single essay. Yes, the dreaded personal statement.
With no guidance other than a vague prompt, you must convince complete strangers you’re a perfect fit for their law school. Never fear, Jelena & Branden are here to help . . . and so are two brave LSATMax students who shared their actual personal statement drafts to be critiqued on the pod!
Listen and discover:
Thanks to Lyndsey M. and Leslie N. for allowing The Legal Level to read, critique, and share their personal statements! You can read along with the podcast at the following links:
Lyndsey’s Essay & Leslie’s Essay: http://bit.ly/3bHXuJA
And a great big Legal Level welcome to intern Maddy, who joins us on the pod this week to summarize our personal statement samples!
Links and Further Resources from This Episode:
University of Washington Pre-Law Advisers’ Personal Statement Tips: https://bit.ly/2NEShKF
Book of 50 Real Law School Personal Statements: http://bit.ly/3sqPkMw
More About Inciting Incidents in Writing: http://bit.ly/3qW5OvN
Jelena’s Upcoming Free Webinar on the LSAT-Flex: http://bit.ly/3qIhcvi
Start Your LSATMax Free Trial: https://go.onelink.me/z1Zu/689fb4b4
Jelena was born & raised in Golden, CO. There she cut her teeth on logic by getting into, then out of, an impressive amount of trouble. When not organizing student protests or lobbying the school board, Jelena competed in equestrian sports & constitutional debate. Jelena took the June 2017 LSAT, partly out of curiosity and partly because she developed a serious Logic Games addiction. After three months of study, Jelena achieved a score of 178. While she didn't end up falling in love with law school, she did find herself really enjoying the LSAT—so much that she left her previous career in tech startups behind and began teaching. Jelena prides herself on helping her students understand not just the systems and methods they can apply to get a good score, but the underlying logic & its applicability to the challenge of learning to think like a law student. Outside of her work with the LSAT, Jelena is a writer, creative content producer, & a competitive equestrian endurance rider.
In 2000, Branden graduated with a BA in Philosophy from UC Santa Barbara. For a few years after, he cast about in vain for entry-level philosopher positions, but, when he was visited by the Ghost of Student Loans Past, he knew it was time to make a change. In June 2006, Branden took the LSAT, scoring a 175. Thereafter, he attended UCLA School of Law, graduating in 2010 and practicing patent law for several years. Since 2013, he has taught dozens of live LSAT classes and tutored scores of successful test takers. When he's not considering the finer points of a particularly tricky Logical Reasoning question or kicking it with his daughter, Branden writes Science Fiction. You can find him after work at the local Starbucks, typing furiously, then deleting what he typed, then typing more, and so on for hours.
Maddy is the Legal Level’s newest intern and podcast lover—receiving her B.A from the University of Pennsylvania in Philosophy, Political Science and Economics. Before attending Penn, Maddy lived in Tel Aviv while serving in the Israeli Air Force. Currently, Maddy is hoping to to pursue her J.D in the fall! Learn more about Maddy's law school application journey in her recent blog post, Applying to Law School: Pandemic Edition: https://testmaxprep.com/blog/lsat/applying-to-law-school-pandemic-edition
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