How Many Personal Statement Drafts Should I Write?
How many drafts of your law school personal statement should you write? What is the expectation for the entire drafting process? Let’s talk about it!
Would you rather listen to this blog post? Listen to our podcast episode, How Many Drafts Does Your Personal Statement Need, on Spotify or wherever you stream podcasts.
The Foundation
I don’t know how many of your parents are like this, but my parents are very old school. My mom is Caribbean and my parents were in the military. My mom is a big believer in doing it right the first time. She says, “If you don’t do it right the first time, I’m gonna make you do the whole thing over.” And that is an analogy for the personal statement.
A strong personal statement starts with strong foundational elements. If you don’t start out strong, you’re probably going to have to re-do your work anyways.
So, what are those foundational elements?
You want to make sure that you do strong brainstorming. So often, the first draft of a personal statement falls short because you did not start with the right ingredients. You want to make a pizza, but you’re not giving me any tomato sauce, pepperoni, or cheese. What am I supposed to do with that? Nothing.
If you don’t have the right ingredients, you won’t be able to make a strong personal statement. The best way to find those ingredients is by brainstorming.
When you are starting, you should do a large, universal brainstorming session. I love for students to take a step outside of the law school application process and take an introspective moment to think about the moments that have been significant to you in your life. Your brainstorming should include personal and professional stories, failures and adversities, and accomplishments and impacts. They don’t have to be related to the law.
Take a week or two to think through that brainstorming. It is only after you have completed that brainstorming that you should think about what your motivation is to go to law school. You should ask what you plan to do after your degree and what area you want to study, and then try to connect that to your stories in a nuanced and interesting way.
Don’t make that connection boring. Show me the development of your passion. I love seeing your growth as a person. I want to know why you’re in front of me. What’s leading you there? Convince me. Persuade me.
Oftentimes, I read personal statements that are missing a personal aspect or places of significance. They have told me they want to go into this particular area of law because of negative things that have happened to them, but then I don’t see what they’ve been doing to try to affect change even as a non-lawyer.
Have you been volunteering for things? Have you been in student clubs? Have you been helping your family members? Have you been doing research? It doesn’t have to be something formal from your resume. I just want to know what you’ve been doing that connects to your passion.
What I don’t want is to feel like you just sat around waiting for law school and you’ve done nothing to explore that passion. If you’re telling me you’re passionate about animal law, don’t just tell me about how your dog was mistreated. What have you done about that?
You are the main character in your personal statement. You are the main character in this movie that you are showing me through these different ideas. I want to know how we got here.
Taking the time to brainstorm the right stories is how we end up with three to seven drafts instead of 20. You get 20 drafts when you actually have no idea what your brainstorming is, and you just think of an idea and choose to write your personal statement on that.
Another reason that you may have too many drafts is because you have no idea why you want to go to law school. Take the time and figure out why you want to go to law school. Do that self-work first because you cannot convince me of something that you don’t believe in. It will show in your personal statement if you haven’t done that introspective work.
The Drafts
In the 10 years that I’ve been doing counseling, I’ve found that it takes about three to seven drafts to create a strong personal statement. Five is a healthy number to shoot for.
Now that you have made your connections, you should start with those first three to four drafts. These drafts are all about making that connection and finding your rhythm. In the beginning, you should expect to do a lot of major rewrites.
If you tell yourself that your first draft is probably going to suck, you will actually produce better drafts. You’ve taken the pressure off, and you’re not emotionally attaching yourself to anything that goes into that draft. It is only a draft, so don’t get so hung up. Just make sure that you have those foundational elements.
The other two to four drafts are not full drafts, but rather refinements. That is when you’re looking at individual sentences, the narrative detail, your word choices, and transitions. Now that you have the strong elements from your first three drafts, you can understand what your structure should look like.
These latter drafts are the difference between a basic personal statement and a bomb-ass personal statement. Take that time. Sometimes it will involve another person. That could be your partner, your mom, your pre-law advisor, a member of our team, or anyone else.
Writing style is so important. Make sure that you’re using active voice instead of passive voice. Make sure that you’re using semicolons instead of commas where it matters. Make sure that you are using the right tense words and the right prepositions. If these aren’t things you know, find someone to help you with them.
Sometimes these grammatical mistakes or transitions fall flat. Sometimes admissions committees aren’t even conscious of it; they may say they “didn’t really like it,” but what they didn’t like is the fact that your sentences have no flow.
The only thought you want me to be having when I read your personal statement is, “Wow, they’re really passionate and know why they want to go to law school.” You don’t want me to be thinking, “Wow, no one taught her that the comma goes inside the quotation mark.”
When they’re spending about 15 to 20 minutes on your essay and two of those minutes are thinking about how your writing could be improved, that is wasted time. That’s why it is so important to reserve a few drafts to go through word-by-word.
Timeline & Preparation
We usually say that it takes about three months to get all of your application materials looking beautiful. Some people will look at me like I’m crazy, but I’ve seen this truth in action.
Many of you are working. Many of you are studying for the LSAT. It’s going to take about three to seven drafts for your personal statement and another three to seven drafts for your diversity statement. It’s probably going to take two to three drafts for your addenda. Some of you will have supplemental essays, “why us” essays, or those additional prompts that will take another one to four drafts.
Things start to add up. You could be looking at about 16 drafts; if you worked on one draft every week, we’re already at 16 weeks. That is more than three months.
I am such a big stickler for getting on a schedule and sticking to a plan. I’d rather you plan for additional drafts and end up with extra time. Everyone is upset about not having enough time, so when you make a plan and give yourself space, you’ll be better off.
You can learn more about how to create that timeline for yourself in our recent blog post about getting started on your applications.
Final Thoughts
In the beginning, we talked about starting with good brainstorming and finding the right ingredients. This is the key to staying at a reasonable draft number. If you don’t have the right ingredients, you’re probably going to have to circle back and get the right ingredients anyways.
No one has time to write 20 drafts of anything. That is how you end up applying in March. All of you have enough time to submit fantastic applications this fall if you plan properly.
If you need extra essay help, we have a few ways that our team of experts can help support you. We offer Kickstart Essay Plans, which are available for a variety of different budgets. You can also look at individual draft reviews on that page.
If you’re interested in more comprehensive support, we have personalized one-on-one consulting and our 12-week Law School Application Boot Camps! You can also submit a question to be answered on our weekly Break Into Law School™ Podcast, streaming on whatever your favorite podcast service is.
As always, feel free to reach out to me at hello@smontgomeryconsulting.com with any of your questions! Best of luck this application season!