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Listener J was falsely accused of violating his school’s code of conduct. Does he need to disclose this in his law school applications?

LSAT Demon student Jacob was disappointed by his scholarship offers. Ben and Nathan encourage Jacob to withdraw and reapply next cycle.

An anonymous listener got caught cheating on a final exam. How badly will this hurt their law school admissions chances?

Micah McCreary is an LSAT coach and law school admissions consultant through his company JurisPrep. He’s also a former LSAT Demon student and current 2L at Harvard Law School. Micah joins Ben and Nathan to share insights about the current admissions cycle, emphasizing the importance of a well-crafted diversity statement. The guys also discuss Micah’s experience at Harvard, the challenges of working in big law, and their shared focus on an accuracy-first approach to the LSAT.  3:51 - Harvard Law School Micah attended Harvard Law School virtually for his 1L year. He now appreciates the networking opportunities that come from attending law school in person. 8:52 - Big Law Micah plans to work in corporate law, but he’s wary of the grueling hours and unrewarding assignments often faced by junior associates at big law firms. 17:32 - Don’t Pay for Law School Micah shares the history and mission of JurisPrep, his LSAT and law school admissions consulting business. The guys explain the nuance behind the tagline “don’t pay for law school.” 27:13 - Ignore the Clock Micah agrees with Ben and Nathan on their accuracy-first approach to the LSAT. They brainstorm ways for students to practice ignoring the clock when taking timed sections. 40:13 - Admissions Cycle In an unusually slow admissions cycle, Micah has noticed that applicants with strong diversity statements have fared better than those without. 56:17 - Working While in Law School Micah recommends that law students avoid working other jobs until after their 1L years. 1:05:49 - Words of the Week Ben and Nathan proscribe LSAT gimmicks. They prescribe a commonsense approach that focuses on careful reading. 1:11:39 - Application Timing Micah advises law school applicants to apply as early in the cycle as possible.

Erik and Cally discuss things to consider when building your list of target schools. Cally and Erik reference the "100% Rule" and Nathan explains this rule here.  Ben and Nathan also explain how to use the LSAT Demon Scholarship Estimator to identify target schools in this podcast.

Ben and Nathan assure listener Dana that their GLAD guide applies to law school applicants of all ages. Start by focusing on your GPA, then begin studying and taking the LSAT, then Apply to law schools early and broadly, and finally, Decide which offer to accept.

Hey Demon family, Francesca here. There’s lots of information out there about applying to law schools in the US. How much of it applies to Canadian schools? As a Canadian student, I wondered about this when I studied with the Demon. Here’s what you need to know about applying to law school in Canada. How do Canadian and American law schools differ? Price: One major difference is that law school tuition in Canada is about half the full price of most American law schools (friendly reminder: don’t pay that). The flip side is that Canadian schools don’t offer as many scholarships—more on this later. Application process: Canadian law schools don’t use LSAC’s Credential Assembly Service. Most schools have their own admissions portals. If you’re applying in Ontario (University of Toronto, Osgoode, or Queen’s, for example), there is a centralized application system called OLSAS. The application requirements in Canada are similar to those in America. Generally, you need to submit your undergraduate transcript, LSAT score(s), letters of recommendation, and personal statement. Here are some things to keep in mind: Most law schools in Canada don’t accept the GRE as a substitute for the LSAT. Quebec law schools don’t require the LSAT. But if you’ve taken it, they will consider your score(s), for better or worse. Some schools have language requirements. If you want to go to law school in Quebec, you must be able to speak French. Each school has specific essay guidelines. Some schools specify word limits, formatting requirements, and even guidelines about structure and content. Applicants fall into different categories. These include general, international, transfer, Indigenous, access, joint-degree, and part-time applicants. Make sure you’re providing the right documents for your category. Some schools may also request corroborative documents, resume, evidence of eligibility, letters of good standing, and more. TL;DR: Read the guidelines on each school’s website! Classes and student life: Like in the US, many law schools in Canada use long final exams worth 100% of your grade, particularly in your 1L year. Grades for most classes are determined on a bell curve. Your 1L courses will be mostly predetermined, while your 2L and 3L years will allow more flexibility and electives. The content of these courses obviously differs from the content of courses in the US: Canadian law schools teach Canadian law. If you want to practice law in the US, you should study law in the US. There are ways to transfer from one country to another, but this often involves another course and/or another bar exam. The process and regulations vary depending on the province/state you are leaving and the one you’re entering. Moving between provinces is much easier than moving between countries—more on this below. Canadian and American law schools alike usually offer law clinic experiences. They also have Black Law Students’ Associations and other diversity groups, student journals and law reviews, degree specializations (like Indigenous law), and other extracurricular opportunities. Class sizes can be smaller than those of big US schools, but student life is usually comparable. Rankings: Canadian law schools are all of similar educational quality and reputation in the job market. American law schools, on the other hand, vary much more in terms of the opportunities they will offer you. Macleans, the Canadian equivalent of US News & World Report, offers a much-discussed ranking of Canadian law schools, but don’t give this too much weight. Consider the difference between the highest- and lowest-ranked schools in each country. In the US, the difference between Yale and Willamette University College of Law is life-changing. (Have you heard of Willamette? If so, be honest, are you from Salem?) In Canada, the difference between the University of Toronto and the University of Victoria is unremarkable. They both have excellent programs. They have comparable employment outcomes. As we’ll discuss below, you should go to school where you want to practice. How does Ben and Nathan’s usual advice apply to Canadian students? Let’s look at some of the Demon’s most crucial pieces of advice and consider the extent to which they apply to Canadian law school applicants. Don’t pay for law school—not applicable It’s pretty rare to get a merit-based full-ride scholarship to law school in Canada. Don’t go into the application process with this expectation. You can, however, get a great scholarship, and some schools offer significant financial assistance in 2L or 3L even if you didn’t get any in 1L. Even though tuition is lower in Canada than in the US, 10–30k a year still isn’t cheap. Just like in the US, a better LSAT and GPA in Canada means better scholarship offers. Most law schools offer need-based bursaries, which require a separate application. Canada’s tuition assistance model is, in this way, similar to that of Harvard, Yale, or Stanford. Apply in September or don’t apply—not applicable The deadlines to apply to Canadian schools are much earlier (school-specific details can be found on our Canadian law school comparison spreadsheet), and many admissions offices don’t begin their review process until after the deadline. The most important thing is to follow the guidelines given to you by the school. Take the LSAT as many times as it takes to get your best possible score—applicable in some cases Different schools have different policies for interpreting multiple LSAT scores. Some look only at the highest score (U of T and Queen’s are examples). Others (like McGill) take an average of your scores. So you should think twice before taking the test on a whim. Again, this information will be on each school’s website. Go to school where you want to practice—generally applicable No matter which country you’re in, law school will help you build your professional network. Build this network in the region where you hope to practice, as local connections will help you find job opportunities. Canadian law schools also gear their curriculum toward helping students be called to the provincial bar. If you go to law school in Nova Scotia, you will be more familiar with the legislation and processes that show up on the Nova Scotia bar than will someone who went to school in Saskatchewan. Many provincial bar societies offer province-specific prep courses instead of a bar exam. You can choose which bar exam or course you want to take after graduation. You can find more information on the Canadian Centre for Professional Legal Education website, on the employment pages of law schools, or on the website of the law society of the province in which you’re interested. These considerations don’t preclude you from going to another province to article or to write the bar exam, but you may need to brush up on specific provincial legislation and case law. If you’re a practicing lawyer in one province and want to transfer to another, you can apply for permanent mobility under the National Mobility Act (or Territorial Mobility Act if you’re in the Northwest Territories). Transferring to or from Quebec practice is more challenging because Quebec law is based on the Napoleonic Civil Law tradition rather than on the British Common Law tradition. The Interjurisdictional Practice Protocol exists to govern these transfers. Get the best LSAT score you can—100% applicable The LSAT is a major component of your application in Canada, just as it is in the US. Many Canadian schools are transparent about the weight attached to each component of your application, and unsurprisingly, the LSAT always carries a lot of weight. For instance, at UVic, your GPA and LSAT are each weighted at 50%, and your personal statement “may also be taken into account.” This doesn’t mean you should neglect your personal statement, but it does mean that if your undergraduate GPA is out of your control at this point, knocking your LSAT out of the park is the best way to increase your chances of admission. A strong LSAT score will also greatly increase your chances of getting a merit-based scholarship. Still have questions? If you’re looking for specific information about a school or program, each law school has a comprehensive admissions page on their website. Most also have FAQ pages. If you can’t find an answer to your question, consider asking the admissions office directly. This is the start of your relationship with the people who will be reading your file, so remember to be professional and thoughtful in your correspondence. By and large, if you find a great resource for American law school admissions information, it’ll apply to Canadian schools, as well. If you’re unsure, reach out to one of our Canadian teachers for more information.  We’ve also written up a spreadsheet comparing all the different law schools in Canada in terms of tuition, stats, deadlines, and more! We did the research so you don’t have to. Special thanks to our teacher and tutor Michael Poirier for compiling many of the resources in this article. Hope to see you in the study group!

Last week, the first scholarship offers for the 2022 law school admissions cycle started rolling in. Savvy applicants who applied with their best LSAT score in the beginning of September already have their first offers in hand. You’ll hear us tell the following two stories on the LSAT Demon Daily podcast in the next few days: LSAT Demon student Ronnie reported that his dad, “an old-school Puerto Rican guy from the Bronx,” got a little emotional on the phone when Ronnie told him about his full-ride offer from Penn State Dickinson. Ronnie has until April 15 to decide whether to accept this offer. He’ll have many more to choose from by then. LSAT Demon student Brandon has a half-tuition offer at a top-20 school, plus a full-ride offer at the next-highest ranked school on his list. Brandon’s stats: an abysmal 2.5 UGPA alongside four official LSATs of 152, 164, 158, and 168. Both applicants improved their LSAT scores dramatically. Both applied at the beginning of the admissions cycle. Both will attend law school for free. Our mission statement at LSAT Demon is “don’t pay for law school.” You don’t have to be a perfect applicant to make that happen. But you do need to understand the game you’re playing and play in a way that takes advantage of its rules. Law schools use rolling admissions. This means they open their applications in the fall for the following fall’s entering class. And they immediately start throwing scholarship offers around in an attempt to poach the best applicants. Law schools give full-tuition scholarships—and sometimes even stipends—to applicants with LSATs and GPAs that will lift the numbers on their American Bar Association 509 profile and, in turn, lift the schools’ rankings. To see what kind of scholarships you might expect with any GPA/LSAT combination, visit our Scholarship Estimator at LSATdemon.com/scholarships. (The Estimator aggregates publicly available 509 data on tuition, scholarships, and LSAT/GPA percentiles to make its predictions.) Law schools care about only your highest LSAT score because that’s what they have to report to the ABA. If some random school tells you otherwise, then they are mistaken, lying, or making applications decisions that lower their public ABA 509 profile, which will undermine that school’s ranking. (Why would you want to go to a school that does that?) The LSAT is learnable. Excited students tell us about 15-, 20-, and even 25-point improvements every time scores are released. Law school in the United States is wildly overpriced. One big reason that tuition is so out of whack is the scholarships. Simply put, law schools are charging everyone a different price. If you’re not getting a scholarship, you’re paying for someone else’s. The reason we say “don’t pay for law school” is that you simply don’t have to. In the coming weeks, Ronnie and Brandon will continue receiving offers. These offers will have deposit deadlines sometime in the spring. Ronnie and Brandon will have the option to accept whichever offers they like best—and they’ll have time to negotiate even better offers before settling on anything. If you’re thinking about applying in October or beyond, you’re already standing in line behind applicants like Ronnie and Brandon. Yes, you could still get into great schools. Yes, you could still get great scholarship offers. I’m not saying these things are impossible. But I am saying your plan is suboptimal. The later you apply, the more offers will already have been made. Those seats and scholarship offers will be unavailable to late applicants while the Ronnies and Brandons of the world make their decisions. Our advice is to apply with your best LSAT score. Our advice is to apply in September, or next September, or the September after that. Or not at all. The reason we say those things is that they serve our broader mission. Don’t pay for law school. People who follow our advice—people like Ronnie and Brandon—will save themselves $150,000 or more in law school tuition. People who don’t follow our advice will foot the bill. We didn’t create these rules. We’re just telling you how to take advantage of them. None of this is new or shows any sign of changing. In highly competitive cycles, and in down cycles, students who apply early with their best LSAT scores get the best offers. If you’re considering applying in October or beyond, just don’t. Wait until September 1 of next year. Keep working on the LSAT—you can take multiple shots at it between now and then. And by this time next year, you may already have your first offers in hand. Come see how easy the LSAT and law school admissions can be. Email us at: help@lsatdemon.com.

It’s September, and wise law school applicants are trying to follow our advice to get in early on rolling admissions. Offers of admission and scholarships tend to be much more generous for those who apply in September than for those who apply in any other month. Good on you, if you’re applying right now. Thank you for listening to us. It’s gonna work out well for you, I promise. Unfortunately, most of the personal statement submissions we receive don’t follow the bulk of our advice. Maybe you’re new. If so, welcome! Check out our previous personal statement lessons and podcast episodes here, here, here, here, and here. It’s a bit discouraging to constantly read personal statement submissions that seem to flout all our advice. I’m not saying anybody should feel sorry for me. I love what I do, and I can’t imagine doing anything else. But going forward, if you’re going to submit a personal statement to the Thinking LSAT podcast, you’re going to have to run a bit of a questionnaire gauntlet. By all means, please do submit. But make sure that you’ve taken advantage of our pre-existing resources before asking for custom advice. It’s a bit rude not to, don’t you think? Or maybe you don’t think. That’s cool too! Email us at help@lsatdemon.com if you want to tell me I’m full of shit. Or, if you’re enjoying these columns and you’d like to suggest a different topic—I’d be delighted to have a mental-health break into almost anything else—please propose something. I read every email, even if I don’t have time to respond to them all. I’ve got a couple more hard-and-fast rules for you. The first one’s really simple: Commandment: Two pages, double-spaced, max Most law schools expect a two-page statement. We expect that you’re going to use the same statement for almost all of the 10–20 schools to which you apply. So when you submit for consideration on a future episode of Thinking LSAT, that’s what we’re going to require. One page is too short. Three pages is too long. Anything between one and a quarter and two full pages is acceptable, and that’s a pretty damn wide target to hit. Use 11- or 12-point font, with double-spaced lines. While we’re at it, please left-justify (not full-justify) and choose a normal font, like Times or Arial. This is a professional document, so it’s not appropriate to let your Comic Sans flag fly. This commandment is non-negotiable if you want us to read your shit. We will not read it if you don’t follow this rule. Why am I such a hardass about this? Well, you’re too young to remember Van Halen, but Van Halen was a rock band in the ’80s. Allegedly, Van Halen had a rider in their tour contract that specified all sorts of complicated stuff about how they wanted their mics and speakers and instruments and whatever other rocker shit. Anyway, one of the things they specified was a bowl of M&Ms backstage. This bowl of M&Ms was to have all the brown M&Ms removed. Allegedly, if Van Halen showed up to play their bitchin’ rock show in Fresno or wherever and there were no M&Ms—or there were M&Ms with the brown ones not removed—Van Halen would leave the building. No bitchin’ rock show for you, Fresno or wherever! This wasn’t because Van Halen hated brown M&Ms. It was because they wanted the venue to follow all the other requirements in their damn rider! If I see a statement that’s one page, or three pages, or not double-spaced, I will know immediately that you’re not following our guidelines. No bitchin’ personal statement advice for you. Commandment: Use a damn period sometimes. Y’all gotta stop it with the colons and semicolons and ellipses and other artsy bullshit. Even when you use them correctly, they’re annoying distractions. But putting all that artifice aside, your sentences are too damn long. Look: Throughout my time working and volunteering in community service, I have been a part of several impactful events and programs, such as being the ambassador at the Capitol One’s Race for the Kids charity event, vice-president of my community centre’s Youth Council, and running virtual programs during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to connect and stay in contact with youth during a difficult time. Come on man. There are 64 words in that sentence. Anyone who tries to read that sentence out loud would pass out from asphyxiation before they finish. It’s just not that hard to use a damn period once in a while, to allow the reader to catch their breath. Nobody’s going to get anything out of that crazy list of vague and unrelated items. Make them separate sentences! If you’re proud enough of these achievements to include them in your personal statement, then give them their own stage on which to shine. Stop crowding them into long-winded lists that your reader is probably just going to skip. I don’t know where I learned it, but someone somewhere told me that 35 words should be a hard cap on words per sentence. I myself violate this at times, but I shouldn’t. When I take the time to go back and edit myself, I find it’s hard to justify even getting close to the cap, let alone breaking it. If I just use a damn period sometimes, I can find ways to cut each of these sentences into two or three, without ruining the style. You should do the same. Even 35 words is too many for most of us. I suggest 25 words per sentence, max. Commandment: Omit most days, times, months, and years. Applicants stuff their personal statements with references to times of day, days of the week, months and seasons of the year, and years themselves. These details aren’t crucial parts of your story, so they should be omitted. Look: Wednesday, April 13th, 2011, started like any other humid day during Nigeria's rainy season. As it turns out, the date is very important to this applicant because of something very bad that happened to them. The entire story violates our commandment to put your best foot forward, and so the entire thing’s gotta go. But even if we were going to keep the story, we’ve gotta lose the date. It makes no difference to the reader whether this happened on a Wednesday or a Saturday, in April or in November, on the 13th or the 32nd, in 2011 or in any other year. It doesn’t get you any closer to making the reader think, “Wow, this guy’s gonna be a kickass lawyer—we have no choice but to admit him,” so it has no place in your statement. It’s especially egregious when months and years are included to make reference to when someone was hired. This information is on your resume. If I cared, which I don’t, I could look it up there. (I won’t.) Sometimes applicants push back like, “What’s so bad about including this? Do law schools really not want to read about thoughts and feelings, or my job interview, or high school, or specific dates?” This objection misses the point. We have only two pages, max, to put our best foot forward. To make the most of our opportunity, we must ruthlessly omit things that are neutral to our story. If it’s not moving the story forward, it’s gotta go. Every sentence, starting from the very first one, needs to draw the reader toward the conclusions that you’re a badass, that you’ll be even more of a badass after law school, and that the reader will have a terminal case of FOMO if they even consider denying or waitlisting you. With all these don’ts, maybe you’re confused about how to get started. That’s okay—just start putting words on paper. Good writing doesn’t just appear out of the ether, perfectly formed. It’s the result of shitty first drafts and merciless rounds of editing. The finished product needs to be somewhere between one and two pages. The first draft can be four pages, or more. Don’t edit yourself too much, just get it all out there on the page. Then use these commandments to cut, cut, cut, leaving only the good stuff behind.

This week’s lesson was prompted by Demon student Kenzie, who writes, Would it be possible to discuss in one of your upcoming lessons how to end a personal statement? I have my story and my facts. I understand your commandments and plan to use them. But when it comes to tying everything together for the ending, I think way too much weight is always put on the “conclusion” paragraph of writing. Granted, it is the end—and could tie everything together or cause the paper to fall apart—but I don’t believe in tying my story into how I will “succeed” in law school because I think anyone who does that is just creating fluff and more bullshit. I simply want to be able to end my personal statement in a way that is strong but not too over the top. Thanks, Kenzie. Ben and I recorded a new episode of the Thinking LSAT podcast just this morning, and with your email in mind, I paid particular attention to the ending of each statement. They were very bad. Just desperately, extremely not good. Terrible enough, in fact, that I’m going to put this in bold: You probably don’t need an ending. Seriously, just omit. You don’t need it! Where does it say in the personal statement prompt that your statement must have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Where does it say, “This is seventh grade, and you need to learn how to write a five-paragraph essay, so you better damn well introduce what you’re going to write about, then write about it, and then write about it again in a lame, obvious conclusion”? It doesn’t say that. So you don’t need to write that way. One of the most common pieces of personal statement advice Ben and I have given over the years is “cut your first paragraph.” A close second is probably “cut your last paragraph.” Most endings suck and just don’t need to be there. Here’s an example: Thank you for taking the time to read my application, and I look forward to discussing my future opportunities at your school. The thank-you part is polite, I guess, but it’s also a waste of time. Schools need applicants. They advertise, waste money on glossy brochures, and literally travel around the country giving candy away, trying to trick people into applying. You do not need to thank them for reading your application—they should be thanking you. You might have even paid them an application fee! As far as the “I look forward to discussing…”—what? Most schools don’t offer interviews, so this will look naive. Even if they do offer interviews, it’s presumptuous to assume you’re going to get one. So just don’t say this. The statement would be stronger without this ending, no matter what came before it. Here’s another one: I admire the work I am involved in but feel limited in providing additional support to the immigrant community. I will obtain the legal knowledge to polish my client advocacy skills by attending law school. I am confident that (LAW SCHOOL) immigration (programs/clinics) will provide me the education to provide quality service and put me on the best path to becoming an immigration attorney, an attorney that shares the lived experiences of their clients. The first sentence of this ending starts by undermining the applicant. You’re supposed to be selling me on the badass work you’ve done, not complaining that you are “limited” in what you do. Your reader sells law school for a living, so they already believe that your options will be broader after law school than they were before. Please don’t shit on your current job. Omit this. The second sentence does the Captain Obvious “I will learn skills in school” thing, which, no shit! That’s what school is for. What’s the point of including this? The third sentence is a transparent attempt to make the applicant look more interested in a particular school than they actually are. This sort of blatant copy-paste job isn’t going to fool anyone. Don’t waste the space, and don’t take the risk that LSAC might send the wrong essay to the wrong school! Name-dropping the right school has no upside, but name-dropping the wrong school has a significant downside. Just don’t do it. Omit. Brace yourself; here’s another one: As you can see, based on my experience, I think I would be a strong candidate and make a positive contribution to your law school. My preference would be in transactional law, where I’m making deals, not breaking them like litigation. The first sentence crosses boundaries with the overly familiar “as you can see.” No. Please don’t presume to tell your readers what’s in their own heads. Worse, the thing that this applicant believes the reader can see is something that’s in the applicant’s own head! You’re thinking that I’m thinking that you’re thinking that I’m thinking… No. Stop it. And even if we put this mental state-sturbation aside, the reader already knows you’re applying to law school, so obviously they know you think you’re a strong candidate. No shit. The second sentence takes an unnecessary potshot at litigation, which will come off as both rude and naive. Your reader knows a lot more about litigation than you do. This idea that transactional attorneys make deals and litigators break them is a holier-than-thou—and also incorrect—assessment of the legal industry that you’re not qualified to make. Omit. Next! I am grateful for the guidance and resources afforded to me as a Big Law patent agent, and I am anxious to step up as a patent attorney who has the authority and capability to counsel large clients on their intellectual property. Gratitude is lovely, but this reference to your mental state should be omitted. The next mental state reference, “I am anxious,” is even worse. It both shits on your current role as a patent agent and invites your reader to see you as an impatient, worried applicant who is experiencing actual anxiety in a rush to take this next step. It’s not the look we’re going for. Finally, as far as “authority and capability to blah blah blah”—yes, law school will allow you to do more things. Stop selling law school to law schools! The personal statement is supposed to be about you, not about trying to convince law schools that their product will be good for you. They already believe that more than anyone else does. This ending is particularly unnecessary because patent agents are extremely attractive to law schools. They know that you’re already employed in the legal field. They know that you will be able to continue getting paid as a patent agent throughout school. They know that you’ll be even more employable after graduation than you are now, because of the experience you will continue to build. You had them at the words “patent agent,” so use this space to talk more about your work. Instead of forcing a conclusion, just shut up—they’re already itching to reach favorable conclusions on their own. One more stinker: I choose to pursue law school now as a natural step toward my family’s future. My goal is to open an anesthesia practice with my husband when he retires from military service, and we hope to continue to serve veterans in the healthcare field. Experience in health and contractual law will be invaluable to the informed development of this endeavor. For me, this is the worst of the bunch. Law school is not a natural step in anyone’s “family future.” You’re going, not them. And it will probably be the worst thing that’s ever happened to them, assuming they actually like having you around. Law school is intensely stressful and time consuming. Unless the kids are desperate to get you out of the house, the three-year law school stress-bomb that you’re about to drop on the household is going to feel totally unnatural and bad. As far as the goal of opening an anesthesia practice with your husband, and “experience in health and contractual law will be invaluable to the informed development of this endeavor”—no it won’t. I’m both a law school graduate and an entrepreneur, and I promise that the only useful thing I learned in law school was “holy shit, there is no way I would ever dare to counsel myself about anything.” If you don’t intend to practice law, don’t go to law school. Just start the business! You can hire whatever lawyering you need. Especially in an area as fraught as healthcare, you’d be insane to take your own legal advice instead of hiring an expert in the field. You become an expert only through the training that comes from working in this practice area for some years after school. By all means, read Wikipedia or check out some books at the library and dive in. You don’t need a JD to do this. And I promise that, even if you do go to law school, the second you start talking to an actual lawyer in the field, you’ll realize that no amount of school or reading would ever substitute for wise, experienced counsel. Simply put, fresh law school grads don’t know shit. Five for five—all these endings suck, and all of them should be omitted. I didn’t even cherry-pick, by the way. These were just the next five statements in the Thinking LSAT podcast queue. Of course, at this point, I can hear you all furiously typing “BUT HOW DO I END IT THEN?!?!?!11!” Yeah. When in doubt, just don’t. The personal statement is only a page and a half long. It doesn’t require a beginning, a middle, and an end. Fill up the available real estate with good facts about yourself, and leave conclusions out of it. If you present the right facts in the right way, the reader will be making positive conclusions about you well before they approach the end of the statement. Ideally, they’re going to stop halfway through and chuck you into the “admit” pile because they’ve already made their decision and they’ve got a huge stack of applications to get through. If they do make it all the way to the end without making a decision, do you really think that any of the endings above would swing the needle toward “admit”? Or would they actually start edging it toward “deny”? Occasionally—on maybe one in ten statements—the theme is something like, “I totally kill it right now as a concert pianist.” In those rare cases, a very brief statement of what you hope to do as a lawyer might be justified. I’m talking one or two sentences, just to let the reader know that you actually wrote this for a law school application and you aren’t recycling something you wrote for an MFA program. Consider something along the lines of, “In law school, I hope to explore a career in commercial bankruptcy.” Or, “I am excited to explore a broad range of practice areas, but my particular interest right now is criminal defense.” Do this only if you think the statement really needs it, though. And if you do it, keep it short. I’m open to the possibility that I’m full of shit—email me at nathan@lsatdemon.com and let me know what you think of this lesson.

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