In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco speaks with three Spivey consultants—Tom Robinson, former Harvard Law Director of Admissions; Sir Williams, former Wisconsin Law Director of Admissions; and Anne Dutia, former Michigan Law Assistant Director of Admissions—about the relatively new category of law school admissions essays that we're calling "experience/perspective essays" or "E/P essays," many of which are variations on the essays previously known as "diversity statements." They walk through the specifics of what these essays can look like (going through several example prompts), how to approach those different prompts, common mistakes applicants make with these statements, traits of outstanding E/P essays, and more.
This episode is part of an ongoing deep dive series on the main components of the law school application. You can listen to our episode on personal statements here and our episode on resumes here.
You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Full Transcript:
Anna: Hello and welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions, a little bit of everything. I'm Anna Hicks-Jaco, Spivey Consulting's President, and today we'll be doing a deep dive into the essays that were once pretty universally categorized as "diversity statements," but which have now broadened into a wider range of essay prompts and topics—and we'll talk about the reasons for that in the episode—but we're calling that new category of essay "experience/perspective essays," or "E/P essays."
This is a continuation of a series that we're doing where we really delve into the specifics, advice, strategies related to each of the main law school application components. We did an episode on personal statements, we did an episode on resumes, you can find links to both of those in the description—and now we'll be taking a close look at these E/P essays. We'll talk through the various different types and categories that these essays can fall into, common mistakes, traits of really stand-out excellent E/P essays, and more.
I am fortunate to be joined today by three of our fantastic Spivey consultants: Tom Robinson, former Harvard Law Director of Admissions; Sir Williams, former Director of Admissions at the University of Wisconsin Law School; and Anne Dutia, former assistant director of admissions at the University of Michigan Law School. Between the three of them, we have well over 50 years of law school admissions experience on this podcast episode. They have so much great advice and so many insights to share. So without any additional delay, I'll go ahead and let them introduce themselves further.
Anne: Hello, everybody. My name is Anne Dutia, and I have been with Spivey Consulting for about seven years. I practiced law for a few years, and then I worked in admissions at the University of Michigan Law School under the wonderful Sarah Zearfoss. I served as a pre-law advisor and an undergraduate moot court coach. I'm still on the board for the American Moot Court Association as I so strongly believe in the mission and benefit of the activity for pre-law students. I'm a first-gen American and a first-gen law student. And one thing that is probably not immediately evident or even clear to folks who have known me for a long time is that I'm from and still consider Alabama my home. My family lives there, and it's where I did most of my growing up and where I went to college and law school.
Sir: Hello, everybody, I'm Sir Williams. Sir is my given first name. I did not pick it, but if you like it, let me know. I'll pass your compliments along to the chef. I am originally from Chicago, Illinois, born and raised. I went to law school at University of Wisconsin, so I graduated in 2011, practiced for a little bit, and then became Director of Admissions there from 2012 until 2019. And then I've been consulting with the firm; this will be my fifth cycle.
I'm really passionate about good storytelling in the admissions process. These types of special essays, it's one of the favorite parts of my work of helping people apply successfully, because everyone has a story, and everyone's story is interesting if you ask the right questions and if you help them craft good answers to the right questions.
Tom: Hi, everyone. My name is Tom Robinson. I've worked in higher education for about 30 years, and the last seven years have been with Spivey. I spent a few years working in financial aid, undergraduate admissions, international admissions, and about four of my seven years at Harvard working and managing the admissions office in the law school.
Over the years, I've met a lot of international students, and I really enjoy working with them through the law application process. But as a first-generation college student, I think the best thing for me about this job is that I get to sort of reveal the entire process as much as I can and help people navigate it and feel confident about the process as they move forward. So I'm looking forward to talking with you today about the experience and perspective essays.
Anna: Wonderful. Thank you all for being here. I am so lucky to have all of your perspectives on this topic. Let's go ahead and jump right in, because this is a big topic. The first thing that I was hoping to talk about was, baseline level, we are talking about this as "experience perspective essays" or "E/P essays," whereas if we had recorded this same or a similar type of podcast two years ago, we would have been talking about "diversity statements." So I'd like to talk a little bit about how and why diversity statements developed into what we're now calling these E/P essays. Does someone want to give sort of an overview for anyone who might not be familiar with the trajectory of how things have gotten to where they are now?
Anne: I am a moot court nerd, so I will give a little bit of the constitutional history. In 2023, the Supreme Court decided in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that race could not be considered in higher ed admission, except for the military academies. Former lawyer, so I feel like I always have to add in all of those technicalities.
Anna: You never hear anybody bringing that up! Look at you, so nuanced.
Anne: But there was a piece of dicta, and it said that students or applicants can still mention those as long as they talk about the experiences and perspectives that were shaped by their race, and so the experience and perspective essay is a way for students to talk about the things that they would have talked about in diversity essays and are important to them, or informed their experiences, informed their motivations, and may have shaped who they are.
Sir: I was going to say, yeah, I appreciate that background and agree with how Anne described it. So for me, I don't really think that the thrust of what schools are looking for has really changed dramatically. The entire point of the application is to help them get to know you.
And so in the past, they had these prompts that were designed to give folks who've had unique, defining experiences, particularly experiences that may have come about as a function of someone's race or class or gender or some other marginalized and/or protected group, and now I think questions have evolved, because of the Supreme Court case, to be more broad, so that people who don't necessarily have defining experiences in that tight little box because you're part of some underrepresented or otherwise marginalized group, but they just want to know, hey, what have been your experiences? Everybody. What are your experiences? What's your perspective? What's informed it? Ultimately, I think the goal is, to use an analogy, to get more of a multidimensional picture of a person, as opposed to just a straight—maybe a 2D version that could be just your numbers. And maybe your personal statement, again, adds a little depth, but these experience/perspective essays or the diversity statements—those are all designed just to give a different angle, a different perspective on still you. So the goal of getting to know you: unchanged. Just how they frame the question: updated for contemporary times.
Tom: I feel like some of my clients, when I talk to them, are more interested in writing these types of essays than they were when they had the traditional diversity statement title. Because it does feel like, while the schools may still be looking for similar things, students, applicants feel a little bit more licensed to talk about things that aren't related to protected categories or ability or religion or sort of immigration status. And so now they are able to talk about things that are a little bit broader, and they feel like they might have the license to do that.
Anna: Let's get specific here. Diversity statement prompts, I think, certainly had differences between various schools' prompts, but I think by and large they were pretty similar. Now, the range of prompts that law schools are giving applicants under this umbrella term that we are using, "experience/perspective essays," "E/P essays," there are so many different options, and they take many different forms. Some of them are optional; some of them are required; some of them have seven different options for you to choose from; some are just one general, broad prompt.
Let's get into some specifics. Let's talk about what these prompts actually look like. I’m not going to get into specific schools, especially because we're looking at last year's prompts—it's August 7th; most law schools have not released their new applications yet, but we can look at last year's prompts as sort of a general idea of the various categories that these types of prompts can fall into. I think the first and probably the most common—you guys tell me if you disagree—is probably pretty simple and pretty broad.
So, I'm going to read one law school's prompt here. "X Law School is committed to achieving an expansive and inclusive law school community that brings a diverse range of ideas, experiences, and perspectives to our classroom. Tell us how your lived experience informs who you are today." And then plenty of other schools include some examples—whereas in the past, applicants might have limited themselves to certain categories here, law schools are now giving examples that make it clear that this is broader. Some of the examples that other schools have given include financial hardship, educational adversity, special talents, work or community service experience, first generation or immigrant experience, an unusual rural or urban upbringing, foreign residence, military background, unique family and/or personal circumstances, health issues, disability, surviving abuse or complex family circumstances like an incarcerated parent, homelessness, living in foster care, neurodivergence, linguistic barriers, skills built and/or lessons learned. That is a huge range of things that you can talk about when you are answering this type of prompt, and it is broader than it once was.
That's one category. Do you think this is the most common type that most law schools are falling into now? What are your thoughts on this?
Tom: I think that is pretty common, and it does seem a lot broader. I think when an applicant might be applying to 10 or 15 schools, they could get overwhelmed with trying to categorize the different ways that the schools talk about this type of essay, but what I usually encourage them to do is to just think about, these essays, broadly speaking, are talking about how your experiences sort of shape your perspectives, how your perspective might be shaped by your history, all of the experiences that you've had and how that might be something that you utilize either uniquely or not uniquely in the law school environment as a peer, as an attorney, as a student working in a clinic. So how do those experiences shape your perspectives on working with others? Generally speaking, I think if you think about it on that level, students can really come up with some really creative ideas and some strong essays.
Sir: I think it's helpful to remember that there are no right or wrong answers to these questions. Again, they're just designed to prompt you to talk about interesting things that you think the school would want to know. Again, because the school doesn't know who you are outside of the application, they can't narrowly craft their questions to get at your specific experiences. So I think what many schools are trying to do is, again, make it broad enough so that you know that your experiences, your story is welcome. There is a place for it. They want you to talk about it. They're trying to help you help them get to know you better. I'm probably going to keep coming back to that during this conversation, but this is all a big old icebreaker. Getting to know you—okay, I'm not going to sing this time; I promised myself I wouldn't, so.
Anne: But I also think that ultimately it's what we were encouraging our applicants to do with the diversity essays anyway, right? We're not approaching these too differently. I think it just, like Tom said, helps students feel a little bit more comfortable digging into their own experiences and thinking about things they believed the schools traditionally wanted, when, in fact, the schools wanted to hear about all of these things all along.
Anna: Some law schools do require this type of essay, and we'll get into that soon, but these ones that we've just looked at are optional. So, what are your all thoughts? Should everybody write these? Should only certain types of applicants write these? How should listeners determine whether they should write this essay or not?
Anne: One of our very wise colleagues talks about it this way, and I go back to it over and over in that, do you have a viewpoint or insight informed by your experiences or perspective that is less common in the law school classroom or in the legal profession, and would it be valuable, for example, in terms of the questions that you ask, or causes that you pursue? I encourage applicants to really dig into, what are those perspectives and experiences are that are differentiating, and also, how do they help you engage with the law maybe differently than the majority of the folks in law school would?
Tom: Yeah, I think that's a great way to describe it, Anne. And I think some students feel like if they don't have a story about grit and distance traveled, maybe they shouldn't write about it, but I think it's really good to pause and brainstorm. If someone was a caregiver, or if someone had some sort of client relationship that wasn't even related to the law. I read a beautiful essay today about someone who worked in a grocery store. So, you know, ideas about how they connect with others and how they build rapport with people, I think those kinds of topics can be really wonderful for this type of essay. If it's not required by a school, I think maybe you should still consider and really spend some time trying to brainstorm what you might bring to a client relationship, to working with peers, or to helping people tell their stories, or to empowering peers, what kind of role you play in teams—think about that perspective and how that might help an admissions officer get in your corner as they're reading your application.
Anne: Tom, that brings to mind my own personal statement from, let's just say, more than a quarter century ago.
Tom: My statement was handwritten, so it was so long ago.
Anne: But it was what I learned about people and myself from waiting tables, and just how working in the service industry really helped me interact with a wide variety of people and understanding kind of the commonalities, but then also meeting people where they were, and I love how you brought that in with the caregiver. Maybe my essay is not as cringy as I'm remembering it, because I'm sure that I wasn't as good a writer, and I'm sure that I wasn't incorporating all of this great advice, but I am hoping that maybe one day I can find it and polish it up to make it look as good as our clients' might.
Sir: I think there is a very common misconception that, in order to speak to these types of prompts, it has to be coming from a place of, "I've overcome this obstacle," or "There was some sort of drama involved in my process to get to here." I worked with someone who is at a top three school now whose statement really focused on the fact that they grew up in an ethnic enclave in Miami, and being around people that looked like them and had the same faith as them who were like, really successful, just motivated them and said, I don't have any excuse for not being able to achieve anything I want, because there are doctors and there are lawyers and there are all these things that people can do, people who look like me ,who came from where I came from, whose parents came from where my parents came from, they're all doing it. So their way of processing that was "I don't have any excuses," and they pushed themselves to sort of do their very best all the time, and it worked out for them. Now, that doesn't take anything away from anybody who had to overcome major obstacles. But at the same time, for me, it illustrated that this doesn't have to be a sad story. You don't have to manufacture drama. Your law school application is not Shondaland. I love Grey's Anatomy, but I'm there for the drama. They're not coming to your application for the drama, necessarily.
Anne: Insights can be derived from success as well. That's what the schools are interested in; they're interested in the insights you've derived from your experiences.
Tom: Yeah, and I think on the other side of that, Sir, is when someone has a real story of perseverance or they have what a lot of admissions people call "distance traveled"—distance traveled is the concept that you may be entering law school just like hundreds of other people at your school, but maybe you had to cross a lot more distance, a lot more barriers, a lot more challenges you had to encounter to get there. And so, some people who do have grit or perseverance that they could talk about in their essay worry about trying to capitalize on that or be perceived as trying to have some sort of admission advantage because of that. That's something to definitely process with people who are mentors and things like that as you write essays, but it is something that I think is really important to share with admissions committees and talk about that distance traveled and grit and perseverance if that's something that really belongs in the essay. Then certainly I think you should feel comfortable sharing it, because admissions officers also want to know that. So it doesn't have to be there. If it's part of your experience, then definitely share it. That can be really helpful.
Anna: We've been doing this as a series where we're doing a deep dive into the various different application components. We did one on personal statements. We did one on resumes. And I think a big theme throughout both of those episodes has been authenticity. And it's such a big theme in all of the content that we put out, honestly. And I think that's important to remember here. If it is your authentic experience and what your life experiences have led you to this point and who you are today, and those experiences have been difficult and hard to get through, you've encountered adversities that most other people have not—if that's an authentic part of who you are, then you should write about it. If it's not, then don't fabricate it. Don't make it up. You don't have to.
So we've been talking about these optional E/P essays. Let's look at a required essay prompt. Most schools do not, but some schools are requiring this general type of essay, and I think that is a different category that people have to think about, especially if they ultimately determine, "I don't think I'm going to write these optional ones."
I'm going to read out one law school's required experience or perspective essay prompt. It reads, "The admissions committee makes every effort to understand who you are as an individual and potential X Law School student and graduate. Please share how your experiences, background, and/or interests have shaped you and will shape your engagement in the X Law School community and the legal profession."
Let's talk about that a little bit. This essay is required. How do you all advise applicants to start brainstorming how they want to answer this question? Especially if they maybe took a look at those optional prompts and decided, I don't think it makes sense for me to submit this. But for schools that require it, now they have to choose a topic. They have to figure out what to write about. How do we brainstorm?
Sir: I take a very linear, logical, and maybe boring approach to this. I say, "What is it that I want people to remember about me when they put this thing down?" Whenever I start writing something in the context of a law school application or an application generally. So if I'm making a statement, I have to be really clear on what I'm trying to communicate; everything else will flow from that. If you're not really clear why you're telling a story, you will very easily—and I know this from personal experience as a rambler—you will get lost in that story, and you won't remember why you started. No one else is going to remember why you started or where you were going, and it's messy. It doesn't have to be that way. So the easiest thing—I'm not saying it's easy to execute, but maybe a simple way to start—is to figure out, okay, so they're asking me to talk about my experiences or background and things that have shaped me. Okay, well, what do I want to say? What has shaped me, and what was the impact? What did it actually do? So what was the event, person, or thing, and what was the outcome? How did it change me? And then the next part could be, okay, and then why is that relevant to this law school experience?
Because if you approach it from that frame, you can take almost any experience, I think, and make it relevant. If you're thoughtful, then you'll be able to not just pick any experience but your best experience. I'll give you a super quick example. I sold women's shoes at Nordstrom all five years of college. Knowing what I know now, I feel like I could crush one of these statements just talk about selling women's shoes, and people would say, "Well, what does selling women's shoes have to do with the law?"
Anne: Like waiting tables?
Sir: Right, waiting tables, watching paint dry, requires a lot of attention to detail and a lot of focus and commitment. I know it sounds marketing-y and spin-y. And I'm not saying you have to be that dramatic, but again, there really are really cool, interesting stories about things that you might feel are just very mundane and normal. "Yeah, I commuted an hour and a half to school every day each way. It's not a big deal. It's just what I had to do." Wait a minute, what? Stop! Let's talk about that. That's different.
Anne: I think people have a lot of trouble seeing themselves as other people see them and what might be interesting or extraordinary about them. Like, commuting an hour and a half to school every day, or even both ways—that's a lot. And also, thinking about what that person did during that time or what they did when traffic held them up, I think those kinds of things are interesting. If we're going to go back to an analogy, that "distance traveled" is harder than, you know, somebody who lived on campus, and they didn't have that time to study or to go visit with professors in office hours. They were missing out on that time because they had to invest that time traveling.
Tom: Yeah, I think that's very true. And changing gears a little bit, I think sometimes it's, if you are looking at your overall school list and there are a couple of schools on there that require a life experience or perspective essay, then maybe start there. A lot of people might write their personal statement or statement of purpose first. Think about the life experiences essay and really put some time into it, because you might find something, just as Sir and Anne have been describing, that is really compelling from a very simple job or responsibility that you had, and that thing might then come out and be a great essay, and if it is, you can use that for multiple schools, even the ones where these essays are optional. That can also obviously save you time. Columbia last year added an optional perspective/life experience essay, but they also had other essays, so you might be able to use the essay more broadly for lots of different schools.
And, sometimes, it is a process, so you'll find a brainstorming partner and try to think through what the topics could be. I had a client who was really struggling to find a topic, and he settled on something related to intuition, like interpersonal intuition was his topic—I don't want to, you know, obviously get too into that, but it ended up being a wonderful essay, and I think it was something fresh and authentic.
And I guess another piece of advice with this, and this kind of goes with what Sir and Anne have been saying too, is that it's good to understand what a school wants out of this prompt, but don't try to write what you think they want to hear. And I think those are different things. So, what they want is to build a class that's full of people who can bring different attributes, and those attributes in these essays can be really broad, as we've talked about. But at the same time, don't try to tell them what you think they want to hear. Try to look within yourself and come up with a topic from there. That's when things like caregiving or intuition or common moments in your life or something you do naturally could be really relevant to how you might work with clients in the future. Those types of things can, I think, add a more personal, more emotional touch to your application. So, you know, this essay can really be an advantage for folks.
Anne: One thing that we talked about in the personal statement deep dive was self-awareness. And I think that's also really important for this essay. Having some self-awareness or spending some time with self-examination and thinking about where you've come from, the trajectory that you're on, and the insights that are derived from those. I think that the best essays, in general, whether they're personal statements or experience essays, are those that demonstrate that self-awareness and how you're situated in the world and what that means for you. Honestly, that's really hard when you've only been alive 20 years, right? With homework and tests and the rest of your life, people don't have a whole lot of time to sit there and gaze at their navel and think about their lives. I recommend engaging in at least a little bit of that to think about what kind of insights you can offer and then maybe work backwards as to the experiences and perspectives that developed those insights.
Anna: All excellent advice. I think it's all contributing to that multidimensional picture, as Sir was saying, of who you are and what you're bringing to a law school.
So, another way that law schools incorporate asking about your experience or your perspective is by actually incorporating it into the personal statement prompt. This is more uncommon, I think. Last year, there was at least one law school that did it this way, where instead of having separate essays for "here's your personal statement" and "here's where we're asking about your experience or perspective," they basically combined it and said, "Here's your personal statement; it can be up to five pages"—and I'm guessing none of you would encourage people to write that full five pages, but I won't put words in your mouth—and basically said, okay, talk about your interests and motivations for law school, your typical personal statement type prompt, but then also folded in elements of asking about your experience or your perspective.
So, what is your advice for applicants who, maybe they've written a personal statement; maybe they've even written one or a few versions of an experience or perspective essay. They have these two separate narratives. What advice do you have for combining those into one sort of cohesive essay? Or do they even need to combine it into a cohesive essay? Could it maybe just be, "and here's this other topic that I want to talk about," without really combining them?
Sir: I think that both are possible. Obviously, you have to pay attention to the instructions that the schools provided, but oftentimes, your stories and experiences tie into these big universal things. And so combining two things that don't seem like they're connected is really just an exercise in thinking about, okay, what is the common denominator? And I'm not going to go long with this math analogy because I suck at it and I hate it, but that's really kind of what it comes down to.
And so I love that we're having this whole conversation and we've talked about three or four different types of prompts so far, because for me, again, at the end, they're all getting toward a similar thing. And so, if you've ever seen a really good politician, they'll agree to go on anyone's show. The questions that they're going to be asked are almost an afterthought to the talking points they have in their head when they go into it. So no matter what questions you ask me, I'm going to make sure that you know that I love puppies and that if I get elected there's going to be Kool-Aid coming out of the water fountain. It doesn't matter what question you ask me. I'm going to make sure I say those things. That's how my team has prepared me. And so similarly, I think coming into an application, it's really helpful if you're thinking about, no matter what question I encounter, I'm going to share this thing about me. I look at these different prompts as different vehicles I have to choose from. Am I going to be driving a Ford today or a Toyota? It doesn't matter. They have four doors or two doors and wheels, and they're going to get you where you need to go. It takes a lot of that sort of, I think, anxiety out of it, about "Oh, I don't know what they're going to ask. They could ask me 20 different things." I have to be very careful, because I want to say that it doesn't matter what they ask you—no, it does. You have to follow directions. But thinking a little bit deeper beyond the surface level of what the question is, and thinking about why they're asking the question, can sometimes help with that brainstorming. "What would they possibly get about me from my answer to this question?" And that can help you get really warm or hot about where you should focus your attention and storytelling effort.
Anne: And Sir, I think that's great advice for interviews as well.
Tom: That's true.
Anna: So I'd like to talk about a couple more categories of prompts that applicants might encounter when they are searching, "Okay, where is the place that I can put my experience perspective type of essay?" One of those types is pretty similar to the first category that we talked about, where it's just giving you the optional opportunity to talk about your experience or perspective, and that is law schools that give a broadly-defined addendum prompt that may be used for an experience or perspective essay.
So traditionally, law school addenda have been pretty limited in the subject matter that law schools are looking for: explaining your LSAT score if you think they need additional context on that, explaining your undergraduate GPA if they need additional context on that, explaining any character and fitness issues. Those were sort of the three main categories of addenda, with, of course, tons of little one-off situations where, you know, this one individual has to include this information, so they include an addendum. But a few schools have broadened their addendum prompt to specifically ask for this experience and perspective type of information from applicants.
So that's just something that I think applicants should look out for if they are going to an application and wondering where to put this essay, is that, it might be under the addendum, even if that's not what an addendum typically in the past would have included. So just be aware of that. And that, I think the considerations are very similar for the first category that we talked about, where it's just an optional, typical type of experience/perspective essay.
Another type of situation that I would like to flag is that—most schools did not do this, but at least a couple of schools did not include any essay or prompt that specifically got at or used any type of language to indicate experience, perspective, this type of essay that previously might have been a diversity statement and now is broader. For at least one of those schools, we talked to their dean of admissions, and they specifically told us, the addendum slot is where you would put that essay, even though they don't specifically let you know. So that's another thing that I want to flag for applicants to be aware of, is that even if you don't see a specific prompt for it, it could make sense in the addendum spot. Now, certainly read over the instructions carefully. If they specify, "these are the only things we want to see in an addendum," don't do it that way. But if a law school leaves it open-ended, which I think some law schools did so very intentionally, of saying "this can be used to address any of the many topics you may wish to include," that might be an appropriate place for your experience or perspective essay.
Tom: I totally agree, and I think in the past, I would always advise folks to be very careful, be very brief with addenda. Now, with this sort of inclusion of a broader addendum, even, you know, that could fit the life experience essay, I think that makes sense. And if you already have a strong essay that you've written for one of the other schools because it was required or because you wanted to, yeah, definitely consider doing that. And the school might wonder why you didn't.
Sir: I think the flipside of the coin is that some of these prompts actually say, "Use your best judgment," which is code for, "We're judging you based off of the decisions you're making"—
Tom: That's true.
Sir: —which is code for, don't include your thesis. I know you think it's interesting, but the application is already like 30 pages long. When you think of all of the essays and resumes and transcripts and letters of recommendation, it's not good judgment to drop your master's thesis in there, or that 32-page, single-spaced response that you wrote because you felt like it was brilliant. That's where, again, talking to people that like, know and love you but who will also be honest with you, can be a good thing. Like Tom was saying, you have to fight this urge, maybe, not to talk about things that you should, because maybe you don't think they're that interesting, but then you have to also be aware of the other side of the coin. I won't name that side of the coin, but there is a name for it. And the application process—it's all about you, in doses. Brevity is a virtue when it comes to applications, I often think, again as long as you're including everything that should be there.
Anne: We used to talk about application files that landed with a "thud" back when we were reading paper applications.
Tom: Right.
Anna: And that is not a positive thing.
Tom: No.
Anna: So, let's talk about another type of prompt, and honestly, at this point, it starts to get really divergent. There are lots of different types of ways that law schools can ask this question, that law schools did ask this question last cycle; there might be ways that they're going to ask it this upcoming cycle that we aren't even anticipating. But I'd like to look at one school's prompt that did it in a way that is slightly different from the way that a lot of other schools did it, which is that they gave a bunch of different options for things to talk about, some of which are pretty squarely within the experience/perspective type of essay, and some of which are different, and some of which offer opportunities to talk about totally separate things. And they give a pretty short word limit, 250 to 500 words per prompt, for these optionals.
So I'm just going to read this out. "Our admissions process is guided by the view that a law school class that includes actively engaged students who possess a variety of skills, personal qualities, and life experiences helps to advance the law school's mission, improves the learning process, and enriches the educational experience for all. Please write one or two short essays from the list below."
The options that they give include, "What does the rule of law mean to you, and what special background or experience do you have that may help you contribute to its advancement or that underscores its importance to you personally?" Second one they have is, "The promise of equal justice is fundamental to our legal system. Why is equal justice important to you personally, and what personal experiences or knowledge do you have that may help you to become an effective advocate for equal justice under law?" Their third prompt is, "Exposure to a diversity of perspectives and experiences can enhance one's ability to deliver effective professional services. Please describe any opportunities you have had to serve clients or your community, either through work or on a volunteer basis, and how your own exposure to different perspectives and experiences helped you." Their fourth option is, "Lawyers are members of a learned profession and are often called to serve the public in a variety of ways. Please describe your interest in public service and any experience that you have had to prepare you for a life of service in the public interest." Fifth one they give you: "Please describe your interest in learning the law in an open, rigorous, and collaborative environment. Why is a commitment to the free expression of ideas so important in the learning process?" And their last option is, "What does ethical leadership mean to you? Please provide examples of how you have prepared yourself to become an ethical leader."
Okay, so let's say an applicant comes to any of the three of you and says, "Hey, we've written these experience/perspective essays; I've adapted it for different schools; we've written this personal statement. Now I've come across this huge thing. What advice do you have?" I know to some extent it's going to depend on the individual, but what advice generally do you have for approaching this type of very broad essay prompt that really gives you a variety of different options for how you want to talk about various topics that might be relevant to you?
Anne: I like that they are fairly narrowly tailored questions, so even if you had to write a new essay, I think that, for people who enjoy writing, this could be an interesting exercise. For people who want to, I think, use essays that they've already written, number three or number five tend to be ones that they could adapt what they've already written. I actually like this prompt, because I think that it allows students to explore or share facets of their experience that they maybe wouldn't have considered otherwise.
Tom: One pitfall that could happen with this particular school is, if you have a perspective or life experience essay that you already like, then you might be tempted to submit it as part of your "different perspectives" prompt the school offers. But I think it's really important to, what all of us have been talking about, which is "read the instructions." Because a lot of life experience/perspective essays don't exactly answer this particular prompt, because it says, please describe any opportunities you've had to serve clients in your community on a volunteer basis, so they're kind of looking for a particular population that you've been serving with that perspective. It's not just sort of a copy-and-paste and bring in a general perspective essay and put it here. So it's really important to pay attention to that prompt. It is an opportunity to maybe reuse that essay in a practical way, but then also look at the other essays and think about maybe there's something else—a shorter 250 words, for example—that you might want to include as well.
Anna: Great advice from both of you. I'd like to look at a couple more prompts. Believe it or not, there are more types still yet to come.
We've talked a lot about prompts that have broadened the scope of what they are looking for from what previously would have been a diversity statement. There are some schools that narrowed what they're looking for and get very specific as far as the type of essay that they're looking for. One of these types of essays is really focused on adversity. So we've talked a lot about the variety of different ways that your identity, your perspective, your experiences have informed who you are and how you can talk about those, and they don't have to be about adversity, they don't have to be about hurdles that you had to cross—but some schools do get very specific and ask for that.
I'm going to read one law school's prompt that sort of falls within this category. They say, "We recognize that some applicants have faced and overcome particular challenges in life thus far. In this optional section, we invite you to share any information about adversity or challenges that you would like us to consider about your personal life experiences. This may include socioeconomic challenges, educational challenges, health issues, disability, immigration status, surviving abuse, or complex family circumstances like an incarcerated parent, homelessness, living in foster care, or others. This is not an inclusive list, but simply an opportunity, if you wish, to share any additional aspects of your background that may give us a deeper understanding of your strengths and who you are."
Thoughts/advice on this type of prompt? Because it is narrower than those that we've been talking about.
Sir: Even with this one, they're sort of narrow up front and signaling "these are the types of things we had in mind," then even they at the end put this catch-all, "this is not an inclusive list. You can go off the rails here if you want. But be careful; we are judging you." Any additional aspects of your background that may give us a deeper understanding of your strengths and who you are—at the end of the day, they want to know about these things, not just because you can check a box, not just because you can claim membership in a group, but they're curious about how these parts of your background—and in this case, primarily adversities—how they've strengthened you and made you who you are. So why are you so passionate about this justice issue? It's an opportunity to help make sense of all of the other information you've provided about yourself in the application process. It provides context for why, during college, maybe you weren't as focused on your grades as you could have been, because there was other more important stuff going on, like college was a means to an end: get the degree so I can support my family. "C's get degrees"—that's not exactly the mantra you want to march into your law school applications with, but at the same time, though, I advise people when I'm talking with them, I always say, look, it's about making your application make sense. It's not that people have to agree with your decisions, but they do want them to make sense. They want them to resolve in the way that musical chords do. When you put certain notes together, it just sounds right, and if you put stuff not together, you don't have to know anything about music to say, "that just sounds weird." It's unsatisfying. I often tell people, when you're faced with an optional prompt, really be thinking about, is this sort of adding to the harmony? Is this sort of completing something that was maybe left unresolved, a question that came up, or is this just you wanting to talk more? Because if you want to talk more, talk to me, but leave it out of the application.
Anna: If you were talking to an applicant, they came to you and they had written their experience or perspective essay for other schools, and it was of the nature of the sort of one that you were talking about earlier with the applicant who lived in Miami and had this joyful experience of his culture and his identity. In this hypothetical, the essay is all that tone; it's about the positive aspects and doesn't really touch on adversity at all. In this type of situation, would you advise that applicant to submit it anyway, given that they do have that sort of catch-all at the end? Would you advise them to try to adapt it or write something completely different? I think this is a situation that some applicants are probably going to come across.
Sir: It would be case-by-case. My default would probably be, if you don't really have any adversity to talk about, let's not. But let's not end the conversation there; let's talk a little bit more. Because some people might view exactly those things you described—growing up in an enclave with a bunch of people that looked like you and feeling sheltered—they might describe those as negatives, as adversity. Think of the immigrant kid whose parents are just so focused on success in America, "You're going to be a STEM major. That's all you can do. Are you going to be a doctor or an engineer? Which one? Because all this other stuff, I haven't heard of that, and that doesn't count. I don't care about what you want to do personally." You could have been a straight-A engineering student, but you could just be very unfulfilled. And so even though it was a sort of boon, it was an adversity and a thing that you had to overcome, too, the ability to speak truth to power and tell the person that's maybe funding the degree that you don't want that. I would get really specific into that person's circumstances. I would feel comfortable assessing and giving them advice on, like, maybe what I would do if I were in their shoes. But I would also be careful not to supplant my judgment for theirs. If they feel strongly about it, then let's figure out a way to make it work. If they feel strongly about not wanting to do it, I'm absolutely not going to force it, because then I think that forcing them to do it, it'll come through.
Anne: I think that's wonderful, Sir, because it's the digging into the way that somebody told the story originally and requiring them to see it maybe from a slightly different angle, or even appreciate their lived experience in a way that's a little bit different from how they had originally thought about it, because our story and what we go through, I think, changes with the more life that we live and how we think about what we've been through, and something that we thought was wonderful at one point or awful at one point, we may re-evaluate with kind of greater life experience.
Tom: I agree with what you both said. And applicants probably put a higher bar for grit and perseverance, like what qualifies as something that I should write about. Sir, I think your example of someone feeling intense family pressure to do one thing or another, from a cultural perspective or from a personal family perspective, that can be really intense. I've definitely had international clients, particularly women from East Asia, write about social pressures and expectations. "You have to be married before you're 30." These are things that are really intense for some applicants. "A professional role is not really what this is meant for, and even investment in a legal education is wasteful." I'm not trying to say parents are awful, but there are some pressures that are really there about having children and raising a family, and how does law school fit into that? So people can write about these things after they reflect on them, as you were saying, Anne.
Anne: Tom, one of my favorite diversity statements—that was the type of essay when we wrote it—was a young woman who reflected on having wonderful, supportive, loving family and lots of extended family all around, and their greatest ambition for her was that she could make a perfectly round tortilla, because that meant that she would be a good manager of her home, or she would be able to be a good housewife. And one of the harder things she had to do was break away from that and show that she could still do this but also have the career that she wanted. So I love that you showed how even loving, supportive, kind of Pollyanna-like life experiences can have expectations that people have to work against.
Tom: Yeah.
Anna: The only thing I would add there is that writing about your family, or writing about experiences that you've had in the framework of challenges or adversities, does not take away from the positive and wonderful things about your family. I think a lot of applicants can sometimes feel guilty or bad about writing about things under that framework of adversities and challenges, because they're thinking to themselves, you know, "no, my family loves me; they've done all these wonderful things for me; I shouldn't be talking about the difficulties that I've experienced in that context, because they've been so great," and feeling like it is a slight against them or takes away from any of the positive things that they have gotten from their family, from their parents. So I just wanted to flag that you should not feel that guilt, and that talking about things from a multitude of different perspectives, just because you have this one side doesn't take away from the other side, doesn't take away from all of the positives. So do look at it in a nuanced way and think about things in ways that you might not have in the past, but recognize that that doesn't invalidate anything else about your identity, or your family, or your culture.
Sir: Quickly, one of our colleagues, Jordana, I think she writes a blog; she definitely writes LinkedIn posts about basically being, like, a recovering perfectionist. And it's so fascinating because, on the outside, these really high-performing people that seem to get all the things, it'd be really easy to assume that they get all the things and that life is great because of it. But the other side of that coin is really intense, very high expectations, sometimes unrealistic, and that in and of itself can be a real barrier. Right now we're in the midst of the Olympics; there are so many stories of that there. You look at Simone Biles pulling out of the Olympics, and everybody's like, "Oh, my God, what are we going to do? I can't believe," but it's like, wait a minute. Or 100 meters, the marquee track and field event, and there's so much pressure on the U.S. favorite to win the whole thing, and when they don't, they're not even talking about the person who won. It's "this person lost"—that's got to be terrible. Your reward for being consistently good is that people are always asking you what's next. It's like, "Oh my god, you graduated from college; that's so wonderful, so when are you getting married?" "Oh, you're married, that's great, so when are you having kids?" "Oh, you've got kids, so when are you having another one?" Wait! What? What's happening here?
Tom: You're stressing me out!
Sir: Like, wow.
Anne: You're making me reevaluate some of my life story!
Sir: Like Anne was saying, sometimes it takes a little bit of sitting and stewing and maybe talking to people that you trust who know you well. But there often, almost always is a story in there somewhere. It's just about being in the space to sort of realize it and maybe shift your thinking a little bit so that you can see it. And if you can't do that for yourself, which most people can't, find a partner who can help you do that.
Anna: Great advice.
So there is one last category of prompt that I would like to talk about—and this one is pretty different from most of the other prompts that we've been talking about—and this is the prompt that specifically gets at "communicating across differences" or working with people who have different perspectives from you or who you disagree with.
So I'll read one school's prompt that, this was their only prompt of this nature; they did not have another sort of experience/perspective essay type option. And this school said: "At X Law School, we value the ability to communicate constructively across differences, even when the stakes are high or the differences significant. Please discuss a time when you encountered a viewpoint that contrasted with your own and explain how you responded. Would you do anything different if the same thing happened today?"
That's one very specific way of framing it. I think some other schools have either one option, or this is their main option, where it's similar, not necessarily the exact same framing. So, as with all of these, read every school's instructions carefully and be sure you are answering the question that they ask. But for this type of prompt generally, about communicating across differences and having these ideological differences with your peers or with people with who you're working with, what advice do you give applicants for this one? Because it is so different.
Tom: I think law schools, like many other places, many other schools and universities across the country, are trying to figure out how to encourage communication and how to help people understand what it means to disagree and disagree well.
Law schools train people to disagree, advance the best arguments, and to problem-solve and use strategy. But at the same time, it seems like, in some cases, people are talking past each other; people are not communicating. So they want to really emphasize right from the very beginning that these are priorities for them. They want people to disagree, but they want them to do it well.
When I was at HLS, and I don't know if they are still using this quote, but Dean Manning used to say, "Listen generously and disagree strenuously"—he would say that at orientation, he would say that in writing, and I think it might have been partially from RBG, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg quote as well. But the idea is, what they really want to emphasize and see among their students is the ability to disagree well, to not burn a bridge in order to win an argument or to score a point even if no one's listening. I think these essays, if you're keeping that in mind, this can be a real opportunity to show them that you can do that. It doesn't have to be a major disagreement, but it could be, and it's all about how you disagree and how you try to listen and what you can illustrate around those points through these essays.
You know, I think there might be more of this type of thing from schools, either during interview questions—because also this year I've noticed it in interview questions, not just in writing for a couple of schools—so I think it's something that schools are really interested in, and they want to hear applicants talk about real-life situations where they've disagreed. Maybe they didn't change anyone's mind. Maybe they changed their own mind, which is always, I think, a gift when someone can educate you. All those themes can come through in these essays if you think of the right examples and do them well.
Anne: Law school discussions can get heated, especially when you're talking about hot button issues. I think law schools are really interested, can you disagree with someone without being disagreeable? And can you try to get to a common understanding, or are you someone who digs in and isn't willing to listen to others? To be clear, you do not want to communicate that if you are. But I think what they're looking for are people who can really listen to others, as well as staying grounded in their own beliefs and communicating those, and seeing if there's any way forward with arriving at a common understanding. And I think that's what these types of questions are designed to uncover.
Sir: I look at this type of question, and I go back to, why they would possibly be asking me this question? What positive things about me could they glean from my answer to this question if I do it right? And maybe it's an opportunity to signal that I'm mature and self-aware, that I understand people and I have some empathy and I can play well with others. In this world, particularly in this country where our last few elections have been pretty close, it's not hard to imagine a scenario when you're going to have people that strongly disagree with you on really significant things. To Anne's point, what you can't do is signal your worst impulses. "Oh, I sat there and cried like a baby, and then I punched that guy out." That's not going to get you admitted. It might get you committed, but not admitted. So I think it's about figuring out, like, all right, this question is an opportunity again for me to say one more thing, for me to give them a little more information about who I am. What are those best qualities and virtues that I want to put forward? Now that I've got those locked in, what's the best story I can tell, the best example I can give within these limited parameters, one to two pages? What can I talk about that's really going to bring people to this conclusion without me even having to explicitly say it? "I'm really smart and mature and well-adjusted and I can play well with others." You can't say those things, because no one's going to believe you, but if you tell the right story, they'll come to the conclusion on their own. And then it feels like their idea. And now you've got somebody rooting for you in the process.
Anna: All great advice. Let me throw out another hypothetical. Let's say an applicant comes to you all, and they have a specific element of their identity, you know, maybe it's their race or ethnicity, maybe it's that they were an immigrant, maybe it's their gender identity or their sexuality, they have some element of themselves that is really important to who they are, and that they want to communicate that to law schools because it is really important to who they are. Do you recommend, in a situation where this kind of seems to be the only prompt that is vaguely in the realm of experience/perspective, do you recommend that they find a way to incorporate that information into this essay, that they find a way to incorporate it into some other essay, or somewhere else in the application? What's your advice for someone coming across this difficult question?
Tom: Personally, I think it gets back to authenticity. I did have a client, she was on a trip with someone, and they were walking from one place to another, and they were from very different backgrounds, and they had very different beliefs. So it was in the context of their own sort of identities, and there was a dialogue—maybe it was a disagreement—and that was a place where it sort of naturally fit that she could share some of her own identities, so I think that would feel authentic. If it feels artificial at all... I was probably one of the more generous readers of essays when I was working directly in admissions. You know, I would read an essay and think, "Oh, that was beautiful," and someone else could read it and say, "Well, that seems a little contrived." People have different responses, and I do feel like admissions people have read thousands of essays, and they will see something that isn't authentic. So you have to be careful if you're trying to get that sort of life experience content into an essay like this.
Anna: Great advice, Tom, for this type of situation. As with all of this, it's so nuanced, it's so individual.
Our team looks extremely closely at law schools' applications and what they're specifically asking for and the options that they give applicants. Those are sort of the main categories that we identified this past cycle. Now, will there be new categories this upcoming 2024–2025 cycle? Maybe. But I think we covered the bases of what most schools are going to be asking.
I'd like to talk a little bit more broadly, now that we've gone through those specific types of prompts. What are some common mistakes or pitfalls that applicants fall into when they are going to write this type of essay?
Sir: I'll quickly jump in. I think I said it before, but sometimes people feel that it needs to be sad or bad or high drama, and so again that forces them to either make something up entirely or embellish a normal situation. And I think it's a mistake, but it's also a missed opportunity. I think Tom has said a few times "authenticity," and that really is it. They want to get to know the real you. And again, that doesn't mean oversharing, so, which kind of ties into another mistake for people where it is true, and life really has been that dramatic. This essay, in specific, it shouldn't be like a therapy session. You really have to be cognizant of why you're telling the story, because if you're telling it to generate pity and make people sad, you're going to tell it a specific way. But if you're just telling it to give context for you being great and fine where you are, if you're telling it for the purpose of "distance traveled," that story looks different, even though it's the same base story.
Anne: I think, just to build on that, don't assume that the conclusion is a given. Help the reader understand what you want the takeaway to be. That doesn't mean that you have to hit them over the head with a hammer, but guide them to what you want that conclusion to be. Do your experiences make you particularly compassionate, overall, or with a certain population of people? Or could it make you a champion for this particular group? Could it make you a source of support for others similarly situated, either in law school or the legal community or the broader community? Are you going to be a thought leader, right? Are you going to be out there asking questions that other people don't think to ask? Leave the reader with some sense of how this experience has primed you to engage with the law and to use the law to make the changes you want to see in the world.
Tom: I really like what you both said there. And one of the things that I've seen—I was reading maybe 15 or 20 perspective essays for a different sort of project I'm working on, and one of the things I noticed is that, in some essays, even really good ones, there's a significant amount of the territory of the essays on other people, and I think some essays can be about others. That could be for a couple of reasons. Maybe the applicant is just nervous to talk about themselves really in a personal way. Maybe they've been trained to speak in the third person, and only talk in data and research, and suddenly this sort of self-revelatory essay, whether it's about something as simple as empathy or something really important to them in a more dramatic way, it's really important for the essay to be about the applicant, and that sounds silly to say, but often, someone's experience can be really shaped by a parent or a grandparent or an important person in their lives, and it's important to share that person's background, but it's also critical to get right into why that changed you, how that changed you, what it meant to you, how you interpreted what happened. It's okay if the first draft is a whole page about another person, but the last draft shouldn't be. As you get into it, really draw those lines from what you learned from that person or what you learned from that situation, and also connect them to how that shapes your contributions in law school. A lot of people think, "I heard that I shouldn't talk about other people, so I'm not going to do it at all." That's maybe an overreaction. I hear that a lot; there are some podcasts out there, "Don't talk about other people in your essays." I don't think that's a problem at all, unless you're doing it too much. And there's not a lot of territory, so you can't do very much, but it's not necessarily, in my opinion, a negative thing to talk about someone who's been a mentor or inspired you.
Anna: Another common mistake that I would add with these essays is that, because they are so different from one another now, because there's such a wide variety of these types of prompts, I think one mistake that applicants can make is just submitting the same type of essay without looking over those different prompts, without addressing the specific questions that are being asked. Many of these have very different length requirements. Some will allow you up to two pages. We talked about the personal statement that was allowed up to five pages. Some of them are 300 words. So there's a huge variety of what law schools are asking for with this sort of umbrella of "E/P essays." That's one common mistake is not to pay attention to those differences and make sure that you are following the instructions and answering the questions asked. Any other mistakes?
Sir: I just want to underline yours, I think it was a really good one, Anna, that people underestimate the importance of following instructions. That's a big folly. I mean, law is all about instructions. Whole documents and lives can turn on a word, an "if," or a "but," and so the people reviewing your application, if they weren't intimately involved with creating the application form, they've certainly read that application form several hundred times. So without even trying, they're very sensitive to exactly what their application is asking. And so, to the extent that you turn in something that doesn't fit, or if you decide to be cute and make your margins eight tenths of an inch instead of an inch, like, they're going to instantly know it, just because they've been exposed so much. Following instructions to me is critically important, because you never know if you're just going to meet that weirdo in the process who's just going to be like, "Oh, trash, because your margins were too big." That's not fair, and it's not normal, but you don't know. So don't play that game.
Anne: What I always say is, you want them predisposed to liking you, so you don't want to either overstay your welcome by writing too much or trying to stretch what they've asked for.
Tom: Picking up what Sir said, too, is the header—because the essay prompts, either a number or the title of it could be different from school to school, it could be just "Addendum 2" or whatever—so that should change. You might be tempted to have a PDF that's just your perspective essay. Just make sure the header is really specific to the school's instructions. Some schools have really specific instructions, some schools have none, but just tailor it to each school's general prompt.
Anna: Great advice, and one of those little things that people don't necessarily have on their radar but that they should.
I'd like to end on discussing some of the traits of really excellent, standout, A+ experience or perspective essays. You all have one admissions cycle of experience reading these types of essays, and then many more cycles of admissions experience reading diversity statements. So based on all of that experience reading thousands of essays that are either within this category or could fall within this category, what are the common attributes among the ones that are just really stand-out excellent?
Sir: They tend to be really thoughtful and intentional. It just feels just right. It's weird, but it's satisfying in a way. It's like Anne was saying, you didn't stay too long, you didn't give me too much detail, you weren't glib. It's just balanced, I guess, is the one-word response to it. That it's just well thought out and balanced. And I think that's possible for everybody, because no one is forcing you—in theory—no one's forcing you to turn your applications in on a specific day. There was a time constraint in terms of how much time you had to study for the LSAT, but this, with these essays, in theory you have unlimited time, or at least more, and so I think that the expectations are higher than they would be for your LSAC writing sample, for example, because again, that was contemporaneous and it was timed, and they sprung that on you. No one sprung these prompts on you. I think people have a right to be persnickety about you following instructions and making sure that it's just the best work that you can muster.
Tom: I guess my response to that question blends the last topic we were on, which is problems that you can encounter writing these essays. Sometimes an applicant might have 2 or 3 parts of themselves they want to talk about in an essay, and they might present it sort of as part 1, part 2, part 3. Whenever I see that in an essay, I always want to think about, what's the through-line? What's the synthesis? What have you learned from it? What can you teach—you've had these experiences, whether it was working in a restaurant, or being a caregiver, or being the target of discrimination, what's the thing that ties it together for you—something that you can teach the reader? As an admissions officer, when I read an essay and I learn something, I'm talking about it at dinner the next night. And those are the essays that, for me, stand out, and they often have a through-line that someone has taken time to think about, "Oh, these concepts sort of connect for me." I think that can just be really powerful. So I always love it when I learn something from an essay, especially from a diversity or life experience essay. And I think, as all three of us have said, don't underestimate yourself. Look inside, and tell the story that you have inside, not necessarily what you think admissions officers want to hear.
Anne: So, I can't build on what my colleagues already said so well, so I'm going to go in a slightly different direction and say that, make sure that this essay complements what you're saying in your personal statement. It can't be a complete departure. The readers are reading all of your documents at the same time. Make sure that it all fits together. If you're covering something even briefly that you covered in your personal statement, you don't have to give as much time or add as much detail. You can refer to it and move on. With the best E/P essays, they're ones that are authentic and personal, but they also fit in with the rest of the application and help the reader understand who you are on a deeper level.
Anna: Great advice. I think that's a wonderful place for us to end as well. Thank you all again for your time. This has been a long one, but I think we got into so many different nuanced situations and advice and looking at these different prompts. I hope that it's valuable for any applicants who are approaching these different types of essays. Thanks everyone, and thank you to our listeners. If you found this helpful, please like, subscribe, and we'll hope to see you next time. Bye, everybody!
Tom: Bye, everybody.
Sir: Bye, everybody.
Anne: Bye, everyone. Thanks!