First Draft - Open to Honest Criticism Forum

[foggybottom]

Removed

[littlelibertine]

this is just a weird nitpicky reading thing, but I feel like most if not all of your sentences have a lot of clauses in them. Breaking up some of those sentences will help your reader feel like they aren't reading the same sort of sentence over and over. A shorter sentence gives greater impact to its topic. Use them strategically. <3

[AJordan]

Why is 'soccer' capitalized?

[foggybottom]

this is just a weird nitpicky reading thing, but I feel like most if not all of your sentences have a lot of clauses in them. Breaking up some of those sentences will help your reader feel like they aren't reading the same sort of sentence over and over. A shorter sentence gives greater impact to its topic. Use them strategically. <3

Thanks for that point, overuse of clauses is something I struggle with. Other than that, how was the overall message?

[Piggy11]

I think you have something potentially useful here, but it needs quite a bit of work.
Content-wise, this feels more like Clara's personal statement. We learn a lot about her (and quite a bit about Mario) and very little about you. I'd like to see, for example, more substantiation of the claim that you are "able to meet the needs of our clients, whether they are immigrants seeking refuge from their home country, or multi-national corporations seeking counsel in large-scale fraud cases". You mention having experience with asylum cases from a previous job - what did that experience entail? What made you focus on Mario rather than one of those cases?
Stylistically, I agree with littlelibertine about the clauses - a lot of those sentences could be shortened and tightened to focus on what's important: "She arrived fifteen minutes late, clutching a grocery bag of sweets she brought as a thank you gift, further outlining her hour long commute from her workplace on the outskirts of a neighboring town". How is the grocery bag "outlining" her commute? What's the key part of this sentence? The commute? Being late? Bringing sweets?

There are a lot of small things that add up to a generally over-casual/unpolished feel. For example ending a sentence with a preposition - "the language school I studied at", or starting, but not finishing a two part statement "from the importance of small details in legal filings as well as utilizing critical thinking and advanced researching in forming an argument". I think it should be "from the importance [...] to the critical thinking". You can also get rid of the multiple instances of "I thought/I felt" - it makes you look unsure of your impact or the source of your commitment.