Top Law Schools

hawaii wrote:This is a rough draft so feel free to be brutal.

For the majority of my childhood after my parents' [The apostrophe needs to be after the 's' to show that you are referring to both of them] divorce, I did not think much about the law and its enormous impact on my life. I grew up wanting to become a pediatrician because I could not imagine a better job than that of helping those who are incapable of helping themselves [barf]. I enrolled in all the required science courses at college but I soon discovered that medicine just was not for me [So much for dispelling the "I couldn't pass organic chemistry so I decided to go to law school instead" stereotype]. Then the research for my final paper in my Comparative Constitutional Politics course brought back all those memories of my complicated childhood. I was tasked with comparing the legal systems of the United Kingdom and India. While I certainly had my fair share of courtroom time in Indian courts [redundant; eliminate the 'courtroom' in 'courtroom time'] as a child, I realized that I really knew nothing about an entire system of law that had an enormous impact [One example of your tendency to use the passive voice quite a bit. I think the passive voice gets a worse rep than it deserves - sometimes it actually feels correct - but you could very easily use the verb "impacted" rather than "had an enormous impact" here; consider making similar changes throughout] on my life.

Studying the legal system in India made me appreciate just how wonderful our system is in the United States. While my father was able to get away with bribing a judge in the Indian courts, albeit for a short time before he was discovered, the American legal system has been able to withstand such corruption [I would probably hedge this with "largely able" or "most of the time" so that it doesn't sound like you have a childish perception of the incorruptibility of the American legal system]. The Indian constitution is riddled with contradictory laws that apply to some people but not to others. The thing I found amazing thing about the American legal system is that everyone is treated equally; the law is fair in what I otherwise believed to be an unfair world. [kind of barf]

[You start nearly every sentence in the following paragraph with "I" or "my", which I have bolded. Get more creative with your sentence structures.]
My undergraduate experience taught me that I loved studying the law [Did it now?]. After spending such a long time thinking that I wanted to be a pediatrician though, I needed to be sure that law was the right profession for me. Fortunately, working as a paralegal for the Office of _________ in the Department of _______ has only reinforced my interest in the law. My first day in the office, my boss told me that our job was not to win cases; our job was to find the truth and do what is right. I immediately knew that this was somewhere I would enjoy working. I always did my best to go above and beyond what was asked of me. My passion for the law must have been apparent because before long, I had a docket of litigation cases that resembled that of a first year attorney. I was assigned to assist on a project for the Joint Committee on Taxation and I even helped to draft published guidance on the effect of _________ on the _____ deadlines for taxpayers nationwide. After two years at the office, I was given a national award, the ___________ Award for Superior Paralegal Support (Paralegal of the Year), beating out over a hundred other intelligent and dedicated paralegals around the country.

While my parents' [same mistake as above] divorce certainly led to quite a bit of childhood drama, it opened the door to my legal education. It has driven me to seek more fairness [Question: Is there such a thing as "more fairness"? Are there varying degrees of fairness? Or is something simply fair or unfair, like pregnancy? One is either pregnant or not pregnant. Consider revising.] in an otherwise unfair world and I hope to continue on this journey as a student at XYZ law school.

mala2 wrote:3. Scrap the part about college savings accounts and applying for scholarships from poverty, makes you sound like a little whiner because that's what it is. Most people don't have college savings accounts. wah. Nobody owes you a college freaking savings account. Unless you were a 3 year old street orphan in Calcutta, you aren't really that poor.