Please give ur opinions & suggestions on my PS Forum

[samdddkay]

This this the first personal statement I have ever written. Please, give me your honest opinion on it.

Ronald Reagan once said, “We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help.” Those words are more true now then ever - no one person can save the entire world, but each person can try to save at least one life at a time. My decision to pursue law reflects my yearning to help save the world one person at a time. 

What qualifies me to do this is the fact that I am an American of Indian descent who was raised in a Muslim, multilingual, single parent household. I have learned to see and understand the world through many lenses because of my childhood. My upbringing allows me to be compassionate towards various circumstances as well. That sensitivity, understanding, and knowledge of different backgrounds will be a useful tool that will enable me to be a strong advocate and lawyer that will help people.

The first lens that I have seen the world through is the moralist, or in other words, religious lens. Because I myself am a spiritual woman, I am able to understand that many people have strong religious convictions that may or may not impair their ethical understanding of the law. However, it would be my job as a lawyer to appeal to this demographic and explain that the law has a humanizing and civilizing mission. Its purpose is to promote tolerance, social justice, and sensitivity towards individual wishes and needs.

    The next lens that has taught me to understand the world is a cultural and traditionalist lens. I am a first generation American of Indian descent. This very fact has enabled me to understand the immigrant plight. People journey to America and struggle all of their lives just to ensure that their children have a better future. Yet, the children that are born to these immigrant parents are caught between the old traditions and customs of their parents and the new, liberal mindset that the American culture offers.
I, personally, have fought this internal battle where I constantly asked myself, “Am I Indian or American?” It took a long time to realize that I am both, and that this very struggle can create social biases among people who need the law to help them. Since I have suffered the same struggles and was caught in the same time warp they are currently in, I can explain the purpose of law. I can show them the beauty of the law and how its structure is intended to stabilize and protect our society.

     Laws are not just rules, they can be applied to philosophies and various gender perspectives. A female lawyer can illuminate the gender bias that some legal issues may hold. The feminism lens forces a person to consider the relationships between men and women and their relative roles in society. For example, the unequal relationships between men and women may appear in a variety of ways in the political and social matters within society. Also, the female perspective which I can offer can invite my peers and future clients to pay particular attention to the patterns of thought, behavior, values, and power within certain relationships. I can show individuals how these patterns may or may not have an adverse affect on legal proceedings.
    The law is beautiful because it provides rules and regulations as to how society is governed as well as protected. However, it also unites a diverse society. Regardless of an individual’s creed or ethnicity, there are laws established that can protect them equally. I want to be someone that can help various individuals navigate their way through the United States legal system, and truly show them that the law has been established to serve, protect, and help them.

I am a strong candidate to be accepted into your law program because I embody qualities that enable me to understand people in various lights. I am a dedicated, driven, and determined woman with a truly unique and diverse background that will not only help me succeed in law school, but will also help me to have a truly individual and one of a kind career law.

[CanadianWolf]

Too heavy on the romanticised idealism, in my opinion. Repetitious. Too wordy. May raise maturity issues due to excessive idealism without any trace of a pragmatic understanding of the law & lawyering. The romanticised idealism may become more palatable if expressed in a more succinct fashion because then your passionate idealism may be viewed as a driving force rather than as an unrealistic & somewhat immature vision of the practice of law.

[samdddkay]

Too heavy on the romanticised idealism, in my opinion. Repetitious. Too wordy. May raise maturity issues due to excessive idealism without any trace of a pragmatic understanding of the law & lawyering. The romanticised idealism may become more palatable if expressed in a more succinct fashion because then your passionate idealism may be viewed as a driving force rather than as an unrealistic & somewhat immature vision of the practice of law.

Thank you for your honesty

[pixytree]

Too heavy on theory and not enough discussion of your actual experiences. Remove "what qualifies me" altogether. What experience(s) have you had that can show these things instead of you having to tell us? Show you're compassionate and understanding with a story of an actual experience--that will get you much further.

[kublaikahn]

Ronald Reagan probably does not play well at most law schools. Anytime you use phrasology like "save the world" you are going to be percieved as naive.

"What qualifies me to do this is the fact that I am an American of Indian descent who was raised in a Muslim, multilingual, single parent household."

Just in terms of style, writing in the passive voice like the above quote overly using the verb "to be" will never create a commanding PS. Change this type of writing throughout your PS to something like: As a Indian American raised in a Muslim, multilingual, single parent household, I empathize with diverse people and see the world through their perspective.
(Just an aside, I would stay away from the list of non-traditional candidacy bullet points like mulitlingual, single-aparent, etc.)

Never begin a sentence with "What" unless it is a question.

Laws are not just rules...

Yes they are. Laws are just rules. However, they can have multiple interpretations, applications, etc. My point is be careful with broad generalizations. You never want the reader of your PS to be thinking, I disagree with this, he/she is wrong.

The law is beautiful because it...

You should stay away from your theories of law and focus on your theory of who you are. My wager is that AdComs have a more sophisticated view of what the law is than you do, going back to Hannibal and Hume and Locke. I don't mind the "many persepctives" theme (lenses you call them), but you should use it to describe things about yourself, not about legal philosphy or how society is impacted by the law. I mean you do this to a small extent for example when you talk about your self identification battle, but you do this so weakly as to provide little about who you are and less about your skills and convictions.


Start over. Pick a good story that goes beyond your identity labels and tell that story well.