PS - sexual harassment Forum

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lawstudentcoeur

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PS - sexual harassment

Post by lawstudentcoeur » Tue Mar 03, 2020 8:35 pm

Do you think it would be a good idea to write on sexual harassment in the workplace that I’ve experienced as for my reason to wanting to get into law? I’ve written a couple drafts on it and my law advisor said the topic was good so far. :? I just honestly don’t understand the concept of the PS considering people will write it in almost a short story format.

Miss Trial

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Re: PS - sexual harassment

Post by Miss Trial » Thu Mar 05, 2020 10:37 pm

I'd say it depends on the law schools you are applying to. Are they in the conservative South? Then no. Are you applying to liberal law schools on either coast? Then sure. Get Harvard's personal statement example book to understand the format of the essay.

QContinuum

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Re: PS - sexual harassment

Post by QContinuum » Thu Mar 05, 2020 10:44 pm

Miss Trial wrote:I'd say it depends on the law schools you are applying to. Are they in the conservative South? Then no. Are you applying to liberal law schools on either coast? Then sure. Get Harvard's personal statement example book to understand the format of the essay.
Generally agree, with the (significant) caveat that many law schools in the "conservative South" are themselves quite liberal, and located in liberal "bubbles" (UT being the obvious example).

I'd also emphasize that a PS isn't the place to "litigate" things. It's a place to write a compelling story, not a place to set out every last detail or rail against a past supervisor/employer/school for mishandling a claim, or whatever. So the focus should be more on "here's what happened (in brief!), here's how this motivated me to want to become a lawyer", instead of "here's what happened, and here are the 10 reasons why my supervisor/employer/school mishandled the claim/treated me unfairly/etc."

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LSATWiz.com

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Re: PS - sexual harassment

Post by LSATWiz.com » Fri Mar 06, 2020 7:56 pm

These things are a little bit like movies in that it's not so much the subject matter as the way it's done. For instance, if you're a studio considering purchasing the rights to Bombshell, which is a movie about sexual harassment, you're thinking, "how do we make this compelling for two hours and tell a motivational story?" It's very easy for that movie be terrible, but it has the potential to be a great film.

I hear the idea about conservative vs. liberal schools, but my feeling is there's a way to write it that makes it universally great and reflect you very well regardless of political affiliation or gender and a way to make it awful regardless of political affiliation or gender.

Without knowing anything about the situation, you want to avoid the reader thinking, "This bad thing happened to this person. I feel bad for them so let me accept them". That can come off badly for three reasons. The first is that you don't want to tell the reader what to feel, and their first thought subconsciously will be, "is this person trying to capitalize off of a bad event?" The second is that being a lawyer doesn't automatically bring about the power to change anything - you have to actually do stuff so they aren't automatically going to think, "Okay, this women will change the working environment for women in the workplace." You'd have to also provide evidence from that very story that implies you have the potential to accomplish that without coming across as overly combative, which requires a great deal of nuance. The third is that decisions are influenced by emotion, and the reader will have a certain emotion reading your personal statement. You want that emotion to be positive, which means in a certain light you probably want that PS to inspire a positive emotion about you. I do think the movie example is apt, because if we take your sexual harassment story and pitch it as a movie, that movie has to be uplifting to get made.

You'd want it to be read in a way that demonstrates proactivity on your part. The best PS I read was from a very devout Muslim whose first draft explained how he faced discrimination growing up in the wake of 9/11 in an almost exclusively Christian town, but that on later drafts described how he got his county to recognize certain Muslim holidays as designated holidays by the public school system. The idea is that he was not just complaining about discrimination. He demonstrated proactive steps he took to address it. He dramatically outperformed his numbers, and without work experience, the PS was the only thing that explains why.

In summation, the idea is that like anything else, the topic is not inherently good or bad. It's the way you come off in that story, and what it says about you. That will be dictated by the actions you took to address it. If you explain it as my boss made sexual comments about me, and that made me uncomfortable, then you're really just a woman that had a gross boss. That story depicts your boss as exceptionally bad, but doesn't depict you as exceptionally good. You're kind of just a passive character overshadowed by an aggressively negative one. That's not a good PS. You'd have to have done something proactive to address it that seems relatively fair in light of the alleged conduct.

QContinuum

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Re: PS - sexual harassment

Post by QContinuum » Mon Mar 09, 2020 12:16 pm

LSATWiz.com wrote:You'd have to have done something proactive to address it that seems relatively fair in light of the alleged conduct.
I generally agree with LSATWiz's terrific guidance above, with the small caveat that I don't think it's absolutely necessary "to have done something proactive to address it". I think it's fine if OP didn't do anything at the time, so long as either 1) as a result of the bad experience, OP has been inspired to attain a position where she will be able to help others in the future (e.g., as a civil rights/women's rights advocate, employment lawyer, etc.), and/or 2) as a result of the bad experience, OP fortuitously discovered
a general interest in law (e.g., maybe OP extensively researched her legal options at the time, which led to the realization that she really enjoys legal research and strategy).

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