How do I start a Law Personal Statement?

Ok, so let's first start by listing all of your extra-curricular activities and awards/achievements. Extra-curricular activities can be anything from sports teams you have played in to roles of responsibility e.g. school prefect. They don't all have to strictly relate to law. Once we have listed those, let's move onto any work experience or voluntary work you have done, again this doesn't necessarily have to link directly to law. Now, let's look at things you have done to demonstrate an interest in law - have you read any books? have you seen an article about a current legal story that caught you eye? did you attend a local court hearing? Don't worry if you haven't done much yet, we have plenty of time for you to read books/articles etc. that you can then put on your personal statement!

Now that we have lists of the things you have done, let's start looking at which of these you are most proud of, and what skills these experiences have taught you/things you have learnt because of doing these things. So what I want you to do do, is next to each of the things that you have listed, talk me through what skills got out doing it, what motivated you to do it and what it taught you. This should leave us with a nice lump of different things we can use to help start your personal statement.

What I then want you to do is talk me through why you want to study law. Remember that you need to be as specific as possible, you won't impress unis if you give a generic, vague answer! Think about what specific areas of the law interest you (e.g. criminal law, specifically the prison system or international law, specifically how human rights are protected?) At this point it is definitely worth doing some research into specific legal issues that interest you - you can be as creative and unique as you like! For example, in my personal statement, I talked about my interest in whether trials should be televised, as on one hand trials are meant to be public, but on the other hand there is the risk that trials will become sensationalised and make a mockery of a serious legal procedure. Write down some of your ideas (it can be in bullet-point style).

Now, we should have a whole list of roles/personal experience and what these taught you, as well as some really good key ideas that led you to want to study law. We can now draw on both of these bundles of information to start drafting your personal statement.