55 Successful Harvard Law School Application Essays: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get Into the Law School of Your Choice Paperback – June 26, 2007

It is a great book for people to get a general idea about law schools admissions essays. The book contains abstracts from essays and shows the diversity of students and their intellectual high level! I love it! I am Russian and I plan to enroll into good school so I ordered this book and I think it is a good asset to have and to study!The book was in good condition and promptly delivered.55 Successful Harvard Law School Application Essays: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get Into the Law School of Your Choice

I'm a tutor and bought this book for a student. It gave us both guidance in preparing the all important application essay. I enjoyed seeing the variety of essays that had been written by successful applicants to this top law school. The reviews and annotations by the Harvard Crimson staff are of great help to readers in understanding how to express their own individual reasons for wanting to enter the legal field. The essays themselves are enjoyable to me as an educator and inspirational to the student who wrote an excellent "Why you should pick me." The jury is still out on her admission to law school.Update: She got into the law school of her choice. Bravo!

I think this book is a little useful as a guide to the range of styles that can be used profitably in personal statements. However, it does little to assist the common lament of "I have nothing interesting to write about!" in that these are essays about triumphing over blindness, racial discrimination, global politics. I'll say the voyeurism alone inspired me to go write my own personal statement - after reading one Harvard-admitted essay whose thesis was "Stop calling me white. My ancestry is Dutch!" I realized, wow, I can totally write one of these suckers and get into law school.So, yeah. Some of these essays will make you feel way intimated and some will make you say "Oh, brother." Loved the one guy who ended his personal statement with a 300 word P.S. randomly and adorably telling the admissions officers he believes it is very important to stay up-to-date on Science, which is why he has been subscribed to Scientific American for the past five years.

The best essays are clearly over the two page limit for Harvard

I was stumped for what to write in my personal statement, but these essays and the comments with them helped me pick a topic and craft an essay that I'm very proud of (and has helped get me into every school I've applied to, including several in the top 20 US News ranking). No matter what stage you are in the writing process, this book is a worthwhile investment.

This is a good book to read if you are interested in seeing sample law school admissions essays. In general, these essays are written at a high level of quality to which many law school applicants would aspire.However, the title of this book is somewhat misleading. These essays are not necessarily "successful" in the sense that they definitely helped the writers to get into law school; these essays were submitted to the Harvard Crimson newspaper by their authors, not identified by Harvard admissions officers as exceptional essays. Therefore, although these are the essays of successful applicants, it is hard to say to what extent the essays factored into admissions decisions. Based on the quality of the essays compared to the quality of the applicants (most of whom are practicing lawyers with profiles posted online), I'd guess that other factors played a much stronger role in the admission of many of these candidates.The quality of the commentary provided in this book is also questionable. The reviewers are undergraduate student reporters, not admissions officers, and in many cases their commentary is at odds with that provided by admissions officers on law school web pages and in interviews. Further, the commentary is provided by multiple different reviewers, and each has a different idea of what constitutes a good essay. If nothing else, one might recall this diversity and feel comforted later, when some school unexpectedly offers up a rejection letter -- admissions committees probably have opinions just as diverging as those of Harvard undergraduates. In any case, I wouldn't use the opinions of these students, good writers though they undoubtedly are, as a guide on how to craft a great essay for the very specific purpose of law school admissions.

Inspiration, but nothing else. I really liked this book and it helped inspire me in my writing process, but it gave me nothing else beyond that. The personal essay is just that, personal, and so, just note, that this will not "write the essay for you" or give you skills over night. Just a helpful note from a current law student to potential, future law students.

So the essays are interesting. I bought it because I was freaking out about my law school applications. I would not say it's a necessary purchase if you are freaking out about apps like I was... but it's still a fun read.