How to Choose the Perfect Topic for a Harvard LL.M. Personal Statement: Expert Roadmap, With Examples

I work with a lot of master of laws (LL.M.) applicants.

They all share the same problems. In particular, they struggle to:

• find ideas and stories for a personal statement.
• recognize good ideas - those that are appropriate for a personal statement and will make a positive impression on the admissions committee.
• identify bad ideas - those ideas that could harm an application.
• decide on the right number of ideas: how many is too many, and how few is too few?
• develop an idea or a sequence of experiences into a full-fledged essay.

Personal statement is one of the core components of an LL.M. application, and I've written about my system for finding ideas for it before (the technique I call the 'Rodriquez List'). In this post, I’ll share the theoretical framework behind my process in more detail. Here you can see how I applied these principles to the essay that won me admission to Harvard.

The use of terms

I'd like to start by defining the concepts involved. Many people get stuck because their assumptions about the process are flawed - such as believing that personal statements are all about aggressively selling yourself, conforming to an abstract ideal of what universities are looking for, or finding what's unique about them. This is not true.

To avoid confusion, let's clarify the terms from the start.

1. 'Choosing a topic', 'brainstorming', and 'ideation'

What's commonly referred to as ‘choosing a topic’ for a personal statement is essentially the process of generating ideas and deciding which ones to include in your personal statement.

However, referring to it as ‘choosing a topic’ is an oversimplification. Typically, a personal statement not only has a broad overarching theme but also brings together a variety of your personal and professional experiences. The most effective personal statements include multiple strategically selected stories about your background and, equally important, an analysis of those stories in the context of your application.

Since a personal statement rarely revolves around a single ‘topic’ but rather represents a series of unique experiences and interpretations, I believe the term ‘finding a topic’ doesn't accurately reflect the process.

The terms I use are 'ideation' and 'brainstorming'. By these, I mean a system for generating ideas on demand, a structured process that allows you to never start from a blank screen with any application.

However, I’ve found that the term 'brainstorming' is often misunderstood. Many people assume it's a chaotic corporate activity where time is wasted and nothing of value is produced, leading them to believe that brainstorming is unnecessary. As a result, they skip the idea-generation stage and jump straight into writing the essay.

This is a mistake that usually to multiple problems down the line, such as weak ideas and stories that fail to convey the candidate's strengths, unexplained gaps in the essay, and a lack of coherent arguments about how the individual’s background relates to their decision to pursue an LL.M.

In my terminology, brainstorming is a structured process for generating ideas on a given subject - in other words, a structured process of ideation. Its goal is to create a wealth of ideas and stories that can be used and reused across multiple applications.

In my work, I use ‘brainstorming’ and ‘ideation’ interchangeably.

In this post, I’ll show you my system for generating multiple ideas for your personal statement. I developed this system in the context of LL.M. applications but use it for all types of applications, including PhD, scholarships, research fellowships, and postdocs.

2. 'Personal statement', 'motivation letter', 'statement of purpose'

Another set of terms that needs clarification relates to the types of essays you'll need to write. As a master of laws applicant, you’ve probably encountered various names for these essays, such as personal statement, motivation letter, statement of purpose, required essay, and others.

Theoretically, the basic difference is that a motivation letter is primarily about – yes, you guessed it – your motivation for doing the program you chose and the goals you hope to achieve by completing it. A personal statement, on the other hand, focuses more on reflecting on your overall life journey, including your professional and personal development. The statement of purpose, like the motivation letter, emphasizes your goals and aspirations, and what you plan to do with your degree afterward.

However, these are essentially different variations of the same type of document, and the differences are largely cultural. In the U.S., it's most often referred to as a ‘personal statement’, whereas in continental Europe, the same kind of essay is called a ‘motivation letter’. What you really need to pay attention to is not the name of the document but the questions being asked. I’ve successfully written and guided others in crafting both of them.

That being said, this post will focus on the American-style personal statement for a master of laws application to a U.S. law school. This is where I have the most expertise in, and it's what the system I’ve developed is tailored for. This type of essay involves significantly more self-analysis and is geared toward behavioral questions about your life choices and values.

I've written about it in more detail elsewhere, but for the purposes of this post, I define personal statement as follows:

Personal statement is an essay where you talk about your past, your present, and your plans for the future. You answer questions like: Why do you want to do a master’s degree? Why do you need this particular degree at this specific point in your life and career? Why is this degree the next logical step for you? And what do you plan to do with this degree afterwards?

NOTE:

Please keep in mind that this system does NOT cover an essay on a legal issue, even if a law school, for simplicity or other reasons, asks you to submit an essay on a legal topic as a part of your personal statement. A legal essay is an analysis of a legal topic. A personal statement is a different matter altogether. I’ve written about legal essays previously here, Part 1 and here, Part 2.

Why ideation is important

I've written and reviewed enough essays to say this directly: most people are notoriously bad at knowing and analyzing their own backgrounds. They think they are good at it, but they aren't. I’m not talking about memory gaps. I’m referring to a sophisticated set of skills that includes:

1. Developing a bank of knowledge (facts about where, when, what, who, with whom, etc.) about your background readily available to support the claims you make in your application.
2. Being able to describe your background in a way that is sufficiently specific and clear for a someone outside your immediate environment to understand.
3. Exercising judgment and being strategic about what to include and what to leave out, instead of trying to cram 20+ years of life in a 700-word essay.
4. Matching the facts from your background with your subjective interpretation of what these facts mean to you, and explaining how they are relevant to your application.
5. Interpreting your background from a position of emotional and professional maturity, while making a convincing argument as to why you deserve a place in the program.

Do you see how important it is to get this right?

One reason people struggle with this is that they are rarely asked to engage in self-analysis. Personal statements are a highly specialized genre of writing, and chances are, you've never trained for it. So, if you don’t know how to approach this, that’s ok - it’s not your fault. I’m here to help.

I’ll simplify the process as much as possible, but I want to make sure you understand why ideation and a structured approach are essential for your success and cannot be skipped.

If you want best results and aim to write the strongest essay possible, suspend your disbelief and don't assume you already know everything about yourself. Most likely, you’ll uncover more details than you expected and develop new interpretations that present your experiences in a fresh light.

Shouldn't all This be evident from my CV?

Your CV is a basic framework of your experience - a distilled version, a map. It's significantly more fact-based compared to a personal statement or statement of purpose. In contrast, a personal statement is largely interpretation-based.

More importantly, a CV doesn't showcase your self-analysis skills or provide the admissions committee with insight into your thinking process. You can use your CV as a starting point for ideation, but it can't substitute for an essay.

How to start ideating

1. Should you look at the questions first?

One mistake I made when writing my own essays was getting too hung up on the questions and constantly measuring my stories and ideas against them. If I were doing it again, I'd approach it differently. I'd read the questions but then do my ideation independently. After that, I'd map my stories and ideas onto the questions.

In my experience, LL.M. essay questions typically follow similar archetypes. You'll notice differences in phrasing, tone, and angle, but these usually won't change the core message you want to convey through your essays.

2. Actionable guidelines

To achieve the best possible results,

• Allocate 60 to 90 minutes for an ideation session.
• Eliminate all distractions. Turn on 'do not disturb' mode on your phone.
• Find an environment that’s comfortable for you - whether it's your office, a café, your living room, etc.
• Choose a time when you feel most productive.

To kick off the ideation, ask yourself: What events in your life were formative?

Here are a few guidelines for identifying events that you consider significant:

• Don't differentiate between professional and personal. Often, personal experiences intertwine with professional choices, and there are many ways to incorporate personal stories into your essay in a powerful way. Trying to separate them may put you into editing mode rather than a creative idea-generating mode.

Example: a client of mine wrote in her application essays about how she got interested in climate litigation, which inspired her decision to pursue a career in policymaking to address climate change. This stemmed from a personal decision to become vegan and also involved dealing with her heritage (as she was born in Kyrgyzstan, where eating meat is deeply ingrained in culture).

• You don’t have to do this chronologically. Start with the first event that comes to mind and go from there. Memory is associative, regardless of what you've been taught. Once you recall one event, think about where the associations lead you, rather than what seems 'logical' to discuss next. Allow yourself to jump between experiences.
• Don’t look for things that make immediate narrative sense. Life doesn’t unfold like the books and movies. You’ll shape the stories into a coherent narrative later. For now, your job is to collect them. At the idea-generation stage, a 'story' is just a series of unstructured notes about what happened, where, when, with whom, and what that meant for you.
• Don't try to sort or organize events logically, or edit them. Your goal is to resurface as many memories as possible, creating a wealth of ideas for future use. You'll choose among them and order them later. It's a separate process.
• Don't discriminate between events based on timeline and scale. Treat shorter and longer experiences equally. For instance, if you spent 3 years working for a law firm and then one weekend as an observer at national elections, and the latter impacted you more, it's perfectly valid to focus on that. Suspend judgments like 'It's not impressive enough' or 'I only won the district level, others were better.'

The only criterion for writing down a story is whether it was formative. Was it significant to you? Did it change and define you? If yes, write it down.

3. Guidelines for thinking of good stories

How do you know what ideas are good? There are several guidelines that I find helpful when ideating.

3.1 substantive directions

To identify formative stories, consider thinking along these lines:

• influences in your life (mentors, role models, books, events, etc.)
• professional achievements (what you are proud of accomplishing)
• skills and strengths
• weaknesses and failures
• values, personal philosophy, and where they come from
• leadership (I like A.V. Gordon's definition of leadership as 'occasions when you have directed the outcome of a project or part of a project, or have been responsible for coordinating or motivating others'. I talked about his book here.)

3.2 obstacles and adversity

Another direction to explore is obstacles and adversity. Almost everyone faced adversity in sone form, everyone encountered obstacles. For many people, these experiences are identity-forming.

Formative is something that dramatically changed your outlook on who you are and what your personal philosophy is. Examples include:

• a conversation with a mentor
• a family event, from the most joyful to the darkest (eg, a birth or death of someone close to you)
• time spent in a particular country
• participation in a moot court or another competition
• a class you took or taught
• research you’ve conducted
• a volunteer commitment you undertook, etc.

These stories can involve your passions, things that inspired you, your future goals and aspirations. Anything that helped shape who you are today can be considered formative.

3.3 formative is subjective

Formative experiences aren't defined by what society considers important or impressive. It’s not necessarily something you received a degree, certificate, or medal for (although that counts too). As a rule of thumb, don’t measure your life against an ‘objective’ standard - there is no such thing. What will get you admitted is the ability to discuss your background competently and make a convincing argument for why you should be accepted.

3.4 formative is not what looks good on paper

Don’t try to skew things to make them look good on paper based on what you think the university wants or what you’ve seen other people do. This is about you and your world. The further you move from comparing yourself to an abstract image of an ideal candidate, and the closer you get to your own authentic background, the more likely you are to succeed.

Keep it within the ethical limits, and don’t misrepresent the objective scale of the events you describe. If you won a scholarship for a local summer academy, don’t claim it was the most prestigious award ever. State what it was and explain how it changed your life.

Be clear about what exactly happened and what it meant for you.

If asking yourself about formative stories doesn’t work, try listing your most prominent experiences. Then, based on that list, assess their subjective importance. Keep in mind that most strategies, including this ideation strategy, work for some people in some instances but not for everyone all people all the time. Adjust the approach in a way that works best for you.

Final Thoughts

If you'd like to learn more, I share my process writing the Harvard LL.M. personal statement in a three-part post series here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. It's an illustration of my original 5-step methodology for writing personal statements. The core of this methodology is identifying and focusing on formative life experiences to craft a compelling LL.M. application. In this post I explain how I strategically chose what experiences to include and what to leave out. You can also read about my philosophy on using personal stories, as opposed to professional, here (the overarching framework) and here (how I applied it to my Harvard essay). For the essay on a legal issue (Harvard's personal statement, part 'b') or a writing sample, please check out this post.

I have also published a selection of my application essays and created a course, The Ultimate Guide to a Personal Statement That Gets You Admission, with a full roadmap for writing a winning personal statement, motivation letter, or statement of purpose.

Good luck, and happy writing!