Harvard LLM Personal Statement Part A: How to Write a Compelling Legal Essay, Part 2
As I've written elsewhere, an essay on a legal issue might be one of the core components of a master of laws (LL.M.) application depending on where you are applying.
In Part 1 of this blog post, I discussed how to find a topic for a legal essay for your Master of Laws (LLM) application. Here, I'll cover how to proceed once you've chosen your topic.
Read Extensively on your topic
If you're writing an essay from scratch rather than adapting a previous piece, it's essential to set aside a few weeks or even months for this process.
For a legal essay, you'll need to read - and read a lot. Writing a high-quality essay requires absorbing a substantial amount of relevant literature. To understand the key parts of the debate and engage with the existing literature in the field, you'll need to process, digest, and integrate your reading. This takes time; it doesn't happen on a schedule, and you can't force it.
Assume you'll need to read 10 to 15 books and articles per 1,000 words of your essay, unless instructed otherwise.
When reading, remember that academic differs fundamentally from reading fiction, though the two are often presented as the same thing in the mainstream representation. An example would be the Harry Potter universe - remember how Hermione Granger reads her textbooks from start to finish? In Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Harry even joins her in a reading competition. This portrayal is unrealistic. If you approached academic books like this, your retention would be close to zero, no matter how good your memory is.
So what’s the difference?
With fiction, you can read a piece start to finish at the same speed, without worrying about filtering relevant and irrelevant ideas. This approach doesn't work with academic writing.
Textbooks are condensed knowledge, which means that you need to engage intensely with the material. By default, everything in a textbook is intended to be important. However, when reading for a legal essay, you have to be ruthless in sorting through the noise, focusing only on what's relevant to your topic and argument.
The same principle applies to monographs and articles. Peer-reviewed articles address topics that their authors find interesting, which may differ (and likely will) from what you find relevant for your essay. You'll need to exercise judgment when deciding what to read closely, what to skimm and what to skip.
Finally, take notes to make the material usable for your essay. Otherwise, you’ll just waste time. You can find a guide on how to read academic texts here.
identify a research question or problem
Based on the literature you've analyzed, what is the question or problem you've identified? For your essay to be effective, there needs to be tension between the status quo and the ideal scenario. You need a conflict, a ‘however,’ which should introduce preferably be introduced in the first paragraph.
People often confuse a research question with something that is entirely new or unexplored. While novelty and absence of prior research often accompany a legal issue or gap, they are not in themselves sufficient. Perhaps there is a reason why little research has been conducted – maybe there is no problem, there's no reason to care, or maybe it’s not a problem that can be solved with legal tools.
When describing a problem, avoid using technical jargon. Most likely, the readers of your work will not be experts in your field. If you aim to secure admission, your essay should be accessible to them as well.
It’s fine to revise your question as you progress with your research. For instance, if your data suggests a better question than the one you started with, don’t hesitate to change it. This kind of change is a natural consequence of the evolution of thought.
Example: I began my PhD at the European University Institute with a normative question: In light of the proliferation of bodies called ‘international commercial courts’, what would an ‘optimal’ design of such a court be? However, after reading more on the subject, I realized that the design depended heavily on the goals of each court, and that each court pursued its own objectives. This meant there was no ‘optimality’ generalizable beyond an individual court. I therefore decided to ask a different question, namely why states establish international commercial courts, and my research question evolved into a systematic study of the motivating forces behind these courts.
Outline
An outline is the structure of your argument, the basic skeleton of it. To create an outline, describe the essence of each paragraph in one or two sentences.
For example, the outline of my Oxford and Harvard essays was as follows:
- Topic: Season of International Criminal Law –Still On?
- The past few decades have seen the proliferation of international criminal courts and tribunals. However, their effectiveness has recently been questioned.
- The available models of international criminal tribunals include purely international tribunals, hybrid tribunals, and internationalized domestic courts. Each has its pros and cons.
- The main drawback of all these models is their ad hoc nature.
- A viable solution would be a permanent hybrid tribunal based on the UN General Assembly.
Write your first draft
If you already have an idea for how you'd like to start your essay, go ahead and write it (but remain open to the possibility of revising your introduction as your writing develops). If you don't, I suggest skipping the introduction for now and coming back to it after completing the body of the essay. The nature of an introduction is such that you often only learn how you should have started after you've finished the rest of the writing.
So if you don't have a way to start your essay yet, it's perfectly fine. You can write a formulaic introduction - one that states your essays purpose, the core argument, and so on. This will help concentrate your thinking and free you up to focus on the body of the essay, which is where the argument is developed.
The body of your essay consists of paragraphs, whose job is to develop your central argument. Each paragraph should focus on one key idea or significant claim. For each paragraph, stick to one central point and support it with relevant evidence and examples. This will help you build strong, focused paragraphs.
If you've completed your reading, planning, and outlining, writing your first draft will mainly involve expanding the outline into full paragraphs.
Guidelines for writing the first draft:
- Schedule prolonged, uninterrupted bouts of work
When I write a first draft, I aim to finish it as quickly as possible. The goal of the first draft is to provide me with the psychological comfort that the major part of the work is done and I'm not working from a blank screen anymore. It shifts me from an anxious mindset ('Omg, what if I can't finish by the deadline?') to a calmer one ('Okay, now that I have the basics, how can I improve it?').
To achieve this, I usually schedule several focused work sessions, ranging from 2 to 8 pomodoros (25-minute intervals), during whihc I minimize distractions and just write until I finish a section or the entire thing (depending on the word count and the volume of the piece).
- Write more than you need
Aim to write about 25% more than the final word count requires. You can always cut it later, but if you focus on writing exactly what you need in the first draft, it may slow you down, as you’ll be too aware of what and how much you’re writing. At this stage, the goal is to get your thoughts out of your head and onto the page. I can refine them in subsequent drafts.
- Refrain from editing while writing the first draft
Writing the first draft and editing are distinct processes that require different mindsets. When writing, you are creating. It is an expansive mode of thinking, where the focus should be on writing more and welcoming new ideas. The more ideas, the merrier. Editing, on the other hand, requires you to be critical, to delete and cut the unessential. It requires that you discriminate among ideas and let most of them go, leaving just a few that get your point across most effectively. These two mindsets are at odds with each other, so it's important not to edit while writing your first draft. When developing your first draft, prioritize writing over editing.
Edit, edit, edit
After finishing the first draft, let it sit for a day or two. Return to it with fresh eyes and begin editing. I'd suggest doing at least three rounds of editing to reach a reasonably polished draft. Read the draft aloud; this will help you identify inconsistencies in your argument. Ask friends and colleagues to read it and provide feedback - aim for at least one external opinion, preferably more.
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I've shared my system for writing other types of application essays on this website before. Among them the technique I call the 'Rodriquez List' for finding ideas for a personal statement, as well as the overall theoretical framework behind my process. It's part of my original 5-step methodology for writing personal statements.
If you'd like to learn more, I share more of my process writing the Harvard LL.M. personal statement in a three-part post series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. In this post I explain how I strategically chose what experiences to include and what to leave out. You can read about my philosophy on using personal stories, as opposed to professional, here.
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.
I hope this helps and good luck! 😊
For more guidance on how to choose a topic for an essay on the legal issue or frequently asked questions, please check out Part 1 of this blog post.
If you'd like help choosing a topic or want personalized feedback on your essay, please fill out this short form or email me directly.