Law Model Personal Statement
This is the model personal statement of a successful Oxbridge Law applicant.
Starting in Year 6, at 9pm on a Monday evening, I would get into bed and turn on the LBC legal hour. I didn’t read comics in bed as a kid; I listened to legal programs. Although I was young, I remember that, right from the start, something about the program (where listeners phone in to receive free advice on their legal problems) interested me intensely. I had questions to ask about Law that simply knowing what the law was could not answer.
Although at the time I was unable to articulate them, I realize now that the questions that truly fascinated me were why the law was as it was, and - more importantly - whether the legal system can be improved. These questions have stuck with me ever since.
Through my attempts to answer these questions, I was drawn to the philosophy of Lon Fuller. Reading Fuller’s book ‘The Morality of Law,’ where he argues that law has an essential connection to morality, and thus the purpose of the legal system must be to uphold what he calls the ‘inner morality of law,’ has given me insights into the thinking and motivations of jurists and has allowed me to begin to both investigate the rationale behind the substantive aims of a legal system, and to think about how attainable a perfect legal system is: one that promotes fairness in the legal system and attempts to remove any systemic injustice. Fuller’s account seemed to me to show very good insight as to the potential for evil regimes to occur and I found the protections against corrupt and evil regimes he suggests we must have to be very wise, so I subsequently decided to write my extended essay on Fuller’s work.
Writing this essay allowed me to stretch my critical analysis by comparing it to contrasting works by the likes of H.L.A. Hart to examine how plausible Fuller’s account of how the law should be is, and how promising the outlook for society is with Fullerian legal system at the helm. This essay helped me greatly to answer my long-ago formed questions as I was able to examine different accounts of how the law should be, and scrutinize each of them, taking in each of their merits and flaws to help form answers with which I am happy.
More recently, my work experience with Lisa Giovannetti QC has allowed me to dive deeper into the legal world and has further helped me try to answer my questions. The case in question was a difficult judicial review of Buckinghamshire county council’s decision to close most of their children’s centres. Talking through the ‘skeletons’ with barristers and subsequently attending the case in court gave me valuable insight into the processes by which lawyers find ways to oppose a decision such as this and how they then choose to argue them in court. It also allowed me to think at great length about why the law on the matter was as it was, even if it seemed unfair as, although the closing of children centre’s would inevitably negatively impact the welfare of families in the area, it became clear that it is not always possible to maintain the status quo, and in that case a difficult decision must be made, and the decision that is made in the end will be greatly influenced by the substantive aims of the legal system.
I now intend to read Law at university as studying the substance of the law will allow me to see what lawmakers’ motivations tend to be in order to get a better grasp of what the true substantive aims of our legal system are and how they can be improved. My tenacity is such that I will never be happy with the answers I form for myself unless I have as much knowledge and as many different viewpoints as possible from which to draw. Studying philosophy at school has given me the necessary skills in analysing texts and thinking critically about them to allow me to succeed as a law student as I can accurately pick out the key points in an argument and think about them objectively, to decide on their strengths and weaknesses before forming an opinion about them - an opinion which can stand up well to scrutiny.
