Today we're going to be talking about your writing style in your writing for law school admissions. So often we focus on the content but we neglect the importance of writing style in delivering the strongest personal and diversity statements.

In part 2, we're going to focus on active and passive voice, transition variance, and some general formatting!

Episode Highlights

Active Voice vs. Passive Voice

Active Voice - subject-focused

• Best used for law school essays

• Uses less words to convey the meaning thus giving more space to add more details to your statement

• It is more concise, direct, and persuasive in telling your story to convince law school admissions why you deserve to attend their school

Passive Voice - action-focused

• Best used in academic papers or particularly in cases when trying to downplay or avoid responsibility for your client

• When the focus is on the result or solution, passive voice is the best route

• Takes up more space with extra words

Transitions

• Transitions is what creates a smooth journey through your story for the reader. Without them, your writing will be awkward

• Avoid reusing the same transition over and over again. Vary your transitions

Types of Transitions

• Emphasizes what you’ve gone through—e.g. “obviously”

• Adds something to what came before—e.g. “in addition to”

• Contrasts what came before—e.g. “despite, alternatively, although”

• Places the next event in time as related to what came before—e.g. “first, then, after”

Formatting

• When writing your essay, it is not the time to be creative. Follow the directions.

• Follow standard 1-inch margin, double spaced, Times New Roman.

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