How to Generate Ideas For a Winning Harvard LL.M. Personal Statement: My Experience, Part 2
Introduction
This is Part 2 of my series where I walk through how I generated ideas for my Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part B. You can find Part 1 here. One key concept I covered there is the importance of formative experiences: why they matter and how you can uncover them in your own background.
In Part 1, I used my participation in moot courts as an example, discussing their significance in my life and how I incorporated them into my Harvard LL.M. personal statement. In this second part, I’ll focus on other key experiences, primarily participation in the All-Russian Olympiads in law.
I’ll first provide broader context, then move on to the specifics. Finally, I’ll share some practical tips to help you identify your own formative experiences and integrate them effectively into your LL.M. personal statement.
As with the moot courts, my aim is to show how much thought and analysis went into selecting what experiences to include in my Harvard LL.M. personal statement. At the idea-generation stage, your goal should be to resurface as many details about the experience as possible. This helps you build a wealth of material you'll later draw on from when writing. You'll be able to edit and cut down down later, but this phase is about exploring and collecting.
Harvard LL.M. personal statement and Formative Experience No. 2: Law Olympiads
Background
In Part 1 of this series, I talked about participating in moot courts as one of the formative experiences I referred to in my Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part B. Here, I'll focus on another: law Olympiads.
I won’t go into the details about my childhood here, but it was extremely traumatic, and I'm still dealing with the consequences. Home was not a happy place. Unlike home, school offered stability and predictability. It was a place where promises were kept and actions led to expected results.
I had a wide circle of friends, including a close group of girlfriends. I was also respected by teachers, though I was never a teacher's pet. It may sound unusual, but that’s just how it was for me. At school, I felt valued, and people listened to what I had to say. It gave my first life experience of visibility and recognition.
In some ways, I was lucky that I was able to direct my energy into academics as a way to cope with difficult family life. My sister, for instance, wasn't able to to that, and the trauma at home severely impacted her ability to succeed in school.
Anyway, it was against this background that I began participating in the Olympiads in the 9th grade. In Russia, Olympiads were held in most school subjects, and law was one of them. Some schools taught an introduction to law as a standalone subject or as part of the social science curriculum. These competitions have multiple stages: district, regional, and federal. In large schools (mine had about 2,000 students, with 5 to 7 groups of 25 students per grade), there'd be a school-level selection process as well.
In 9th grade, I won the school competition and advanced to the district-level Olympiad in law. I didn’t prepare much — honestly, I had not idea how one was supposed to prepare for a law contest at 14. I relied on common sense and what I'd learned in social science. As it turned out, common sense wasn’t so common after all. I placed 2nd at district level and qualified for the regional round. There, I placed 3rd, which took me to the federal level, where I also placed 3rd.
I was hooked. I’ve always had a deep need for intellectual fulfillment, and these Olympiads became a way to satisfy that need.
Over the next three years, I competed in multiple subjects — law, history, geography, literature, Russian and English languages, Russian literature, ecology, and biology — winning prizes at district, regional, and federal levels, but my greatest success was in law.
Most of the time, I had no idea where to start. The teachers were supportive but couldn’t offer much guidance. In a school as large as mine, they simply didn’t have the capacity to focus on individual students. Occasionally, I could get my hands on the previous years' assignments, but the competitions had grown increasingly difficult, and by the time I entered, old materials weren’t helpful.
Before the federal rounds, our region organized a short training camp, but it was mostly team-building. The camp lasted just five working days, hardly enough for serious prep. For the most part, I was on my own.
In my solo preparation, I focused on reading the legal codes, especially the main ones: the Constitution, Civil Code, Criminal Code, and both civil and criminal procedure codes. I didn’t try to memorize them. Instead, I focused on understanding the logic behind each norm and reconstruct it through reasoning, rather than rote learning. I didn’t use textbooks or scholarly articles because I found them too overwhelming to navigate at the time. Just studying the codes was more than enough to keep me occupied.
In the months leading up to the federal competitions each spring, I would often skip school for weeks at a time. Teachers allowed it because of my academic track record and because they knew I wasn’t slacking off. I was working intensely. My daily routine was strict: I’d wake up at 6 a.m., study all day with breaks to eat, and go to bed at 11 p.m. I repeated this every day.
In my first year at the federal level, I placed third nationally. The same thing happened the next year, in the 10th grade. In 11th grade, I placed first.
How Law Olympiads shaped my life
I lived in a village and attended school in a nearby town with a population of about 30,000. Throughout my 10 years of school, I didn’t realize I was socio-economically disadvantaged, because just so many people around me were. Many classmates lived in communal apartments, with two or three generations sharing 20 square meters.
The Olympiads were an opportunity to travel, meet new people, and experience things beyond the small world I had known. Winning at the federal level could even grant you a state-funded spot at a university. exempting from entrance exams. Outside of Olympiads, there were few ways to get out of the "nothingness" I lived in, not that I fully understood that at the time.
There were also monetary prizes, though they weren’t my motivation. The first money I ever earned came from winning an Olympiad, and it paid for my first trip abroad — a summer school in London to study English. Over time, I also won prizes like two laptops, a camera, a pocket computer, and an MP3 player.
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I'm telling you this in such excruciating detail not to indulge myself, but rather to show you two things:
- first, when you ideate for you LL.M. personal statement, try to remember as many details as possible pertaining to each experience. You are not likely to use most of them. But you are very likely to uncover insights about the meaning of things that will influence what you write and the way you write.
- second, as I'll discuss below, it's best not to talk about childhood experiences in an LL.M. personal statement. However, there are exceptions, one of them being that an experience is so meaningful that you need to talk about it to explain what happened next. For me, law Olympiads were such experience. For you, it'll be something else.
Below, I discuss several more experiences and my reasons for including them or not in my Harvard LL.M. personal statement. I hope this thought process helps you make decisions regarding your own personal statements.
Harvard LL.M. personal statement and Formative Experience No. 3: Teaching at Moscow State University
At the time of my LL.M. applications, I was pursuing a PhD and teaching the law of obligations to third-year students, two 90-minute sessions each week. Preparing for these classes was time-intensive, and despite my best efforts, I always felt I could do more. Still, I loved it. The students and our discussions were deeply rewarding, and the experience proved invaluable.
In my Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part B, I linked this teaching role to my experience coaching the Concours Charles-Rousseau team, tying both to my goal of transitioning into academia. I didn’t include the PhD work itself, as I felt it would clutter the essay. Instead, I highlighted it in my Harvard LL.M. CV and the application form.
Harvard LL.M. personal statement and Formative Experience No. 4: Work at Noerr
By the time I decided to pursue an LL.M., I also had accumulated a variety of professional experiences. I interned at the State Office for Registration in Moscow, the Association for International Arbitration in Brussels, and Morgan Lewis in Moscow. I was also working as an associate at Noerr, a German law firm, and as a research fellow at the Higher School of Economics.
It may sound like a lot, but my enthusiasm for exploring different facets of law drove me. By the time I decided to pursue an LL.M., I had a clear understanding of what brought me the most fulfillment. I share this not to suggest that such a volume of experience is necessary but rather to highlight that everyone’s journey is unique. You don’t need to have as much experience before applying unless a program specifically requires it (e.g., Chevening requires 2+ years of work experience). Many LL.M. students have little to no work experience; others have years of it. Both paths are valid. Some of my Harvard LL.M. classmates came straight after their first law degree and still secured high-paying jobs in the U.S. jobs.
Focus on your strengths and accomplishments, regardless of how much or little experience you have. You do you.
While most of my work experiences were rich in analytical challenges, they often lacked in vivid, narrative-friendly moments I could showcase in my Harvard LL.M. personal statement. As I brainstormed, I struggled to condense them into impactful, specific stories that highlighted my strengths.
One memorable project, however, stood out. A European client wanted to sell yoga mats in Russia. These mats had been banned under EU regulations for containing carcinogenic chemicals, so the company tried to sell them in a different market (so much for Western values). Unfortunately, Russian regulations allowed higher concentrations of the chemical, but Russia was also a party to a UN Convention, and a related protocol was being negotiated to prohibit it.
Working on this case felt like an Erin Brockovich moment. For once, I had the chance to prevent harm. In a rare moment of legal influence, we advised the client against distributing the mats, and they complied.
However, as much as the experience meant for me, I ultimately did not include it. While it would have supported my overall theme of lawyers as leaders, I already had enough material to fit into the 750-word essay.
Harvard LL.M. personal statement and Formative Experience No. 5: Participating in the national banking law reform
As a research fellow at the Higher School of Economics, I worked on two projects commissioned by the Russian Central Bank, advising on reforms related to pledge and the transfer-of-title regimes. My recommendations were implemented in the new law, and I was later offered a position at the Central Bank, which I declined.
I was 23 at the time, and participating in a law reform at that age was a big deal. Initially, I included this experience in my Harvard LL.M. personal statement, as it supported the theme of lawyers as advisers vs decision-makers. I used it to reinforce my aspiration of becoming a policy- and lawmaker, a theme that was also central to my Cambridge LL.M. application.
However, by the time I applied for Harvard LL.M. a year later (after securing admission to the Cambridge LL.M. but lacking sufficient funding to pursue it), my goals had shifted toward academia. While the law reform experience was meaningful, I felt it detracted from my central focus of effecting change through teaching. As a result, I chose to exclude it from my Harvard LL.M. personal statement but highlighted it in my Harvard LL.M. CV and application form.
analysis and actionable Guidelines for Your harvard LL.M. personal statement
Now, I'll talk more about the factors that influenced my decisions to include certain experiences. I'll show it on example of law Olympiads.
Let’s note that my last high school Olympiad took place when I was 17. (In fact, I received the award on my 17th birthday, April 25th). When I applied for Harvard LL.M., I was 23-24, which was 6-7 years later.
In LL.M. applications, there's a general rule of thumb: it's best to stick to stories from the last five years of your life. Focusing too much on childhood or adolescence can be seen as weakening your LL.M. personal statement, making it feel backward-looking or like you're avoiding adult issues.
However, there are exceptions. Childhood or teenage experiences can be useful when they provide context for later decisions or events you'll discuss in your LL.M. personal statement.
In my case, it made sense to include the Olympiads because they not only influenced the trajectory of my professional life but defined it. Honestly, I don’t think I'd have become a lawyer without them. My grandmother was a historian, and history was my favorite subject in school. I was genuinely surprised when I did better in law than in history, as I initially thought I’d follow in her footsteps and become a history school teacher.
However, I only included a tiny portion of information I actually uncovered, as per above: let’s compare the material I’ve just discussed with what I actually included in my Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part B:
“For years, the glad game and Pollyanna’s irrepressible optimism were my philosophy of life, and changing the attitude toward a problem was primary solution. This continued until the high school: I entered All-Russian competition in law. As I prepared, I learnt: adjustment was not the only option. I may try changing the situation first. Law offers tools designed for this. Understood this way, law was for me about taking actions and making decisions, while leadership was an inherent part of the legal profession.That’s what appealed to me, and I chose law school. As I went through law school, this perception of law remained undistorted”.
The question is, why did I make this choice? Why such a brief mention, and why this particular phrasing?
As much as I value this experience, it had to serve a specific purpose in mz application was to:
- Show my commitment to law: This journey started when I was a teenager. (Yours doesn't have to — this was just my personal path, and I wanted to highlight it).
- Demonstrate an academic track record of success: An LL.M., like any graduate program, is academic in nature. You need to show that you thrive in an academic environment and enjoy learning. Winning an Olympiad is a clear, tangible way to do that.
- Connect it to my later choices: I wanted to link the Olympiad experience to my ongoing search for meaning in the legal profession, which ultimately led to my decision to apply for the LL.M.
As you can see, most of the details I’ve described here didn’t make it into the essay. Instead, there’s a brief description of the Olympiad paired with its deeper meaning to me. Crucially, I connected this experience to my decision to become a lawyer in the same paragraph.
Although I wanted to include more about the Olympiads, I had to be strategic about how much of the 750-word limit I could dedicate to something that happened seven years ago. Every part of the essay needed to serve the overall goal of explaining my motivation for pursuing Harvard LL.M.
Since this experience was incredibly important to me, I also highlighted it in my Harvard LL.M. CV, but I framed it differently. I removed any mention of high school and simply listed the prizes and awards I earned. I could do this because the winner's title came with a prize, so it didn’t matter that it happened during high school.
In general, for all meaningful experiences, I suggest finding ways to include them in multiple parts of your application. This reinforces their significance and makes yourLL.M. application feel cohesive and memorable to the admissions committee.
Final thoughts
This closes the ideation phase, i.e. generating ideas for your Harvard LL.M. personal statement based on your experiences.
If you'd like more guidance, I created a comprehensive course, Harvard State of Mind on Demand, to guide LL.M. applicants through developing all major components of an LL.M. application, including personal statements, CVs, and recommendations.
If you'd like me to review your LL.M. personal statement or help you get started, please read about my approach and fill out a short application form.
Hope this helps and good luck! ☺️