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

Introduction

I work a lot of with master of laws (LL.M.) applicants on their LL.M. personal statements.

Most of them share the same problems. In particular, they struggle to:

• find ideas and stories for an LL.M. personal statement.
• recognize good ideas, i.e. that are appropriate for an LL.M. personal statement and will make a positive impression on the admissions committee.
• identify bad ideas, i.e. ideas that could harm an LL.M. 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 LL.M. personal statement.

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. You can see how I applied these principles to my Harvard LL.M. personal statement Part B.

LL.M. Personal Statement: 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, eg, believing that LL.M. 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 an LL.M. 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’ would be an oversimplification. Typically, an LL.M. personal statement not only has a broad overarching theme but also brings together a variety of your personal and professional experiences. The most effective LL.M. 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, 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 for an LL.M. personal statement is unnecessary. As a result, they skip the idea-generation stage and jump straight into writing.

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

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 LL.M. 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 LL.M. personal statement.

2. LL.M. '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 an LL.M. 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 LL.M. program and the goals you hope to achieve after 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 variations of the same type of document. The differences are largely cultural. In the U.S., it's most often referred to as an LL.M. ‘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.

That being said, this post will focus on the U.S.-style personal statement for a LL.M. application. 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 an LL.M. 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?

LL.M. Personal Statement: 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 wealth of knowledge (facts about where, when, what, who, with whom, etc.) about your background readily available to support the claims you make in your LL.M. application.
2. Being able to describe your background in a way that's 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 LL.M. 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 on the LL.M. program.

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. LL.M. 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’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 the best results and aim to write the strongest LL.M. personal statement 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.

LL.M. Personal Statement: Shouldn't all This be evident from my CV?

Your CV is a basic framework of your experience, a distilled version of it, a map. It's significantly more fact-based compared to an LL.M. 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 a personal statement.

How to start ideating for your LL.M. Personal Statement

1. Should you answering the questions first directly from the start?

One mistake I made when writing my own essays was getting too hung up on the questions asked 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 idea-generation 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? The events that when you think of them, it's clear that made you into who you are?

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 LL.M. personal statement 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 LL.M. personal statements 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. 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 do. 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 the 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 for an LL.M. personal statement

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 use 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'.)

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 a 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 necessarily 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 on writing the lL.M. personal statement

I share my process writing the Harvard LL.M. personal statement in a three-part post series starting here‍. It's an illustration of my original 5-step methodology for writing personal statements  a compelling LL.M. application.

If you'd like more guidance, I've created a comprehensive Harvard State of Demand course on all major aspects on an LL.M. application.

If you'd like to me to review your LL.M. personal statement or help you get started, please read about my workflow and fill out a short application form.

Best of luck, and happy writing! 😊