Law School Applications Editing and Proofreading Services

There is a semester on the transcript with two failing grades, and it is the semester the applicant's father died. The personal statement does not mention it, because the applicant was advised not to make excuses. The committee sees the grades, has no explanation, and applies the only interpretation available to them — which is that this is what the applicant's work looks like under pressure.

We edit law school applications and their components — addenda explaining academic or disciplinary matters, personal statements, diversity statements, optional essays, resumes for legal admissions, character and fitness disclosures, transfer applications, and the letters that accompany a reapplication. Our editors work on the document nobody wants to write.

The addendum is the shortest document in a law school application and the one that most often decides it, and its failure is either silence or a plea. Committees are not looking for a story; they are looking for whether a fact has been accounted for. We work through these so the addendum states the fact first, in one sentence, since a reader who has to work out what is being explained becomes suspicious before they become sympathetic; so it is kept to a paragraph or two, because length signals that the writer thinks the matter is worse than it is; so the explanation is factual and dated rather than emotional, given that a committee moved by a paragraph still has to justify a decision to colleagues and needs something to point at; so the recovery is evidenced with what happened afterwards — the later grades, the completed degree, the years since — as this is the only part that actually addresses the committee's question about risk; so responsibility is taken for anything that was the applicant's own doing, since a disciplinary matter explained away reads far worse than one owned in two lines; so no comparison is drawn with other applicants and no request for special consideration is made; so a character and fitness question is answered completely and identically to any answer given elsewhere, because inconsistency between disclosures is treated as a character matter in itself; and so it is written as a separate document rather than folded into the personal statement, which has a different job. Addenda written this way remove the doubt they address.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including transcripts, disciplinary records and disclosures. We are editors rather than admissions officers or lawyers, and we offer no legal advice and no view on admissions, character and fitness or any application. What we can do is account for the fact without pleading.