The widely respected China Law Blog (recently voted the best law blog in the United States by the ABA Journal) put up my law school personal statement today because, according to the blog’s founder, Dan Harris, ”… it very nicely (and personally) sets forth what it can be like to try for a small foreign business to operate in China and deal with its laws.”

To Dan’s intro I would only add that getting into Michigan was a BIG surprise (Dan is kind enough to say that he wasn’t suprised), on account of my sub par GPA (and based on my long list of rejections at other schools), and so I’d like to add one other thing that potential law students reading this blog could take away from my experience:

If you’re applying to a Tier 1 law school with, let’s say, no better than a 3.08 GPA, then try to put yourself in a post-graduate situation that you can’t find at a job recruitment fair. When you eventually settle into a situation (whether it be transient or in a static location), work as hard as you can at it. CRUSH it. Even if ‘it’ means washing dishes and busting tables in a pizza restaurant overseas, a crushed ‘It’ will give you character, and make great fodder for an interesting story when you decide to apply for school, or a job. I definitely couldn’t have hoped for as much (in terms of getting into a school) three years ago.

Finally, writing your personal statement takes time, and the hardest part of the process for me is finding the right angle.  This is where my essay started.