michigan law optional essays

Law School Optional Essays

Many applications invite submission of optional essays.

Typically, optional essays might ask you to articulate why you are applying to that school (“Why School X”), or they might invite you to discuss parts of your background that would contribute to the diversity of the incoming class (a “Diversity Statement”). Michigan holds the record, I think: they offer eight optional essay topics, although you are restricted to picking two.

Other schools have one-off optional essay prompt that you probably won’t find anywhere else. Georgetown and Notre Dame are good examples.

No matter what the optional essay topics are, submit optional essays only if the following three conditions are met:

(1) you have something interesting to say on the subject (content), and

(2) you can write about it well and do that topic justice in roughly one double-spaced page (execution), and

(3) that essay adds something new to your profile that isn’t already highlighted elsewhere (value-add).

“Why School X” Essay

If you are applying to School X only because it's a top school, or you are applying to School Y only because you have a better chance of getting in there than a more competitive school, then you don't have anything interesting to say about why you are applying. You might dredge up a few things to say about their "prestigious faculty," "excellent reputation," or "national placement," but that's not interesting either, because you could probably say that about any of their peer schools.

In fact, if the reasons you're giving for why you want to attend School X could be copied and pasted into the same kind of essay for its peer schools, then it's not specific (or interesting) enough to justify an optional essay.

If you're going to bother writing a "Why School X" essay, have something to say that really does distinguish that school (for you) from other wonderful peer schools. Of the different kinds of optional essay prompts out there, I treat only the “Why School X” essays as quasi-required, because I think it looks bad if they expressly invite you to talk about that and you have nothing at all to say. So put the work in.

Diversity Statement

Similarly, don’t bother writing a phony-baloney Diversity Statement if you don't have something meaningful to say about yourself.

You can and should think of diversity broadly, in terms of life experience that you have to contribute to an incoming class. Admissions officers are trying to put together an interesting mix of incoming 1Ls, all with different life experiences and backgrounds. Diversity in this context doesn’t just mean things like ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. And yes, you are allowed to write about your race and ethnicity even after the Supreme Court decision. That’s in no way off limits for your essay.

Of course they are interested in underrepresented backgrounds, but if that doesn’t describe you, think about other aspects of your background that would add to the mix. Maybe you have lived and worked abroad, or are a national or world class athlete, or come from the art world, or you’ve overcome something really difficult that has affected and perhaps even changed how you go through the world. Those are all elements that would add perspectives in the incoming class. And that life experience will in fact make you a better law student and lawyer.

But that's not sufficient to justify submitting an optional diversity essay. You also have to be able to say something meaningful about that particular element of your background, and how it has shaped you in a substantial way. It's not enough to identify that you have that background; you have to explain why and how it matters. Always answer the implicit “so what?” part of any essay question.

This piece of writing also needs to be personal rather than abstract. If you can't discuss that part of your background in a meaningful, personal, well-written way, showing not just the "what" but also the "so what" (why it matters to you), don't submit the essay. Nobody wants to read generic mugga-wugga, especially when it wasn’t required. Then you’re just wasting their time, and that’s not the best way to get them to like you.

And even if you have those interesting things in your background, don’t submit a redundant optional essay. If you’ve already covered those aspects in our Personal Statement, for example, then your Personal Statement is also doing double duty as your Diversity Statement. Don’t waste their time with redundant essays. Any optional essay should add something to your profile that you haven’t already highlighted elsewhere.

Bottom line: You are much better off showing them one really great required essay on its own, rather than sending them a really great required essay plus a “meh” non-required essay. The latter actually detracts from your application and from the impression you're making. Don't dilute the impact or the quality of your great essay with something that is less than great. So make it great, or don’t submit it at all. Half-measures are the worst option.

How to Get into the University of Michigan Law School: GPA, LSAT Requirements, and Acceptance Rate

June 13, 2023

Stratus Admissions

University of Michigan Law School Introduction

About the university of michigan law school, what does the university of michigan law school offer.

• Michigan Law Class of 2025 Acceptance Rate and Statistics
• Michigan Law Class of 2021 Post-Graduation Statistics

Michigan Law Application Details

University of michigan law school faqs.

U.S. News & World Report has consistently ranked the University of Michigan Law School among the top 14 schools in the publication’s Best Law Schools list. Michigan Law also boasts esteemed alumni including Valerie Jarrett, who served as senior adviser to President Barack Obama, and Heather Gerken, the dean of Yale Law School. In addition, the University of Michigan’s prominent reputation makes Michigan Law a top destination for law school applicants.

Around 800 people were accepted into Michigan Law’s Class of 2025. Given the competitive admissions process, having strong test scores and grades is essential to a successful application. In addition, knowing some key facts about the school can help enrich your application and set you apart from other applicants. 

In this post, we at Stratus share what you need to know to increase your chances of getting into Michigan Law.

History and ranking

Located in Ann Arbor, not far from Detroit, Michigan Law is part of the University of Michigan. The law school opened in 1859, more than 40 years after the university was founded. Michigan Law ranks tenth in U.S. News & World Report’s 2023 Best Law Schools list.

Acceptance rate and class size

Michigan Law typically has an acceptance rate of about 10%. Roughly 1,000 students are enrolled in the school, and each class has about 300 students. Michigan Law’s class size provides students with plenty of people to network with, but also gives them a chance to get to know their peers.

Post-graduate status

In 2022, Michigan Law’s first-time bar-passage rate was 95.5%. Around 94% of the Class of 2021 accepted jobs that require JDs, and only around 1% of graduates were seeking a job and unable to find one. 17% of graduates were working in clerkships. 

Among Michigan Law’s more than 250 faculty members are prominent legal figures such as feminist legal theory expert Catharine MacKinnon and former US Attorney Barbara McQuade.

Famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow attended Michigan Law. In addition to those mentioned earlier, the school’s more prominent graduates include Judge Raymond Kethledge of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, former Ohio Senator Rob Portman, and businessman Sam Zell.

First-year curriculum

Michigan Law’s first-year curriculum includes courses on standard legal topics such as civil procedure, contract law, constitutional law, criminal law, tort law, and legal practice. The school’s Legal Practice Program spans two semesters and focuses on practical legal skills such how to research relevant cases and put together a brief. Michigan Law also requires students to take a legal professions course in addition to courses in international and comparative law and administrative law in order to graduate. 

Michigan Law offers courses of varying sizes, ranging from more than 100 students to fewer than 20. Courses cover conventional topics such as employment law, environmental law, and secured transactions, but also more specialized areas including poverty law and European law. Some courses have one end-of-semester exam that determines all of a student’s grade, while seminar courses base a student’s grade on a paper.

Writing requirements

Michigan Law requires students to complete a course that has a “substantial writing” component, according to the school’s website. 

Michigan Law’s 18 clinics cover a range of issues including child advocacy, community enterprise, and civil rights. 

Student clubs

The roughly 80 clubs at Michigan Law, such as the International Law Society and the Intellectual Property Students Association, focus on a range of legal topics. The clubs organize lectures, discussions, and social mixers for students to attend, providing them with opportunities to further explore their legal interests and connect with their classmates.

Michigan Law publishes nine journals including the Michigan Law Review , the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law , and the Michigan Journal of Race & Law . Participating in these journals gives students opportunities to publish their own work, edit academic papers, and attend conferences and symposiums.

Michigan Law’s 18 centers, including the Center for International and Comparative Law and the Empirical Legal Studies Center, focus on an array of legal topics. These centers organize events, publish papers, and advocate for positions on related issues. Students can participate by assisting with events, conducting research, and completing externships.

Class of 2025 Acceptance Rate and Statistics

Michigan Law received 6,254 applications for its Class of 2025 and offered admission to 819 students, with 336 ultimately enrolling. This equates to a 10.7% acceptance rate.

Of the Class of 2025, 

• 50% are women. 
• 49% are men. 
• 1% are nonbinary.
• 24% identify as LGBTQ+.
• 42% are people of color. 
• 14% are first-generation college students. 
• 13% reported facing significant socioeconomic disadvantages.
• 79% took at least one year off in between college and law school.

Students in the Class of 2025 represent 129 different universities in 46 different US states and territories as well as 25 countries.

In terms of statistics,

• For the LSAT, the 25th percentile was 166, the 50th percentile was 171, and the 75th percentile was 172. 
• For undergraduate GPA, the 25th percentile was 3.59, the 50th percentile was 3.83, and the 75th percentile was 3.92. 

Class of 2021 Post-Graduation Statistics

According to Michigan Law’s employment report for the Class of 2021, of the 363 graduates, 

• 342 accepted jobs that required passing the state bar. 
• Nine were working in jobs where having a JD is helpful.
• Two were working in “professional” positions.
• Two were unemployed but were not seeking a job. 
• Four were unemployed but were seeking a job. 
• Three had enrolled in other graduate programs. 

Graduates took jobs in the following industries/roles:

• Law firms: 219
• Business: 8 
• Government: 16 
• Public interest organizations: 46
• Judicial clerkships: 62

Michigan Law Application Requirements

• Online application
• Undergraduate transcript
• Letters of recommendation

Personal statement

Optional essays

Application

Michigan Law follows a rolling admissions process and traditionally accepts applications from late August through the end of February. Applicants usually must accept admission by May. Michigan Law’s early decision deadline is typically in mid-November, and applicants will receive a decision by mid-December. (Note that early decision is binding.)

Letters of recommendatio n

Michigan Law applicants must submit a minimum of one and maximum of three letters of recommendation, with at least one preferably from an academic source.

Make sure you customize your resume for your Michigan Law application. Use professional and consistent fonts, avoid small page margins, and do not exceed one page. As far as content, avoid jargon so the admissions committee can easily understand your accomplishments, and be sure to balance your work experience with law school–related skills. Your resume should include sections on your education, experience, and personal information.

A personal statement is also required. Rather than providing specific content guidelines, Michigan Law notes on its website that the applicant is best suited to discern “what is most important for us to know.” The school views the personal statement as an opportunity for you to expand on topics that your resume and transcript cannot fully cover. Michigan Law recommends that the personal statement consist of between two and four pages, double spaced, with at least an 11-point font.  

Michigan Law gives you the option to write two additional essays from a choice of nine prompts on such topics as your interest in the law school, a unique quality or skill that will help you in the legal field, and which “prominent person” you would choose to have dinner with.  

What if I attended a low-ranked undergraduate institution?

As long as your college is accredited, its undergraduate ranking does not matter. Having a strong GPA and test scores is more important.

If I take time off between college and law school to work, do I need to do legal work?

No, as long as you do something productive with your time off, such as working or completing an internship. Michigan Law values all types of work experience.

Is Michigan Law looking for applicants with a particular undergraduate major?

No. The school accepts students from a variety of academic backgrounds.

I have a low GPA but a difficult major. Will Michigan Law overlook that?

Generally, no. Law schools usually are only interested in your overall undergraduate GPA. They will allow some flexibility for applicants with particularly difficult majors, such as a STEM major, but this will not excuse a low GPA.

Does it matter when I apply?

Given that Michigan Law follows a rolling admissions process, if your application materials are ready to go at the beginning of the cycle, it probably helps your chances a little to apply then because that is when the most spots are available. If not, you are better off not rushing your application. If you think you can improve your LSAT score by taking it one or two more times in the fall, remember that substantially increasing your score will improve your chances much more than applying a few weeks earlier.

Do I need to take time off between college and law school to work in order to gain a competitive edge?

Although work experience can improve your chances of acceptance, plenty of students get into Michigan Law each year without any. It is difficult to quantify how much work experience helps because there are so many factors in the application process. If you have stats that make you a competitive applicant and you want to enroll right after you finish college, do not feel that you must take time off to work. 

Are you considering applying to Michigan Law? Whether you are looking for comprehensive law admissions consulting, hourly help, or perhaps interview prep, we at Stratus Admissions Counseling can help you! Sign up for a free consultation today!

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Law school personal statement

Since each school has its own application, the directions for the personal statement can vary from school to school. Read the directions carefully and consider what it is you really want the law schools to know about you that cannot be found elsewhere on the application. Your statement should be a document that can pull together your disparate experiences, interests and qualities. In the eyes of an admission committee, your reflection on actual experiences and past accomplishments usually has more value than speculations about future accomplishments. Be brief, factual, and, above all, be organized in telling your story. What you say is just as important as “how” you say it. Whenever possible, support your writing with concrete examples from your own life experiences. If you are given the option of writing any “optional” essays, it may be in your best interest to oblige given that some schools use optional essays as a gauge to measure your interest in their particular school.

Have your statement reviewed by people who know you to make sure it is an accurate reflection of you and your values, but also by people who do not know you to garner more objective feedback. 

Law school personal statements can be reviewed at Peers Advisors at Sweetland Center for Writing , and LSA Academic Advising (734) 764-0332.

This self reflection exercise may aid you in your preparation to writing a law school personal statement. You may wish to use some of the ideas generated from going through this exercise as a springboard for your application essay/s.

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Michigan Optional Essays Forum

Michigan Optional Essays

Post by lawschoolboundfuture » Fri Aug 17, 2012 6:00 pm

Re: Michigan Optional Essays

Post by JDizzle2015 » Fri Aug 17, 2012 7:14 pm

Post by soj » Fri Aug 17, 2012 9:43 pm

Post by No13baby » Fri Aug 17, 2012 10:04 pm

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Personal statements: What not to do

Sometimes I will unexpectedly stumble across an item I wrote at some point in the distant past, and upon rereading, I’ll be thrilled to discover I still like it. That’s a wonderful feeling—very self-affirming.

That is not the feeling I get when rereading my law school personal statement. More accurate adjectives include “shame,” “revulsion,” and “horror.”

After a couple of seasons in this position, way back in 2003 or so, I got up the nerve to go dig out my application file from the huge storage room hidden deep in the recesses of Hutchins Hall . Given the weight I put on personal statements when I read them, going back to check out my own seemed like a clever idea. Without actually remembering, I’m going to guess that I expected a nice self-affirming experience, but alas, no. I loathed my personal statement to such a degree that I had the Looper -style existential crisis of realizing that if I had been my own dean of admissions, I would not have admitted myself. I returned my personal statement to the vault, resolving never to speak or think of it again.

But as Freud got famous for observing, repressed thoughts have a tricky way of coming back on you. My stupid personal statement would worm its way into my brain every once in a while, and finally, about a year and a half ago, I got the idea of tearing it apart for this blog: part philanthropic, educational gesture; part exorcism. It took me another year or so to get the nerve to go dig out my application file folder again, and yet another six months to beat back the waves of nausea that washed over me every time I peeked at the essay inside. But here we are. I think I’m ready. Let’s just tackle this horrifying task bird by bird . 1

Often I am asked, “What’s a good subject for a personal statement? Do I have to explain why I want to attend law school?” No!, I unambiguously respond. (I say it just like that, with an exclamation mark.) While your life path to law school might very well be in the background of whatever you write, it is certainly not necessary—and usually not desirable—to make it an explicit rendering. Often, even well-considered reasons behind wanting to attend law school are fairly mundane and simply expressed, not to mention shared by many candidates, with the result that any essay focusing principally on them is not particularly compelling. Occasionally, candidates will have very targeted, well-established career interests (e.g., the emergency room doctor who wants a career in health law; the school superintendent who wants a career in education law), and those make for compelling essays. But “I would like to have intellectual challenge in my career; I like unraveling problems; I like research and writing,” are such bland—though completely valid—explanations that they inevitably fail to engage the “personal” part of the personal statement mission. So, while those motivations might be the undercurrent of a personal statement, constructing the essay as an explicit “because A, then B” endeavor is not likely to be riveting.

Another bit of advice I frequently give along those lines is that people who have had experiences very early in life that set them on the path toward law should focus instead on something of more recent vintage. Don’t tell me about how you got an idea as a child about wanting to be a lawyer—I would prefer to know why, now that you’re an adult, your application is in front of me.

Given my standard advice, how much, on a scale of 1 to 10, do you think I loved reading this opening line? “My interest in law school began when I was eight.” Really, just terrible.

From there, my long-ago self went on to explain that that was the year my mother went to law school. Now, my mother’s move was a pretty bold one in 1972 for a 38-year-old mother of three in Main Line Philadelphia, and 40 years later, I still find it admirable and inspiring. I may have just finished generally criticizing this sort of theme (and this shows the danger of general advice), but it seems not impossible that this could have been an interesting topic. Yet, for reasons mysterious to me now, I seem to have made a deliberate choice back in 1989 to explore my topic in the most ham-handed imaginable way. (And let’s just politely avert our gazes from my having identified my mom’s degree, in the second sentence, as a juris doctorate .)

Mostly, my personal statement is hard to read because of the hyper-formal tone I took. I can dimly remember writing with my unknown audience in mind, and picturing them as super, super, super stiff and humorless and scary—also, for some reason, I pictured at least 10 of them simultaneously reading my application. Unsurprisingly, writing to please an audience like that turns out to make for clunky prose—not to mention really awkward, unnatural phrasing.

The whole thing is peppered with words that seem a little—off. I don’t remember doing this, but it reads as if wrote it out normally and then went back to up the syllable count, substituting five-dollar words for my daily quotidian vocabulary, like some horrible Google translate feature gone awry. Here’s a little writing advice from Stephen King on that score: “Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” 2 (I would have been better served to use a dictionary, given that on at least one occasion I misused a word completely: “disinterest,” which means “lack of bias,” when in fact I meant “lack of interest.”)

Doubtless, it was this same classing-it-up impulse that led me to quote Judge Learned Hand, whose work I had never actually read. Again, I don’t remember doing this, but I presumably combed through a book of quotations to find something inspiring. (Remember, this debacle occurred pre-Internet; I actually had to go to a lot of effort to produce such an unreadable mess.) I’m going to take as an article of faith that, however much you may love the one sentence you have stumbled upon, quoting people whose work you do not actually know is always a bad idea.

My personal statement is also tedious; it is totally expositive, completely devoid of detail or anecdote. I could have told the funny story about the time I got dragged along to a meeting my mom had with her scariest professor, and announced upon exiting (while still in the doorway, mind you) in my loudest eight-year-old voice, “ I think he’s NICE !,” and segued from that to something about how I should be admitted because I had already gotten over Paper Chase -style neuroses. Or I could have told the story about how I once got dragged along to class and sat in the back row next to one of her classmates, another non-traditional student (Episcopal priest turned Vietnam War protester turned would-be lawyer), who gave me whispered explanations of everything that was going on in the discussion, and credited him with some inspirational force. Or I could have told the story about her very young study group partner, who pulled me aside one day (in our living room, mind you) and whispered, “Go away, kid; you bother me,” and explained that I was devoted to the cause of a jackass-free law school. And so on. But I chose instead to explicate in ponderous prose that I was Called To The Law. Shudder.

The flaws are not merely stylistic and thematic. The specific content stinks, too. I veered wildly between being braggy in a quite direct, unnuanced way, and talking excessively about other people, without clearly explaining the significance of those other people to me. And, as if I had never, ever been taught anything about constructing an essay, every paragraph is essentially a stand-alone endeavor. I did not seem to have any particular point I wanted to build to—I was, instead, largely throwing out separate thoughts that seemed potentially persuasive. Focusing on one particular thought or event, and developing that thoroughly, would have been likely to be more productive.

Have I mentioned it was awful?

In retrospect, I have a pretty good idea of how I came to write something so misguided. What I intended to write was something like this: My mom went to law school when I was young. It was an unusual move, and I admired her. In fact, though, she ended up absolutely hating being a lawyer, and then she died when I was in college, still hating it. That combination of circumstances made me really second-guess my previous certainty that The Law Was For Me. I therefore took some time to work in a law office and experiment with some other activities, and consider what I wanted from a career. Mission accomplished, and here I am, Michigan Law School. So, why didn’t I just write that? Because at the time, I was really uncomfortable with the idea of writing about my mom to strangers; even four years after she died, it was still very much an open wound for me, and I was leery of in any way exploiting it. So, instead, I wrote in a completely elliptical way, and never connected the dots—to the extent, weirdly, that I never even said that she had died, just that she had gotten sick. There were two possible solutions for my fundamental writing problem: either pick some less-fraught subject or force myself to be direct.

The good news is, the hot waves of mortification that wash over me when I read it carry with them some helpful perspective. The personal statement is very important, but it is just one piece of the puzzle, balanced by the considerable amount of information elsewhere in the application. (At a completely practical level, this is one of the great virtues of the optional essay prompts we provide; for people tormented by the task of writing a free-form personal statement, the direct, focused questions often lead to a much better result.) Even though I retain a hard little nugget of disdain in my heart for my 24-year-old self, I have learned to be more generous to others. Knowing how badly I flubbed it makes me very admiring of those who don’t, but also more forgiving of those who do. (And very thankful to Allan Stillwagon for having been forgiving of me.) Approach your personal statement as a five-minute conversation with a normal human being, at the end of which you hope the normal human being is thinking, “This person would be well-suited to be at XYZ law school when fall (or, perhaps, summer) comes.”

And for heaven’s sake, go easy with the thesaurus and Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations .

-Dean Z. Senior Assistant Dean for Admissions, Financial Aid, and Career Planning

1 Bird by Bird by Annie Lamott is my all-time favorite book on writing. Shout-out to Lisa Rudgers , who recommended it.

2 Stephen King’s On Writing is my second-favorite book about writing. I have to dissent a bit from his anti-thesaurus edict, though. As one blogger noted , “Actually, I can think of one exception to this rule. I generally don’t pluck words I don’t know out of a thesaurus unless I’m trying to be funny, but if a word is on the tip of my tongue and I can’t for the life of me think what it is, the thesaurus is a good way to find it.”