Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book to get you started!
Review: As someone who works privately with students, helping them with admissions essays for law school, I highly recommend this book. When students call me in regard to assistance with their essays, I recommend that they first buy this book as a means to get started. The guidelines and essays have helped my clients not only to gather their thoughts, but also to organize and write them into interesting and creative essays. By the time they come to me for feedback and editing, they are well on the way to getting into the law school of their choice.
Rating: 
Summary: spend your money and time on the LSAT
Review: Don't waste your time. Law school admission is a numbers game most schools ( say 90% ) just assing you a numeric score based on your LSAT score and your grades ( weighted for the difficulty of your college ) and if you score above a certain number you are in, below a number and you are out, and somewhere in between then they MAY look at the other stuff. Most schools get enough applications in the upper group to fill their classes without wasting time reading your essay. Sure, having a great essay can't hurt, but why not work a bit harder on rasing your LSAT score or getting better grades. Those can't fail to raise your chances
Rating:
Summary: spend your money and time on the LSAT
Review: Don't waste your time. Law school admission is a numbers game most schools ( say 90% ) just assing you a numeric score based on your LSAT score and your grades ( weighted for the difficulty of your college ) and if you score above a certain number you are in, below a number and you are out, and somewhere in between then they MAY look at the other stuff. Most schools get enough applications in the upper group to fill their classes without wasting time reading your essay. Sure, having a great essay can't hurt, but why not work a bit harder on rasing your LSAT score or getting better grades. Those can't fail to raise your chances
Rating:
Summary: Great resource
Review: I bought this book because at one crazy point, I actually thought of going to law school. I came to my senses eventually and I ended up applying to PhD programs in biology. I thought I wasted money on this book, but then I gave it a chance and it actually gives great overall advice on writing effective personal statements for ANY purpose. Graduate schools all look for the same thing ultimately, they want to know what you are about and they want to know why you chose your career path. This book is great because it gives you examples of people coming from all sorts of background and you can draw on all their experiences to put together your own essay. I even stole a line from one of the essays because it applied to my own life and I wouldn't have found a better way to say it. I'm going to Columbia University starting this fall, so I guess my personal statement wasn't half bad. This book made the job a lot easier, especially if you have writer's block like I did. It really gives you a starting point.
Rating: 
Summary: marginally useful
Review: I didn't find this book too useful. I went after it mainly to see some example essays. However, the example essays in the book are simply not very good. There is another book called How to Get into the Top Law Schools which contains some better essays along with comments about what each essay does well and does poorly.However, if you are not an experienced writer and don't know where to start, you may find this book helpful.
Rating:
Summary: Of Limited Value
Review: I found this book to be of only limited value. As we all know, essays are only one aspect of the whole law school admissions game, and it is therefore misleading to suggest that writing great essays alone is enough to differentiate you from all the other highly qualified applicants out there. For essays alone, Kaufman's book was pretty helpful. But another book I also purchased, Richard Montauk's "How to Get Into the Top Law Schools" was ultimately much more comprehensive and useful in guiding me through the admissions process in its entirety.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Place to Start
Review: I recently faced the challenge of writing my personal statement for law school. When I sat to down to write it, I found that I didn't really know where to begin. I found this book useful not because of the writing tips it gives (I thought those could have been more helpful) but because it gives a whole bunch of example essays. If you have no clue where to begin, buy this book. If you have a pretty good idea and are just looking for tips to help you polish it up, you would probably be better off just talking to your pre-law advisor. He/she knows exactly what makes a good personal statement.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your time.
Review: If you are a literate individual, you can write a personal statement that runs circles around the ones excerpted in this book. If you're looking for a better way to waste your money, go and rent "Legally Blond," which will boost your self-esteem about the whole law school process.
Rating:
Summary: For those who dont know where to start
Review: If you are like me and had no clue where to begin writing a personal essay (the personal ones are always the hardest, this book offers a step by step outline of how to brainstorm subjects and how to organize your thoughts, write and outline and eventually the essay(s). I really needed this because I, like you, will have to write a number of essays, depending on how many schools we are applying to. I have all these ideas and life experiences, but did not know how to organize them, let alone write anything coherent! This book helped me tremendously with organization and perspective and put me on a path to writing 4 sucessful essays.
Rating:
Summary: Law school for the illiterate
Review: If you would consider this than, please, condsider retail or maybe hotel room cleaning.
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