Inclusive Statement: Style and Content

This post is part of a series of instructional blog posts regarding our admission streams at UVic Law. As we have discussed in posts of weeks past, each admission stream or program has unique admissions requirements. However, the basic requirements for admission for all applicants (online application, application fee, LSAT score, Personal Statement, and unofficial transcript) are the same. If you are looking for some guidance on your Personal Statement, check out the following blog posts:

If you are looking for guidance on other parts of your application, you may find these blog posts helpful:

We have also done a series of webinars that answer some common Admissions questions.

Last week, I began writing about the Inclusive Admission Stream. We talked about its purpose and who should apply to the Inclusive Admission Stream, as well as some basic framing for Inclusive Statements (like showing the nexus, your likelihood of success, and that the timing is right for your to attend law school). However, when we are looking at style and content of an Inclusive Admission Statement, what is it that makes a strong Inclusive Admission Statement? As with all our Admissions requirements, we hesitate to give specific instructions that will prevent creativity and sincerity from coming through in our admission pool. However, here are a few guidelines that will help keep you on track while drafting your Inclusive Statement.

First and foremost, no one is qualified to tell your story but you. Please remember this while writing your Inclusive Statement. Applicants will often ask (or hire) others to review and edit their application materials. What commonly happens is that the well-meaning editor edits the statement in a way that waters down the language or meaning or takes out specific thoughts, words, or phrases. We cannot emphasize enough that we do not want anyone to edit the way in which you tell your story. By all means, please do have a trusted friend or relative review your entire application, including all statements, for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and word usage. However, we strongly believe that only the applicant themselves should tell their story.

Secondly, recall that this statement, along with the rest of your application, is all we know of you. Remember the purpose of what you are writing, and don’t get lost trying to accomplish that. You need to tell us why you are applying to the Inclusive Admission Stream, showing a causative nexus between your non-competitive GPA or LSAT score (or both) and the life event, barrier, or circumstance that caused it both in time and in duration. We do look at your other academic performance and ensure that any event lines up with the non-competitive GPA or LSAT performance. For example, if a medical diagnosis in March of 2021 caused a dip in grades, but your grades were affected until December 2023, ensure you explain the entirety of the lower GPA and not just the term with the diagnosis. Charts and other visual aids are not required, but they can be helpful to establish this piece.

You need to also show your likelihood of success. For some applicants this is easily done. If an applicant has all A terms and a high LSAT score, except has two lower grade terms that line up with family care responsibilities, the likelihood of success is evident without much explanation. For other applicants, this is a greater challenge. This is especially true for applicants who have ongoing barriers present in their lives. If, for example, most of an applicant’s GPA and the LSAT score are non-competitive, the applicant needs to show in other ways that they have a high likelihood of success in law school. This can be done by talking about other accomplishments or life experience, as well as talking about growth and learning.

You need to explain any ongoing barriers that prevent you from being a competitive applicant. If your highest-reported LSAT score is non-competitive, you should explain why you should not be asked to take it again before applying to law school. Likewise, if you completed less than a full undergraduate degree, you should explain why its impractical for you to be asked to complete it.

When looking at ongoing barriers, it’s important also to ask if any prevent you from success in law school. When thinking about this, be sure to ask yourself if this is the right time objectively for you to attend law school. When reviewing your Inclusive Statement, ask yourself whether, based on what we read, we might ask ourselves whether you should wait a bit to apply. Articulate that you have appropriate supports in place and that you are not still struggling with something that would likely no longer be an issue in a year or two.

Thirdly, remember that this is meant to be a strengths-based application. That may be hard to remember when the instructions are literally tell us why you didn’t perform competitively in undergraduate or on your LSAT. However, we do mean for it to be strengths-based. When discussing the inherent deficit part of the conversation, it’s possible to address the necessary negatives in a few short sentences before moving on to your strengths. It’s also possible to focus on growth, lessons learned, and perspective gained.

Many people find it very difficult to speak about themselves, so we have put together a list of questions to help guide you. The questions are about 2/3 of the way down the page. Hint: looking through these questions might help you connect with some of the things we are looking for when we read an Inclusive Statement.

Make sure that when you write, your statement tells a logical story using clear language. It should flow easily from one point to the next. Bouncing around from one event to the next without tying them together isn’t helpful generally.

Avoid using evasive speech. It’s really difficult for us to make a decision about an Inclusive Statement when we cannot tell what you are talking about. It also doesn’t always look like an applicant has accepted something that has happened in their lives if they can’t talk about it in plain language. Granted, some of that less-than-plain language may be intended as a writing style choice, but plain language is a better choice in this particular exercise.

Try not to repeat things you said in your Personal Statement. Every year, we get a handful of applicants who submit the same document for their Personal Statement as their Inclusive Statement. We get many more who just cut and paste portions from one to the other. Please note that the same people who read your Personal Statement read your Inclusive Statement. The two statements have very different purposes, and, yes, we did intend for you to write both of them independently. Look at the ways in which the instructions of each ask different questions and point you in different directions. Think of the two statements as complimentary, not an overlapping set.

Lastly, it is not necessary to overshare. It is, though, necessary to tell a complete story. However, writing (and reading) your story may be difficult. It’s important to acknowledge that there is a balance between what needs to be said to tell your story and what isn’t necessary to understand the complete picture. We rely on our applicants to know what that boundary is for themselves. Reliving events and further traumatizing yourself and potentially reviewers isn’t the goal of writing this statement. Remember, this meant to be a strengths-based statement that only you are qualified to tell.

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