Law School Admissions Letter

As a passionate pediatrician, my father dedicated his life to children, not least of all me. But when Multiple Sclerosis (MS) took from my father his professional passions, it also took my father from me. Today, forced into a premature “retirement” due to his disability, my father is a shell of his former self, literally unrecognizable to even his loved ones. Throughout my childhood, I bore witness to a degenerative disease’s ability to slowly rob a loved one of his physical and mental health. Armed with an MS-HAS, a law degree will allow me to make a meaningful contribution to the healthcare systems that have failed my father.

My father’s desire and ability never wavered; with his professional life out of the picture, he dedicated more time to me. To be sure, there were both good times and bad times but, most importantly, there was time. What there was not was a return on the passionate professional investment that my father had made--as a self-employed medical practitioner, my father’s forced retirement resulted in the involuntary termination of his health insurance coverage. My family and I were now uninsurable due to “pre-existing conditions” considerations, so my mother returned to the workplace simply and only in order to obtain health insurance for our family. But even this did not fully account for my father’s condition.

Ultimately, healthcare that accounts for endless amounts of prescription medications is often anything but “affordable.” In our case, we lost both our healthcare and a provider, though I found myself gaining something: a passion for problem-solving, as applied to our nation’s broken healthcare system. No LSAT preparatory course was possible for me, but I nevertheless began pursuing a place in the legal profession, which I hope to engage as a means of curing the ills that have plagued my family, in addition to so many others. I cannot solve the problems now plaguing my own family, but through studying the systems that contributed to these problems, I hope to change them for the better. Indeed, I can think of no better cause to which to dedicate myself going forward.

Through the law and its practice, I hope to make the best use of my Masters in Health Services Administration by discovering new means of implementing genuine change at a level that might serve to directly impact the lives of so many unfortunate citizens. Through combining my understanding of and experiences in the healthcare context with an understanding of the law and how it relates to complex systems of administration, I believe that I will be able to make the meaningful contributions of which my father believes me capable. In fact, given his confidence in my capacity for such a contribution, I know that I must fulfill these expectations. With an advanced degree already under my belt, the pursuit of a second one is something into which I am prepared to invest the entirety of myself.

Most people spend their entire lives without ever discovering something about which they are truly passionate. To silver lining in the cloud that has been my father’s illness is that I will not have to spend another day in the search for an opportunity to change the world for the better. If granted admission to __________________ (Law School X), I will continue to dedicate my every waking moment to the effectuation of meaningful change in the healthcare industry. Though I do not yet know the precise manner in which I will impact the healthcare industry, I do know that I will be able to bring a unique perspective to this industry, both professionally and personally. I also know that I will bring these same qualities to the table of the law school in which I choose to enroll. I very much hope to have the opportunity to enroll at ______________ (Law School X), from which I hope to graduate with distinction before distinguishing myself just as my father would expect me to.