Many people have asked me to share sample law school diversity statements. Below are 6 of my favorites.
Diversity Statement #1: Family Adversity & Caregiving
A raw and resilient narrative of growing up with an addicted father and assuming a caregiving role for both siblings and parent. This statement explores how hardship shaped the applicant’s lens of empathy and motivation to pursue law.
Result: Admitted to a T20 school with a large scholarship, despite a sub-2.8 GPA.
I grew up in Ohio with my parents and two younger brothers. Though I lived with my parents, I was often left caring for my brothers, as my father was frequently unfit and my mother was out working well over sixty hours a week to keep a roof over our heads. I made sure my brothers went to school, had food to eat, did their homework, showered, brushed their teeth, and were cared for when they got sick. That was the easy part.
I also had to shield them from our father’s addiction. Since I was a toddler, he has been an addict. He has been to rehab eight times, prison three times, and threatened suicide at least six times. And he never hid his problems from my brothers and me. When I was six, I had to wrestle away his gun as he waved it around during a drunken stupor. When I was twelve, I had to discard bags of pills and needles he left out on the kitchen table one night. If I hadn’t woken up early the following morning, my brothers likely would have got to them. On more occasions than I can remember, I hid and spilled out his alcohol. Despite it all, each time he went to rehab I told myself that he would get better. He never did.
A few weeks into my senior year of high school, my father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. It progressed rather quickly and, by the time I started college, he was no longer able to perform routine self-care. With no relatives willing to have anything to do with him, I was left as his sole caregiver. It remained this way for my stay at [university 1] and [university 2]. As I pursued my first bachelor’s degree, I cared for both my father and brothers.
For years, I let my family struggles prevent me from reaching my potential. I worked for the moment, trying to keep things together and make sure that each day ended with my brothers safe and my father not out on the street. It wasn’t until my senior year at [university 2] that I realized my experiences were not normal and that I was letting them hold me back. While they no longer do, I still use them as a lens to view the world, which enables me to better understand and help those in difficult circumstances. I will continue to do so as I pursue a legal career.
Diversity Statement #2: Animal Rescue as Identity & Upbringing
A vivid, outside-the-box essay about growing up in a rescue ranch with dozens of animals. The applicant draws out lessons of patience, adaptability, and non-verbal empathy.
Result: Admitted to 8 of the T14 schools.
A camel seeking retirement from a lifetime of pulling carts. A duck left locked in an abandoned house. A starving group of emus set free in the wild by their owners. A gentle draft horse abused by his handler in preparation for rodeo work. Goats, sheep, parrots, alpacas, and miniature brahmin cows, all relinquished by overeager owners unprepared for the routines of feeding and care. With each story, the size of our family and rescue operation grew.
We took in our first rescue when I was four, and by the time I was seven, I was one of about sixty “children.” Like any siblings, we sometimes squabbled. In the living room, I competed with a dozen rescue dogs for space on the couch. In the kitchen, I wrestled with our potbellied pig, Moo, over cereal in the pantry. I quickly learned the difficulty of pulling an indulging pig from his food. But it wasn’t all fighting; we also loved each other. My first responsibility was caring for a pair of emu chicks that nested in my bathtub. Their hungry chirps served as my alarm for school. During dinner, I ate with one hand while the other held a bottle for our orphaned baby llama.
As I grew older, my role shifted from sibling to parent. Starting in fourth grade, I spent weekends trimming goat hooves, shearing alpacas, and tossing hay to our motley herd. Groggy school mornings involved carrying four happily chattering parrots to their outdoor aviary. During the summer, I mixed peacock feed and cleaned stalls before breakfast, occasionally finding myself holding down a kicking donkey for his midday shots.
The work was the easy part. Much harder was establishing friendships with creatures taught to distrust humans. When I was thirteen, I remember always crouching to approach Napoleon, our miniature horse, who would have bolted otherwise. It would be months before I could stand in front of him. When I was sixteen, I learned that reared ears on a camel is a sign of comfort, while the same on a llama precedes spitting. It wasn’t an easy lesson, and I got pretty wet while learning it. Just last year, I spent several hours a day over twelve weeks soothing a petrified Great Pyrenees. She eventually stopped peeing herself at the sight of a human and was adopted to a good home.
Decades on the ranch have taught me to work with compassion and accept long stretches with little progress. I have learned that what works for one creature may be the complete opposite for another, each idiosyncrasy revealed over time. My siblings instilled in me the virtues of adaptability and patience, and those are the lessons I carry closest—knowing how to sit, listen, and understand others, regardless of species.
Diversity Statement #3: Bicultural Conflict (Turkish-Armenian Identity)
Explores the applicant’s early identity conflict between Armenian peers and Turkish heritage, then pivots to self-acceptance and a commitment to impact over labels.
Result: Admitted to 8 of the T14 schools.
I sat down at a dinner table covered in all sorts of Turkish and Armenian meats, fish, and cheese. It was like this every Sunday. My family got together, talked, laughed, and shared stories about our week, code-switching between languages as easily as we did ethnic dishes. After we finished eating, my grandma put the leftover enginar, a traditional Turkish dish made of artichoke hearts, into my lunch box for school.
I obviously couldn’t bring enginar to my Armenian school, so I woke up early the next day to make a PB&J. If I had brought the enginar, my peers would have tauntingly called me a Turk and claimed I wasn’t a real Armenian. As a result of the Turkish genocide of Armenians during World War I, there is enmity between the two countries. My family is Armenian but lived in Turkey for many years before moving to the U.S. in the 80s.
In my first few years in Armenian school, I became a cultural chameleon. I couldn’t show my Turkish self without risking ridicule, so I embraced my Armenian side and distanced myself from anything Turkish. I studied pages of Armenian words I had only known in Turkish, created playlists mixing System of a Down with Armenian church hymns, and discussed the country’s history with peers at lunch. At home, I blurred boundaries between my two cultures. I filled my dinner plate with Turkish and Armenian food, affixed Turkish prefixes on Armenian nouns, and watched episodes of Turkish dramas with my Armenian-speaking grandparents.
As time passed, while I flourished in school, I felt out of place at home. I couldn’t balance the two cultures and elected to just cut out my Turkish half. This led to a strain on my family relationships. I was quiet when anything Turkish came up, in a way embracing my peers’ negative outlook. It wasn’t until I attended an event about a slain Turkish-Armenian journalist that things clicked. Learning how Hrant Dink dedicated his life to seeking positive change in Turkish-Armenian relations made me realize I didn’t need to be a cultural chameleon. What defined Dink wasn’t his culture or ethnicity but his work.
With this in mind, I no longer felt conflicted by my mixed culture. I am defined by my actions, values, and goals, not my countries of origin. While I stayed sensitive to my peers, I focused more on cultivating my unique sense of self and less on fitting everyone else’s idea of who I should be. As a law student and attorney, I will keep this lesson at the forefront of my mind. Ultimately, it is my work and impact on the world and those around me that is most important. And I will do everything in my power to make a mark worth remembering.
Diversity Statement #4: Third-Culture Kid & Global Mobility
A reflective account of growing up across continents and cultures as a diplomat’s child, highlighting the applicant’s adaptability, empathy, and global perspective.
Result: Admitted to several top programs including Boston College as a splitter.
After an absence of almost three years, I’m back in Shanghai and meeting an old friend for dinner. She asks if I miss being in America. Without hesitation, I say no, explaining that in many ways I feel more at home in China, since this is where I spent most of my childhood. Plus, the food is better, I joke. “That’s surprising,” she says, “because you’re American, not Chinese.”
My heart sinks. In America, I am seen first and foremost as Asian. In China, I’m a foreigner. In reality, both are right. I’m half Chinese and half American. Being a “halfie” means my features are a kind of a Rorschach test for the viewer, morphing according to who sees me. Although my friend may feel certain I am American, my mind wanders through memories that would challenge her conviction—such as being teased as the only Asian girl in my third-grade ESL class or being told to “go back to China” during the height of the Covid-19 crisis. In the eyes of many, I am Chinese.
My father was an American diplomat to China and my mother was a stage and film actress from Shanghai. Every one to three years, we moved between Singapore, Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Washington, D.C. By the time I started high school, I had already attended seven schools in three countries and mastered code-switching between Mandarin and English.
Moving so often taught me to leave certain assumptions behind and to see “normal” in a new light. Ordinary things like classroom etiquette became sources of novelty and revelation. In Washington, D.C., I was encouraged to ask questions. But in Beijing, my questions were reprimanded as undermining the teacher’s authority. In Hong Kong, I took exams that rewarded my ability to memorize long passages of text. In New York, pure reproduction was not enough; I also had to critically analyze what I learned. These contrasts were disorienting at times, but I embraced them with an open mind, adapting to the environment I was in.
While I used to feel lost among the many places I have lived, I now see my bicultural upbringing as a gift. It taught me how to navigate ambiguity and adapt quickly in unfamiliar places. It helped me internalize the practice of leading with empathy, not judgment. And while it has taken me time, I no longer define myself in fractions, as a “halfie,” but as the sum of whole parts: Chinese and American. As I step into the classroom, I look forward to sharing the multiplicity of values and perspectives I have been exposed to. They have shaped who I am today and will no doubt shape my journey in law.
Diversity Statement #5: Tinkerer Identity & Out-of-the-Box Strengths
A tech-infused narrative that connects childhood tinkering and obsessive curiosity to problem-solving and unconventional thinking in legal spaces.
Result: Admitted to a T6 school with a sub-3.2 GPA.
Growing up, I was a tinkerer. I began as my father’s assistant for home construction projects—building benches, installing drywall, wiring audio systems—before going off on my own. As I fiddled, my father’s favorite maxim replayed in my head: “measure twice and cut once.” Except I usually cut several times. Any time I got my hands on a new device, I grabbed my toolset and tested how much I could take it apart before I had to put it back together.
When I saw how simple the inside of my first electric guitar was, I took out its shoddy pickups and soldered in noiseless ones. I did the same with the tone and volume potentiometers, and it was soon a pattern for me. Any time I got something new, I upgraded it. I stopped being interested in full devices, rather seeking out parts. This approach allowed me to get an electric guitar with a sound as smooth as a Santana solo. I saved up money from odd jobs for a bridge, tuners, bone nut, strings, and pickups. For pennies on the dollar, I assembled a new guitar. To my friends, it was high-end; to me, it was a Frankenstein masterpiece.
I took a similar approach with my computer when it could no longer keep up with my music production needs. In my basement were old desktops covered in dust, so I stripped them for their best parts to build a “new” one. As my music became more complex, however, my computer was no longer able to handle my processing needs, so I did the same thing again. I used what remained of my savings to buy parts from Newegg and built a faster computer from scratch. That did the trick for a couple of years, but over the last half-decade, I have tinkered with it at every opportunity, swapping out and upgrading parts. The computer almost looks like a taped-together kid’s project at this point, but you would never know once it’s turned on.
As I have matured, my love for disassembling gadgets and rebuilding a stronger version has carried into my intellectual pursuits. Examining the components and logical structure of an argument enlivens me, and I am not averse to playing devil’s advocate. Beyond the theoretical, my love for incorporating technology into my pursuits surfaces in everything I do, whether it’s tackling web design for a research project or fixing people’s laptops on weekends. As a law student, I look forward to using my technical skills to provide insight on legal issues where technology plays a role. Likewise, I know that my experiences will enable me to approach issues from an unconventional angle and contribute a nuanced voice inside and outside the classroom.
Diversity Statement #6: Cultural Connection Through Cooking
A rich, sensory essay on Iranian cooking traditions as a bridge to ancestry and values like precision, pride, and intergenerational legacy.
Result: Admitted to a T6 school with a sub-3.0 GPA.
As soon as I enter the Iranian market, I go straight to the butcher and ask for the best Cornish hens that day. Then it’s over to the produce section in search of the freshest leafy vegetables. I grab some parsley and remember what grandma told me: more than two brown leaves is a bad sign, no dry stems, and when in doubt, use the smell test. I sift through a dozen wilted stocks, grab the brightest one, and throw it in the bag.
Cooking has always been my way of connecting with my culture and ancestry. Although I have never actually visited Iran, I have experienced it in the kitchen many times over. From a young age, my grandma taught me how to make Iranian dishes that were passed down to her and had me repeatedly practice the relevant techniques until I perfected them. In her eyes, patience and attention to detail were necessary prerequisites for success in any endeavor.
When I return from the market, I start preparing grandma’s signature dish: Zereshk Polo Morgh, chicken and saffron rice mixed with barberries and pistachios. Task one: long and fluffy rice. I start the brief boiling process, removing a grain every minute to check the consistency. A slightly mushy exterior is my cue to begin steaming. I slowly layer the rice into a giant pot and crank up the heat to ensure a crunchy bottom tahdig layer, the crown jewel of all Iranian rice-based dishes. When steam pours out of the lid, I reduce the flame and let it simmer. Task two: juicy Cornish hens. The dry rubbed hens go into the oven belly up, with a small base of broth to retain moisture. Set it to 385 degrees for 3 hours, then 5 minutes in the broiler for crispy skin. Task three: shiny barberries. I sauté them in saffron butter for roughly 2.5 minutes, immediately removing the pan from the heat when they start ballooning. A quick stir with brown sugar provides a sweet and glossy finish.
Preparing a feast each week has been a tradition in my family for generations. Although I was usually grandma’s assistant, today, I’m in the kitchen alone while she chats with my family in the living room. Aromas of Iran fill the air as I put on the finishing touches. I grab sixteen plates and begin filling them. A mound of barberry laden saffron rice, a sprinkle of slivered pistachios, and a serving of golden Cornish hen with parsley to garnish. I bring the plates out to my family and wait for grandma’s nod of approval. She nods. I smile widely.
My years in the kitchen have bonded me with a culture I deeply cherish. Through grandma’s teachings, I have learned to value patience and precision, knowing that prioritizing the little things will always make for a better, more complete product. I am confident these values will help me excel in law school and my career.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is a perspective and/or experiences statement?
Most schools no longer request a “diversity statement” by name. Instead, they ask about a formative life experience, a personal perspective, a moment of growth, a time you changed your opinion, or a situation that tested you. These new prompts are broader, but the goal is similar: show how your background or mindset adds something valuable to the law school environment.
Can I still write about race, disability, religion, or socioeconomic background?
Yes. Schools can’t explicitly ask, but you can still write about identity—especially if it’s part of a story that shaped how you think, what you value, or how you approach the world.
Do I need to write one?
Some schools require it. Most treat it as optional. If you have a meaningful story or lens that wasn’t explored in your personal statement, it’s usually worth submitting.
What makes for a strong statement?
Not just the topic—how you tell it. Strong diversity statements focus on reflection, not resume. They often explore tension, change, contradiction, or emotional distance traveled. The best ones show the writer’s thought process evolving.
How long should it be?
Follow the school’s instructions. If there’s no stated limit, aim for one page. A few schools allow up to two pages, but one page is often most effective.
How many different versions will I need?
One core version is fine for most schools, but you may need small tweaks—especially if a prompt emphasizes one specific element (e.g., opinion change, resilience).
How did the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action change the diversity statement?
Instead of a traditional “diversity statement,” many schools now ask applicant to reflect on a formative life experience, identity-driven perspective, resilience, or time they changed their opinion. These updated prompts still serve a similar purpose—highlighting difference, depth, and growth.
Where can I learn how to write my own law school diversity statement?
Check out my Diversity Statement Guide or book a 1-on-1 consultation.
Want to read more standout examples?
Check out winning personal statements and law school resume samples that sealed the deal.