Personal Statement
...ic rights than our nation’s legislatures. But understanding the cases that affect our liberties requires time, energy, and expertise that the average citizen does not have. So lawyers occupy a crucial place in the American judicial system—they act as intermediaries between the Courts and the people. After the semester, I turned my research into an honors thesis on diversity in higher education, and several smaller essays on individualism in the Constitution. I was able to present several of them at academic conferences, but my proudest moment was when I presented my thesis work as the only undergraduate at the Georgia Political Science Association annual conference. My interest was piqued, but law was still primarily an academic interest, so I spent most of my junior year debating between graduate and law school. That summer, several events changed my life and convinced me that law school was where I wanted to be. The first was the arrest of a young man I have known most of my life. Just out of high school, he was arrested on minor criminal charges. The family and everyone close to them were devastated. There is no doubt in my mind that his actions deserved to be punished, but what overwhelmed me about the situation was the total helplessness of the boy and his family. To those on the inside, he was a good kid, terrified by the consequences of a few bad decisions. But to the law, the police, and the public defenders, he was just another criminal. I wanted to help, to give him the support and assistance he needed; I wanted someone to defend him who believed in him, someone who wouldn’t assume he was already settled into a life of crime. But there was nothing I could do but pray for someone who could help him. Only three weeks later, my sense of helplessness hit closer to home. On the way to pick my mother up from the airport, a car much larger than my own left a subdivision I was passing. I do not remember the crash, the minutes before it, or many hours after it. The officers told my family that the driver had not seen me and entered the road directly in front of me. I was going under the speed limit and swerved to avoid the car, but it was too close. I broke both of my legs and spent over a week in the hospital. In the weeks following the wreck, I became acutely aware of the importance of the legal profession. Hospital bills, surgery bills, and physical therapy had to be dealt with under laws my family and I knew nothing about. In a wheel chair for almost two months and often sedated by pain medication, I was unable to keep track of anything, and lacked the expertise to deal with the insurance companies and doctors involved. In addition to every day life, my family was still reeling from the accident. We needed someo...