Sidley Austin application question

[reedyboy]

Hi guys,
The Sidley application has this question on its work experiences section.

"Detail your extra curricular activities and interests and positions of responsibility. Please state what you feel you have gained from them and how others have benefited from your involvement. (250 words max)*".

My question is whether this should be answered in bullet points or in a structured paragraph. It seems most intuitive to write each activity and then around 50 words on it and start a new pargraph. But unsure if they are looking for a more structured answer which draws upon multiple experiences to evidence a quality gained?

 

[Manifesting]

I think these things are up to you. Lots of firms have a similar prompt and equally start them with the verb “detail.” I remember at the Legal Cheek law fair, a Latham GR member suggested that people may use bullet points for these questions and that applicants should consider structuring and formatting answers in a way that make it easy for GR to read.

That said, I personally much prefer prose because I believe it can look more polished. And also, in my opinion, had the Sidley GR team wanted bullet points, they would have asked you to “list” them (like when they asked for academic scholarships and prizes), not “detail” them.

I really like Sidley’s prompt because it asks you about not only what you gained from your extracurriculars but also what others had. As a result, my writing felt more thought out and I used up a little more words with each activity than I normally would. Specially, I talked about a couple of my interests, followed by activities I did under those umbrellas. This interest-driven structure, in my opinion, made my final essay look and feel a lot less disjointed.