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Sample Statement of Purpose for M. Juris
“To live a meaningful life, to be well-read and to seek new
knowledge.” I have always applied this axiom as the guiding principle
of my academic endeavors. I belong to that generation of university
students in China who graduated in the last decade of the 20th
century, when the country was already implementing a market economy.
As products of the educational system governed by market economy, most
students have become correspondingly pragmatic-minded and regarded
academic pursuit as a means of achieving material wealth. As far as I
am concerned, I have stubbornly adhered to my deeply-entrenched belief
that the purpose of intellectual endeavors and the meaning of life are
to speculate on the ultimate, to create and to contribute. With such a
long-cherished motivation, I would like to suspend my present career
and come to a new starting point—to apply for admission into the world
renowned Law School of your first-class university to embark on a M.
Juris. I believe that I am a competitive applicant for your program
based on my 4-year systematic education in law as an undergraduate,
7-year work experience in the related fields, as well as the skills
and the ample potential to undertake legal practice and research that
my education and work experience have endowed me with.
My 4-year rigorous undergraduate program was done from 1992 to 1996 at
the Law School of China XX University, the most prestigious law school
in China. The solid and comprehensive coursework that I did for my
program covered the theories of almost all the fields of
jurisprudence. On top of that, I gradually developed a pluralistic
perspective in my academic research under the influence of my advisor
and other teachers, all of whom obtained advanced degrees in
jurisprudence from the law schools in western countries. Out of my
wide-ranged interest, I read extensively most of the western classics
in law and philosophy including On Crime and Punishment, On the Spirit
of Law and The Social Contract. Those classic works aroused in me the
humanitarian feelings that have largely been suppressed by the
existing education that I have been receiving in China. They ushered
me onto the road of questing for a totally different kind of truth and
for the first time in my life they heightened my deep concern for
human welfare and my deep sympathy for the tribulations that human
beings have to undergo.
At the same time, law study made it possible for me to bring into full
play my faculty of creative thinking. Two cases can illustrate this
point. The first is that, as early as 1993, I independently developed
The Management System of XX. This multi-level database management
system, which incorporated such diverse functions as data collection,
analysis, query and retrieval, could legitimately be considered a
sophisticated high-tech information product considering the technical
background of that time—the WINDOWS operation system had not come into
existence and the computer technology was mainly dominated by the
computers of 286 model. Being the first of its kind in my law school,
the system significantly helped enhance the efficiency of
jurisprudence research and for this I was awarded the honor of the
Second Prize for Scientific Research Achievements of my university.
The second case is my participation as a research assistant in our
school’s Legal Regulation Research Project from 1995 to 1996. By
consulting and translating a large amount of legal literature and
doing extensive on-the-spot sampling investigations, I completed my
thesis which was entitled XX. The significance of this thesis is that,
at a time when the rule of law has not come to play an important part
in the social life of the Chinese citizens and when people have hardly
paid any attention to the issue of legal supervision (the concepts of
the rule of law and legal regulation are just beginning to be the
formal subjects of government concern now!), it touched on a very
sensitive topic with foresight and pioneering spirit. The thesis
received a “Class A” rating for its originality in that year.
Upon graduation, I availed myself of various opportunities to
undertake legal practice. First, I worked at the Ministry of Justice
(XX Provincial Branch) where I examined and checked the
foreign-related legal cases undertaken by lawyers across the province.
Then I launched my own company where I was involved in providing legal
consultations to local enterprises and organizations. I also served as
a voluntary legal advisor to the Justice Promotion Foundation of XX
Province. I derive immense satisfaction and a strong sense of personal
achievement each time I offer legal aid to the people and the society
with my professional knowledge and wisdom.
On account of my prominent performance in work and my good command of
English, I was sent in 1998 to attend an intensive common law training
program sponsored by the XX. This training program was taught solely
in English language by professors of American XX Foundation, scholars
sent by XX Justice Department and XX and XX lawyers. In this program,
I received systematic training in courses such as British and American
contract law, trial systems, American uniform commercial code,
business law and legal regulatory environment, American Constitution,
etc. and I was given the honor of Excellent Graduate. In the course of
this program, I participated in the XX International Symposium on
Bankruptcy Law at which I presented a research paper entitled The
Present Condition of China’s Enforcement of Bankruptcy Law. The paper
captured the general attention of the participants. In retrospect, the
10-month training program, by familiarizing me with the British and
American legal systems through the learning of major law courses,
considerably broadened my vision and has laid a firm foundation for me
to perform more advanced studies of the law courses concerning British
and American legal systems.
The most direct factor that has prompted me to this application
decision is my one-and-a-half-year experience since 2000 of
participating in examining and rectifying the market order of the
futures transactions as a member of the work group of Improving and
Rectifying XX Province’s Financial Sector. In my work, I came to
discover that the development of China’s futures market faces serious
legal restrictions. An obvious fact is that there exist many outmoded
laws and regulations that are absolutely out of tune with the growth
of China’s futures market. With the increasing integration of China
and the rest of the world, represented by China’s accession into the
WTO, there are simply too many provisions in China’s existing law that
hinder the formation and the sustainable development of a standardized
futures market in China. It is pathetic to find that the grave legal
imperfections inherent in China’s futures industry epitomize just a
tiny fraction of the dire reality that China’s legal system woefully
lags behind the needs of social development of the country.
To promote China’s perfection of its legal system, it is imperative to
learn advanced knowledge of jurisprudence from western countries and
to assimilate useful experiences from western legal systems. As home
to the common law system and to modern capitalism, Britain is reputed
for its time-honored legal system and for its unparalleled research in
jurisprudence, with a wealth of in-depth literature and data
collection. For a young man like me who is bent on the study of
jurisprudence, it is inevitably the best place where to seek an
advanced education. I wish to receive an overall education in
jurisprudence while focusing on the legal regulation of the financial
market, which is closely connected with my past career background.
Through your M. Juris program I intend to proceed onto an M. Phil
program. It is my expectation to comprehensively and perceptively
study the legal spirit and the legal system of the common law so that
I may be fully equipped to contribute my knowledge and expertise in
jurisprudence to the construction of China’s forthcoming legal
civilization and to the improvement of China’s legal regulation
system.
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