The law school addendum: when to explain, and how briefly

An addendum is a short, separate note explaining something in your file that a reader will otherwise have to guess about. Its entire purpose is to remove a question mark, and the best ones do it in a paragraph and stop.

What an addendum is for

• A semester or year that is clearly out of line with the rest of your record.
• A gap in education or employment that a reader will notice and wonder about.
• A large gap between two LSAT scores, or a canceled score, where something concrete explains it.
• A character-and-fitness disclosure — an academic or legal matter the application specifically asks about.
• An unusual academic record: a transfer, a degree taken over many years, an institution with a grading system that does not translate.

What it is not for

It is not for arguing that your numbers understate you. Every applicant below a median believes that, committees have read it thousands of times, and it converts a neutral number into a negative impression.

It is also not a second personal statement. The personal statement is where you are interesting; the addendum is where you are brief and factual. Mixing them costs you both.

How to write one

• State the fact. What the anomaly is, without euphemism.
• State the cause, once, without dramatizing it.
• State what changed, with evidence — the grades afterward, the work since, the thing you did about it.
• Stop. Three or four sentences is a strong addendum. A page is a red flag.

The tone to aim for is a competent adult accounting for something matter-of-factly. No apology, no plea, no blame — a reader is deciding whether you will handle difficulty in law school professionally, and the addendum is a live demonstration of exactly that.

The GPA case specifically

This is worth knowing before you write anything, because the number a school sees may be lower than the one you have been quoting yourself, for structural reasons rather than performance ones. If retaken courses are why your LSAC GPA is below your transcript GPA, that is a legitimate, factual, one-sentence addendum — and it is far stronger than a paragraph about how much you have grown.