I hear so many stories of students saying: my essay was brilliant, unique, special - I worked so hard and none of it translated into results. Yes, because you are doing it ALL WRONG!
I have been admitted into Law school, graduated top of my A Level cohort, and have won national writing competitions. Here is my trick on how I got shortlisted for both my Law and Philosophy essays (Q3 and Q1 respectively).
Firstly, have clarity of argument. No clear roadmap, no results. In the Art of War, it is said "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail". Prepare your research extensively, not using some 13th century legal philosopher's quotes, but recent articles that actually interest you. Clearly label Introduction and Conclusion to help your poor examiner too!
Next, mention your counters. Deal with them. If I argue that jurors cannot understand complex forensic statistics, I should then say "Skeptics of this view argue that we could have training sessions for jurors. That being said, this argument is dismantled in that many jurors may have different levels of background, and these programs would be very expensive to manage". Do you see all the evaluation and analysis in those three sentences?
Also, if you want to get shortlisted: be clear. If you want a high or very high commendation, have excellent language and research. If you want to win? As in, grand prize, or your category? HAVE AN INTERESTING TAKE.
There are 100 000 students writing, how can you be so arrogant to think that none of them will have the same arguments as you. What makes you special? Because you used fancy adjectives and asked ChatGPT to give you some synonyms? No.
Take this example: Should we be polite to ChatGPT?
"Let us begin my first asking ourselves the more dramatic question: do we have a duty to be polite?" Starting it off like this will immediately hook your examiner. Then you can go on to say that it is not a duty but a social convention we often follow. Then say "but social implies this is an interaction with other people. Can we consider ChatGPT as "people"?". Then reach whatever conclusion follows.
Be smart about it. Be clear. Be concise. Do not be loquacious in your explanations. It is innocuous to navigate your reader, but do not spoon-feed them. AND, LASTLY - do not blame anyone but yourself. My DM's are always open to the JLI community. Good luck and enjoy this guys! <3