Competition law postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

My interest in competition law began in a second-year contract seminar that drifted off topic. We were discussing standard form terms, and our tutor mentioned that a supplier telling retailers what price to charge online is treated very differently from a supplier merely suggesting it. The distinction seemed almost arbitrary until I read into the reasoning: the law is less concerned with the paperwork than with whether rivalry between sellers survives. That shift in perspective, from the bilateral contract to the shape of the market around it, is what I want to study properly.

I took the competition and regulation options available in my LLB and wrote my dissertation on resale price maintenance in online marketplaces, focusing on how the object-restriction framework under Article 101 and the Chapter I prohibition copes with pricing algorithms and marketplace platform parity clauses. Working through decisions and the accompanying guidance taught me how much of the subject is argument about counterfactuals: what would have happened to prices absent the agreement. I found the economic reasoning demanding rather than decorative, and I taught myself the basics of market definition, the hypothetical monopolist test and concentration measures using an undergraduate industrial organisation textbook alongside the legal materials. My supervisor's main criticism was that my early drafts treated economic evidence as a settled backdrop rather than something the parties contest; redrafting around that point improved the work considerably and it was my strongest mark of the degree.

Alongside my studies I have worked for three years at a garden centre café, the last eighteen months as a shift supervisor. Customer-facing work has been more relevant than it sounds. I handle complaints about pricing and promotions, and I have watched how a small independent responds when a larger chain opens nearby: what we change, what we cannot change because of our supply agreements, and how narrow the room for manoeuvre is. It has also given me practical habits that suit legal work. I draft the rotas, reconcile the till at close and am the person who has to explain an unwelcome decision calmly to someone who disagrees with it.

I am treasurer of my local badminton club, which has around sixty members. When I took over, subscriptions were collected inconsistently and we were close to losing our court booking through late payment. I moved the accounts onto a simple spreadsheet system, set up standing orders and put a one-page summary to the committee each quarter. Two seasons on, the club holds a modest reserve and has been able to subsidise juniors' county entry fees. It is a small thing, but it involved persuading volunteers to accept more structure than they were used to, and negotiating a longer booking at a better rate with the leisure centre.

Postgraduate study appeals to me because competition law rewards depth. I would like to work seriously on merger control and the assessment of dominance, particularly abuse of dominance in digital markets, where I am still unsure how far existing doctrine stretches and how much of the new ex ante regulation is a separate project rather than a continuation. I am also keen to study private enforcement and follow-on damages, an area I only touched on as an undergraduate. I want to be taught alongside people with different national backgrounds, since so much of the subject involves comparing how regulators reach different conclusions on similar facts.

My longer-term aim is to qualify and practise in competition law, ideally in a team that handles both advisory work and investigations. I know that route is competitive. A rigorous master's, with substantial written work and proper grounding in the economics, is the preparation I need and the study I would most like to be doing.

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