Although law school admissions is primarily a numbers game, I think some of the comments in this thread are underestimating the influence and importance of soft factors. Admission committees do pay close attention to and place significant weight on personal statements and LOR's, etc.
It's impossible to assign an across the board percentage to how much weight is placed on soft factors since it varies by school. Some LS's are numbers whores, whereas other admission committees go with a much more holistic approach in making admit/reject decisions.
Treat soft factors as insignificant/unimportant and submit a half-baked/low quality personal statement and LOR's at your own peril!
A crappy personal statement and/or weak LOR's can easily tank admission chances and cause rejection of an applicant that would otherwise be an auto-admit by the numbers alone. I've heard of many instances of people with a high or near perfect GPA and high LSAT score getting rejected by schools they were at or above the 75% index numbers for. Typically those people didn't take the PS and other application components seriously, didn't put in the effort, and submitted crap because they figured their numbers would cover for it and carry the day.
As far as work experience is concerned, having worked in a law office or as a paralegal does not impress admission committees or even raise an eyebrow. It does not give you any sort of edge over applicants that haven't worked in a law office/in the legal field.
PS: please people, use the enter key to paragraph when making a long post, it makes it a lot easier to read.
