Will my personal background be considered when selectors consider my essay?

I'm a prospective Law LLB applicant who is currently in the process of drafting the personal statement.

I grew up in a country where citizens are tried and punished for holding certain views are practicing certain religions. As a result, and as you can begin to understand, issues like freedom of speech, separations of powers, and religious intolerance are close to my heart.

I was planning on structuring my personal statement in a way that I would be able to talk about my personal background, use the books I have read ( Burke, Locke, Tocqueville, The Federalist Papers etc.) throughout my life to support my views and reasons for studying law, and address my ambitions for the future.

Here is my problem:

After reading through examples of essays from previous students, I discovered that talking about notions like democracy and freedom of speech are considered to be "cliche" and "unoriginal".

What can I do about this.

I'm not applying to do law, PPE/economics and politics, but I only talked about free speech (in fact liberty but whatever Mill mentioned it) in relation to the books I read and I wrote about what I thought about them.

I think a personal statement should be more about discussion and evaluation of the academic stuff you've done not about the ideas alone, you can save that for your interview.

Best of luck applying.

Thanks for your message.

Some Universities, such as LSE, do not give interviews to applicants as part of their admissions procedure.