At this stage of the law school admissions process, you probably have Application Season Fatigue Syndrome. You just feel done. So corralling people to write your letters of recommendation (LORs), a nagging and seemingly redundant task, might be the last thing you feel like doing. After all, haven’t you already proven your worth through your polished essays, work experience, LSAT score, and GPA?
We get it. But take a deep breath, and give your LORs your full attention. They carry considerable weight, and the adcoms read them very carefully. A convincing law school recommendation can be the icing on the cake of your already compelling law school application.
In this guide, we tell you everything you need to know about these all-important LORs, including
And as a bonus, we include two sample law school LORs for two very different applicants.
Compelling LORs expand on what you have demonstrated in your essays:
When you consider how much heavy lifting these letters can do, it’s understandable that an adcom struggling to decide between two otherwise equally qualified candidates will give the nod to the one with the stronger LORs. Beneficial LORs are ones written with genuine enthusiasm and highlight specific academic and personal strengths. Conversely, lackluster LORs – ones written by recommenders just going through the motions, without adding any new insights about you or your career potential – can be the kiss of death to your law school application.
Choosing the right people to write your LORs is crucial, yet only a few individuals will be qualified to do them justice.
Effective LORs highlight a range of qualities that adcoms look for when assessing an applicant’s potential to succeed in their law school program. At competitive schools, these qualities include the following:
Nearly all law schools require at least one, and often two, LORs from professors or other college-level instructors who can affirm your academic promise. Some schools require two academic recommendations, even if you have been out of school for more than two years. Ideally, you will have cultivated a relationship with at least one professor with whom you have taken two or more courses and who can assert your intellectual and personal growth and performance over a longer period of time. Strong recommenders could include an advisor on a research project or someone else who can offer evidence of your success in completing advanced coursework.
The professor you choose should also know you well enough to be able to compare you favorably with other students they have taught. They should be absolutely convinced of your academic abilities and potential. This might seem like an obvious point, but an LOR written by a professor from a political science or history class will carry more weight than one written by the instructor of your “History of Film and Social Change” course.
Unless the law school wants academic recommendations exclusively, you have other options. For example, if you’ve been working for several years or have served in the military, one LOR should be written by your employer or supervisor. Here, too, the recommender should be able to write knowingly and enthusiastically about your intelligence, focus, character, leadership, research and writing abilities, and other relevant skills and qualities.
If you are working currently but don’t feel you can afford to reveal to your manager that you are applying to school, go to the next-best source, such as a former supervisor. Do not seek a recommendation based on a position that you held more than three years ago.
What if you’re self-employed or run your own company? In that case, choose a partner, consultant, major client, vendor, supplier, attorney, or accountant to write your LOR. You should have a long-standing relationship (of at least two years) with anyone you select. Additionally, that individual needs to have had opportunities to witness your intelligence, integrity, professionalism, and other strengths. The same holds true if you work in a family business, but don’t make the mistake of asking a relative to write your LOR, especially if the relative shares your last name.
Never choose a recommender based purely on their job title. A teaching assistant or internship supervisor writing about you with genuine enthusiasm is better than the chair of the political science department or your brother-in-law’s stepmother, who is a judge you met once at a summer picnic, writing a vague semi-endorsement that could be about almost anyone.
A heartfelt LOR from someone who knows you well and believes in your academic and personal strengths will shine above one from a relative stranger with a fancy title every time.
Good writing takes time and thought, and this is true of meaningful and beneficial LORs. Writing a recommendation is a lot to ask of an already busy person, so you might feel a little intimidated at the prospect of doing so. But you won’t know whether your professor, boss, or mentor will be available for the task or receptive to the idea until you sit down and make your request. Asking a professor shouldn’t take long – college instructors are used to being asked and will understand what you need. Still, it will help your professors if you explain something about your career goal, why you have chosen the schools and programs you have targeted, and what you’d particularly like them to highlight in their letters.
People who work outside of academia might be less familiar with this process, so make sure to explain why these letters are so important. Be up-front about the time you estimate it will take to draft the letter, and assure them that you’ll make the task as easy as possible by providing a copy of your personal statement, your resume, and a list of highlights from your work/internship experience that will help reinforce your abilities and skills. Once you’ve laid it all on the line, ask your potential recommender whether they feel they are the right person for the job. If they admit – or you sense – that they cannot endorse you enthusiastically, or if they’re hesitant about being able to give the letter the time and attention it requires, they will probably politely decline. If that happens, just move on to the next prospect.
How long should all this take for you, the applicant? It might sound excessive, but we recommend giving this entire process a good three months from the time you approach a recommender with your request until the date the letters are due. This avoids adding pressure to your already packed schedule or to that of the recommender. This is especially true for professors, who are at their busiest in the fall and receive many similar requests.
Now that you’ve secured commitments from your recommenders, give them the tools they need to get the job done. Provide them with as many of the following as are relevant:
It’s possible that even with all the supporting materials you have provided, your recommenders might doubt their ability to fulfill their commitment because of time constraints (or maybe they don’t like writing). In these cases, they might ask you to draft the letter on their behalf and say they will then approve and sign it.
This option might be very tempting. However, it will be a huge red flag if the adcom suspects that you wrote one of your own evaluation letters. And it’s very difficult to pull off sounding like someone else, no matter how hard you try. Your distinctive voice has come through clearly in your personal statement. That’s a good thing and was precisely your goal! Similarly, your LORs must reflect your evaluators’ unique voices, observations, and assessments. Now, because college professors are so often asked to write evaluation letters, if yours begs off, it might be a sign that they are not comfortable writing a convincing one for you.
Employers or supervisors of applicants who are working full-time should also write evaluation letters themselves. However, if they insist that they simply do not have the time or the ability to write an endorsement, yet they seem sincere about wanting to submit one for you, you might have to default to this option. However, this should absolutely be a last resort. If your recommender is not a native English speaker and it would be especially burdensome to them to write the LOR in English, suggest that they write the letter in their native language and offer to pay to have it professionally translated.
If you see no way out of writing a draft for an important recommender, set up a time to meet with them – in person, if possible – and interview them to understand their perspective on your work and your suitability for law school. Be prepared with a list of convincing highlights from your work history that will reinforce the qualities you want the recommender to discuss in their letter. You will already have provided a list of anecdotes and achievements, including projects you completed successfully and what was notable about them.
With some luck, the recommenders will already have read this material, as well as your personal statement and resume, and have ideas ready to share with you. But if they seem unprepared, have the list with you so you can ask questions to help jog their memory. Write down as many points and anecdotes that your recommender discusses during the meeting as possible. Take note of specific words and phrases that are distinctive to their personality and communication style as well as their point of view.
LORs are not long, so don’t repeat information in them that already appears in your personal statement. That being said, certain achievements are so significant that it would only make sense for both you and your recommender to have mentioned them. In this case, your recommender should shed some new light on the achievement from their perspective as a manager or mentor.
Remember that in LORs of this kind, comparative evaluations of the applicant are most helpful to the adcom. For example, “In my five years of running this department and supervising more than 50 employees, Justin has proven to be one of the most nimble thinkers I have ever supervised.” Or “Shannon’s attention to detail and sense of responsibility have stood out notably from those of the dozen or so interns I have managed in recent years.”
Armed with your notes on your recommender’s recollections, you’ll be ready to write an LOR made up of their observations with minimal prompting from you.
Here’s another idea: have your recommender work with an Accepted expert to draft a winning, authentic, and convincing LOR. Click here to learn more about this package!
Daniel is a 22-year-old recent grad who majored in environmental policy analysis. Although he had two internships in the field of environmental planning and research, after much thought, Daniel decided to devote his personal statement to the life lessons he learned from more than 14 years of studying piano and performing in music competitions. Daniel is counting on his LORs to prove his capacity to handle challenging academics.
This letter was written by one of his professors:
It is with great pleasure that I recommend Daniel R. for admittance to your law school. I have been a professor of public policy and environmental law for the past 18 years and first met Daniel during his sophomore year, when he took a lower-division course in environmental law, a challenging topic in which he earned an A-. This course doesn’t lend itself to a lot of class participation, and I appreciated that Daniel seemed thoroughly engaged during every class. He also approached me during office hours for clarification on points he had not understood to his satisfaction. I was pleased to have him return to an upper-division course of mine during his junior year, in ethics in environmental policy. This was a much more participatory class that involved not only class discussions but also cooperative student projects. In class, Daniel’s questions and comments were always thoughtful and to the point. When responding to others who made comments with which he did not agree, Daniel debated them respectfully and often won over classmates with his logic, pleasant attitude, and command of the facts.
Because Daniel is extremely bright and very personable, when my research assistant graduated, I offered Daniel the job. He seemed both flattered and enthusiastic about the prospect, and with his help, I was able to expeditiously collect research on a paper I am now finalizing on the performance of incentive-based policy instruments as they relate to industrial greenhouse gas emissions. My trust in Daniel’s abilities was not misplaced. He was organized and responsible, and showed a refreshing ability to conduct extensive literature reviews with little direction from me. These included data-driven literature reviews and small-scale studies from which he extrapolated the relevant data. His analytical abilities, organizational skills, and sense of responsibility will help him perform at the top of his game in law school and beyond.
I’d also like to point out that Daniel’s major in environmental policy analysis is highly demanding. It requires coursework in both hard science and social science, including biology, chemistry, physics, and calculus, as well as environmental and natural resource economics, ecology, spatial and dynamic bioeconomic modeling, and policy analysis. This makes Daniel’s 3.8 GPA in the major that much more impressive.
This past year, I supervised Daniel again for his senior thesis on water quality planning and public policy. He asked me for feedback on the critical analysis of his data collection methodology a good month earlier than most of his classmates, and also asked me for advice on whom to approach to learn about the latest research on the topic that hadn’t yet been published. His thoroughness and planning showed: his thesis was an outstanding and incisive analysis of this complex issue, particularly his focus on the long-standing issues of water shortages and political turf wars over water in the state of California. Daniel does have a tendency toward perfectionism, but I have seen him learn to trust himself more over the past year and worry slightly less about the final results.
In addition, he has a friendly, collegial personality and many interests, including piano, which I understand he has played at the competitive level for many years. His written and verbal communication skills are of a very high level. (In fact, I have rarely heard him use the irksome verbal tic “like” every third word, as so many other young people do nowadays.) Daniel’s training in environmental analysis and public policy will serve him well in the field of environmental law, and I give him my highest recommendation for admittance to your program.
Let’s look at some of the aspects that make Daniel’s evaluation letter so effective.
His professor established his credibility as a recommender from the start, noting his tenure as a professor at the university and examples of interactions with Daniel showing a long-standing relationship with him. These include the following:
All in all, Daniel comes across as not only extremely capable but also likable and well-rounded.
Now let’s look at our second applicant. Sonya is 27 and has worked for three years at a not-for-profit agency serving immigrant, refugee, and low-income women and children in need of housing and other social services. This letter of recommendation was written by her direct supervisor:
I have known Sonya D. for the past three years, since she joined our agency as a novice case worker. Last year, during a management shake-up, Sonya was promoted from case worker to housing specialist, and I became her direct supervisor. Sonya brought an abundance of enthusiasm to both her roles, successfully going to bat for clients who were entitled to housing and other publicly funded benefits but whose applications had fallen into the quicksand of government bureaucracy. She is firm and unyielding on behalf of her clients, a trait that will make her a very effective legal advocate on behalf of the underprivileged.
In my eight years as a supervisor in the world of social services, I would rank Sonya in the top 1% of the dozens of case workers and volunteers I have worked with. Most people enter this field with a strong emotional commitment to helping the underprivileged, but far fewer also have the intelligence, ability to see the bigger picture, and even business smarts that can make their efforts most effective. For example, Sonya joined the agency during a rocky time when finances were perilous, employee turnover (including management) was rapid, and morale was low. Despite her youth and relative inexperience, within three months, Sonya had suggested creative initiatives to streamline and improve our services and to boost morale.
Sonya caught my attention in particular when she documented the inefficiencies in our client intake system and made specific recommendations for streamlining that system. She lobbied hard for these changes, which were approved and have allowed us to save countless hours of paid staff time each month. Notably, it has also saved as much as two weeks from the time a client registers with us to when she is transitioned into safe, appropriate housing – a dramatic difference in the life of someone who might lack any adequate or safe housing at all. Sonya also offered to manage several volunteers to work on staff-initiated projects, freeing up the time of employees for other casework and reducing administrative costs. Although she is much younger than nearly all our volunteers, she was granted approval. Despite a few bumps along the way, she was able to earn respect from our much older volunteer corps. She is clearly a young woman who is eager to improve her performance in every task she undertakes.
In addition to these achievements, Sonya organized a series of community events in collaboration with our local police precinct to raise our profile in the community, engaging social media and local media outlets to spread the word. Two other community events are already on the calendar for next year.
When Sonya joined our agency, we desperately needed to increase our client base to secure more government funding. Within nine months of implementing her initiatives, we more than doubled the number of clients we had served from the year before, to well over 300 a month. She has been the driving force in helping to reverse our agency’s fortunes. Her ability to see the bigger picture and think creatively and with a business mind-set has made our agency more stable and better equipped to fulfill our mission of helping a vulnerable population find safe housing.
Sonya’s outstanding performance as a case worker and her significant contributions to improve workflow agency-wide resulted in her becoming the first staff member to receive a raise during the two years our agency hobbled along during a severe financial crisis. Last year, she also earned the Best Employee Recognition Award for her service.
Her biggest weakness, in my opinion, has been learning to control her frustration when faced with inefficiencies or ineptitude in the government agencies and other social service arms we work with. She is impatient when waiting for weeks for housing when a more efficient system would have transitioned her clients within days. But she has learned that she must swallow her frustration, because many of these colleagues are often overwhelmed by their own workloads and also lack her talent at envisioning a better way of getting things done. I am satisfied with her progress in this area and am confident that as she grows in maturity and experience, she will manage these trying situations with relative calm.
I can easily imagine Sonya bringing the same commitment, drive, intelligence, and initiative to her studies in law school that she brought to this agency. Our loss will be your law school’s gain.
Sonya’s evaluation is chock-full of impressive achievements. Although none are related to academics or research, it’s clear that someone with this level of intelligence, foresight, determination, organizational and problem-solving skills, and creativity is also likely to excel in law school. Let’s look at a summary of her achievements:
Choosing the right recommenders and giving them the tools they’ll need to write a powerful LOR can upgrade your profile in an already competitive applicant pool.
Remember, there’s no better feeling during law school application season than knowing you have a supportive, experienced expert guiding you every step of the way. Whether your recommenders would appreciate assistance, or you would personally, we have helped thousands of applicants gain seats at top law schools across the country – and we can help you, too. Want to get Accepted? Schedule a free consultation with an expert today!
By Judy Gruen, a former Accepted admissions consultant. Judy holds a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University and is the co-author of Accepted’s first full-length book, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools. Want an admissions expert help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!
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