Self-study
Hi! I'm beginning to ask people for LOR for this upcoming cycle. I'm aiming to have 3 LOR (4 if you advise that's best). Who do law schools want to see as LOR? As of now, I'm planning to have one from my professor (graduated college last year, so that's still relatively fresh), one from the managing attorney at the law firm I worked at last summer, and one from my current boss (who is a senior paralegal at my law firm). Do you recommend I swap one of the professional LOR for an academic one? Or branch out from that completely?
I'll take any experience y'all have with this. Thank you!!!!
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4 comments
Happy to give you some insight on this from the AdComm perspective, @Epicness!
First things first, the LoRs are typically the final docs that an admissions officer reviews in your app. While you may read that and say "OMG! They're the 'closing argument'!", I'd argue the reverse. By the time I got to the LoRs, I already knew if I was going to vote to admit/waitlist/deny. What I wanted from the LoRs was confirmation of that decision. So don't spend a great deal of time worrying and strategizing here! No one's decision hinged on their LoRs!
With that said, the content I want from an LoR is either 1) what did you bring to the classroom?, or 2) what do you bring to the work space? Given that you just graduated last year but have been working since then, it's normal to have one academic and one professional. It's also ok to submit a second professional, but I think it's worthwhile to ask a key question - would these two letters have substantially different substance or are they going to say the same general things? If it's the latter, hearing something twice isn't any better than hearing it once. I promise!
So, high level recap - one academic, one professional, and you're fine. If you just can't stop yourself and want to submit a third (or a fourth!), just know that admissions officers will read the first two closely, see there's a third and will skim that over ... and "oh, come on, there's a fourth!?" and will really skim that one over.