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.
@JacobBaska Do you consider there to be any disadvantage to getting strong letters just from professors from when you were in college if you've been out for a year or so? I work an international job abroad currently and most of my coworkers don't speak enough english that I am confident I could get a letter from anyone.
@BlotOfInk If you're within a year or two of graduating, then it's totally alright to have two academic letters and no professional ones. Don't even think twice about it.
The only time it may look a smidge odd to not have any professional letters is if 1) you've been at the same job for over a year, and 2) it's something in the legal/legally-adjacent industries (ie, places where the expectation is that someone is going to be here for an entry level job for 2ish years before going to law school). But that's a very specific example that I wanted to post here in case someone later reads this thread and is like "BUT WHAT ABOUT ME?! I'VE BEEN A LEGAL ASSISTANT AT ___ LAW FOR TWO YEARS!"
@JacobBaska Thank you Jacob!