Hi all,
I had a letter of rec written about 2 maybe 3 years ago when I thought I was going to apply. I'm shy asking the professor to redate it for this cycle. Is it bad if the date is from years ago?
5
Hi all,
I had a letter of rec written about 2 maybe 3 years ago when I thought I was going to apply. I'm shy asking the professor to redate it for this cycle. Is it bad if the date is from years ago?
4 comments
I did the same thing, all you can do is ask! as an attorney you'll need to advocate for others, best to start now doing it for yourself :)
From the AdComm perspective, it's not a deal breaker to see an older LoR. It's not uncommon for profs to write a letter when the applicant is still a college student, is thinking of law school down the road, and they just "bank" the letter for later.
But would it be nicer to see it dated this year? Sure!
So you can think of it this way. The prof is probably wondering whatever happened to your app. It's always a courtesy to tell your recommenders what happened. So maybe you can be in touch to email them, let them know that you're applying this year, and that you appreciated them writing that LoR a few years ago (which you'll now use this year). If/when they respond and say "that's great! just let me know if there's anything I can do to help," you can reply and say "actually, if there's any chance you could re-date things, that'd be awesome."
Good luck!
@JacobBaska Thank you, super helpful!
The worst they can say is no! I say just ask anyway it's way better than looking for a whole brand new person to write one