LOR advice

jhanco10

Good evening,

I already have individuals who have agreed to write letters of recommendation for me. In addition to my resume, what other information should I send to my LOR writers? They have interacted with me a good bit, but don’t know everything about me. What suggestions do you all have for information that I should get to these individuals?

Thank you so much in advance!

LSATisland

Are these professors? If so, did you write any papers or other work for them? If so, resend those and they can refresh their memories and possibly reference your work in their recommendation letters. Also, in terms of personal information, if your Personal Statement is not too personal to share, that would be helpful for them to see, especially if they want to write their letters in a way to complement or accentuate how you are presenting yourself to law schools. Lastly, if given the option between communicating via e-mail or in person, choose the latter so they have more of a personal take -- e.g., maybe drop off physical copies of these materials.

AudaciousRed

I don't think your LOR writers don't need to know everything about you, really. They can only speak to what they personally know and the way they have interacted with you anyway. My boss can't speak about my academics in depth, and my teachers (for the most part) can't speak about my diligence on the job.

For my LOR writers, I found a couple articles (University of Utah has one, I think) for recommenders on what law schools look for, and linked them to help my writers if they needed to know how to do one for law school (I'm pretty sure the professors I asked don't get a lot of requests for Masters level and beyond, let alone law school). I wrote them a nice letter, and offered to provide any papers or projects I did for their classes (and named those classes). They responded that they remembered me and my work rather well, so they didn't really need any of them after all. It's always good to offer, though. My suggestion would be to talk to them, ask them if they need anything to help them remember you and your work, anything you can do to make their work easier, etc. Be as forthcoming and helpful as you can be, but talk to them. Email, phone, or even dropping by their office (especially that last one if you can do it).

Leah M B

There's also a section on this in the Admissions course! https://7sage.com/admissions/lesson/rec-cheat-sheet/

The whole section on LORs is really helpful, if you haven't gone over it yet.

And shoot, I had a link to that University of Utah page but it looks like they took it down!! It was so good. You can try googling "how to write a law school recommendation" and see if you come up with any other helpful page that gives instructions.

Leah M B

This is also a really great overview on how to handle it on your end: https://7sage.com/admissions/lesson/how-to-get-the-best-letter-from-your-recommenders/