Rec Letters

Micaela_OVO

I currently have rec letters from a business law professor and an attorney who was my supervisor at an internship last summer. Would it be appropriate to have my mentor write one? Google doesn't offer much insight for this topic. My mentor has been extremely helpful to me this past year, and I feel she can speak highly of my abilities and qualities better than any other professor I've had. She just graduated law school in May.

CFC152436

Depends on the school. I might be over-generalizing here, but I think most schools prioritize academic recommendations over employer recommendations. I'd focus on getting 2 professors to write letters for you, then contact individual schools and see what they think about additional recommendations.

CFC152436

This is from the Yale Dean of Admissions (obviously Yale is pretty unique in its acceptance requirements, but I think her advice on LOR is pretty standard):

"Academic references are going to carry the most weight. Period. Particularly if you have a weaker part of your application, you really need to have phenomenal academic references who are willing to vouch for your performance as a student. If you’ve been out of school for a few years, I would suggest going back to your college professors and seeing if anyone would be willing to write one for you. If you think you’re going to be out of school for a while before you apply to law school, then plan ahead and get some professors to write you letters of recommendations now and place them on file with your undergraduate institution or set up an LSDAS account and let LSAC store them for you for up to five years.

I think only as a last resort -- you’ve been out of school for 10 years, none of your college professors remember you, etc. -- only then should you seek out employer recommendations that will speak to the kinds of things that an academic reference will. So, you’d want your employer to address writing and analytical skill, your intellectual curiosity, etc. Obviously, the closer they can be to the legal field, the better it will be for you. So if you’ve been a paralegal in a law office or worked for a judge, then that might be helpful, again, as a last resort."