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Comments
For most law schools, if you've been out for 5+ years, I think employer LORs will be just fine. A LOR from a prof isn't always required, but if you could secure one, it might be helpful. If you cant, being that you're 5 years out it's quite understandable.
Academic letters are always better than pro letters. You should go with a pro letter only if you can't secure a good academic one. Admissions officers do understand that after being out of school for a certain amount of time, academic letters become increasingly difficult to obtain. So go with a pro letter if you need and it will be fine, but it would definitely not be better.
It doesn't hurt to send some "feeler emails" to prospective profs. If they say that they are not able to write you a strong recommendation, then go with the pro letters.
I'm pretty sure most schools specifically require LOR from people 'familiar with your academic performance.' Some schools are happy to accept non-academic LOR in addition to the two required letters, but it needs to be on top of the fact.
Each law school's website explicitly notes what they require in an LOR.
I was reading an interview with the hiring partner for a V20 or something firm a few days ago in which he mentioned that his take on job experience was, yeah, it's nice if 3L applicants have it in order to mix things up a little, but you need a license to practice law, so we don't think any job experience is terribly relevant. We want to see solid academic performance.
Law schools generally seem to take a similar tack.
I've been out of undergrad for 8 years and am having an undergrad prof. write me one.
@username said:
I think this is really bad advice you read. Past job experience will absolutely be relevant to how you do in school and your future law career as it gives you work and life experience that you don't get in school. Previous job experience, or other accomplishments you've had since being out of undergrad say a lot about your ability to succeed in different environments. As far as I know, from all the research I've done, most schools really value at least a year or two of job experience after undergrad. The main thing is that you show you've succeeded at whatever you chose to do. I don't know who gave that advice, but I'd really be skeptical of it. Having a license doesn't automatically give you all the life skills that you'll need to be a lawyer either.
As for the original question (sorry for the sidetrack
), I've been out of school 9 years and I'm getting professional LORs. I've heard mixed things about this, but I don't think your undergrad teacher can speak as much to your current potential when you've been out of school more than 5 years, and I think most law schools realize this. I tend to think (and based on my research) that more current references are better, but it may depend on the school. That said, I also have "academic" references even though my professional references are not from profs as I have colleagues that I work/write with are academics that I've done a lot of projects with, so it sort of fills in that gap for me. If you can get one old prof to write a recommendation I'm sure it would help, but I wouldn't stress it
@"vanessa fisher"
It's not advice. It's a comment made by the person doing the hiring at a big firm as to what he looks at when he hires. It's a comment which is echoed in most of the interviews on biglawbusiness or law.com with hiring partners. So, the people hiring for those jobs are the ones saying it... frankly, i'd be skeptical of the opinions of anyone but those people.
Also, I didn't say that it was irrelevant. I know plenty of people where their background was relevant to a very specific kind of law that they wanted to practice and that's how they got their job. Moreover, there are certainly law schools who value work experience when evaluating applicants. They pretty expressly say that it takes a back seat to academic performance. Valuing a year or two of work experience doesn't mean that it supersedes academic metrics... which is exactly what the quote said.
Also, my advice to OP was read the express requirements laid out on the law school's website. Seems pretty solid to me.
The opinion that work experience is not "terribly relevant" is not echoed by most hiring partners. It is correct that WE takes a back seat to academic performance, but it's still very relevant.
@"Alex Divine" would it be possible for me to just make one post on these forums without you posting a direct and didactic reply to me? 'cause that would really improve my personal experience of this site. Thanks!
@username
Please don't take this as a personal attack as it isn't meant to be at all, but for what it is worth I think you may be taking things too personally in regards to @"Alex Divine"'s comment. We are all here to learn things and get solid advice that has real implications for how we approach our applications and our law careers. It's big stuff for a lot of us. You have every right to share what you know and think, and others have the right to respond and disagree based on their own knowledge and research. Telling people to not respond to direct advice you are giving to the OP that they don't agree with because it would make your user experience better is not really in the spirit of this format, imo. Everyone here has a right to comment and respond as long as they aren't making ad hominems or threatening people.
I am falling into this category as well @afios134 . Not only am I 5 years out, but I never developed any meaningful relationships with professors. I reached out to a professor who was likely to remember me and we chatted on the phone. He agreed to write me a letter but it was very weak -- pretty much a stock lor. I don't feel I can use that.
So I will have professional letters because that is the best I can do. I pretty much coasted through undergrad just grade-hunting without every interacting heavily with professors. It's a major regret of mine and I'll be working it into my application in a positive light. (change since undergrad shown in professional work).
I am wondering how much consideration is given to these softs if we are over the one or both of the median GPA/LSAT. Given the type of law I would like the practice (and several other considerations), I really like BU and BC. They are kind of conspicuous in their low-ish GPAs/LSATs considering their rank, bar passage, and employment stats. My GPA meets BC and is just below BU and I am aiming for 170 LSAT which would crush their mid to low LSAT medians. So I am curious how great the opportunity cost of missing a strong academic letter will be.
@"vanessa fisher" I don't disagree with you, which is why I haven't said anything until now. If it were an isolated incident or we occasionally disagreed, I wouldn't have said anything. However, I've been barely able to make a single comment in these forums without having that particular user make a comment with the specific purpose of contradicting my statement. I get it, Alex. Everything I say is wrong.
I appreciate that you feel that we should foster an open environment but I'd suggest that certain users should learn to present their opinions as such and not feel the need to respond to every single post on the forums. Frankly, the fact that I can't post without having the same single user tell me how wrong I am isn't helping to develop that environment.
We are all dealing with the same inherently incomplete information when posting in regards to applications, etc. We should thus approach giving advice with a certain humbleness. We should cite sources when possible. When taking the time to contradict other posters we should explain our reasoning, ask for clarification and try to build a constructive dialogue. Incessantly swooping into a conversation to say, no, you're wrong without providing a basis for that objection is not constructive.
There's a difference between proactively exercising the right to comment in a way that furthers the community and just being obnoxious. Feel free to make your own judgements as to where I fall on that spectrum.
@username thanks for the response. I can see there is some history here with the two of you I'm not privy to, so I can only offer suggestions from my own vantage point. I think online forums are inherently difficult (I ran a facebook and youtube page about politics and gender for years so I know how hard it is to keep these forums constructive). The nature of the platform limits certain niceties we'd get in person, or a sense of knowing people's energy/intent when they comment which leaves us to mostly infer or project intent online.
I think sharing sources is valuable and qualifying statements about our own knowledge is good practice. That is why I qualified my own statements regarding the research I had done and also that it may vary from school to school. Ultimately, everyone is responsible to do their own research on topics that are important to them, so we can only add our own limited advice/info here. I'm just generally against trying to censor or stop people from commenting because we find them annoying or because they comment to much for our personal liking.
Anyways, I think your last post here is valuable for insight into your experience and more constructive than the initial one. I'll leave it at that and get back to studying now
Also, @afios134 , this is why it's important that you check the website of the individual school you are applying to. This is from the Ask Asha Yale Law School application blog:
I often tell applicants that applying to Yale Law School is a lot like playing blackjack. The odds are on the house, there's more than a little luck involved, but there are a few basic rules you can follow to increase your chances significantly. One of those rules is to submit two references from faculty members who have taught you in a class. Let me put that another way: Your chances of admission to Yale Law School go down drastically if you submit only one or no academic letters of recommendation. Or let me break it down even further: Your letters of recommendation will make or break your application.
(https://law.yale.edu/admissions/jd-admissions/ask-asha/bad-idea-jeans-biggest-mistake-you-can-make-your-yale-law-school-application)
@username i've read this before. it was just as discouraging then lol. the only silver lining is that i won't be applying to yale.
@username and @jkatz1488
I wouldn't let that deter you from applying to Yale. If you look at the comment section of that blog a few people ask about if you have been out of school a long time and Asha says a solid letter from your employer or colleague that can speak to the same skills is better than a weak vague letter from an old professor from undergrad (see comment below from Asha). Yale in general is a more academically oriented school, so high importance on academic references makes sense and will skew more that way, but it shouldn't deter you from applying if you have been out too long to get one.
Asha says:
"We certainly understand that for much older applicants who have been out of school for many years, it may not be feasible to obtain two solid academic LORs. Your professors may be difficult to track down, they may be retired, or they may not remember much about what kind of student you were. And you'd be much better off sending in LORs that are detailed and accurate than ones that have little to no substance or are based on fuzzy memories. As we tell many applicants, if your recommenders can speak to the same kinds of skills and qualities that a professor could have discussed - skills that would show your potential to succeed academically at YLS - their letters will have more of an impression. In other words, the more closely they can approximate academic LORs in substance, the better!"
@"vanessa fisher" thanks for the context. Perhaps I should reconsider. Honestly, I haven't given T14 much consideration at all for 2 reasons. First, I am placing a big priority on scholarships. Second, I am really turned off by the idea of Big Law and so there's a much greater chance I won't have the massive salary post graduation to pay off what debt I do incur down quickly.
All that said, I've really done very little application/research work. My main focus has been on LSAT. So I am speaking without much conviction. I am not even sure I will apply this cycle!
@jkatz1488
yeah I totally understand. I'm Canadian and Yale has been sort of my dream school so I've done a lot of research on them. I'm still not convinced I want to go to school in the U.S, which is my major deterrent at the moment. I may end up doing a cheaper options here in Canada, as the debt is daunting over there and the U.S has a very weird loan system that builds way more interest than here in Canada.
One thing I can say about Yale is that they have a fantastic repayment program. Unlike Harvard, they really encourage alternative law career paths in academia and public interest. I can say with some confidence that Harvard is much more of a streamline to Big Law than Yale. As a result, Yale also scales your payments after graduation to whatever salary of whatever job you get. Even if you don't end up a lawyer, they scale your payments to a percentage of whatever you make. That is actually pretty amazing.
All that said, I'm 33 years old so the prospect of having 300K of debt when I come out, even if they scale my payments, sort of terrifies me. If I was 23 I might take it in stride more as there is more time to work it off, but at this point I don't want to be in debt the rest of my life
Good luck with applications!