Letters of Recommendation
Letters of recommendation are an essential component of your law school applications, but in many important ways, they’re different from the letters of recommendation you might have needed in the past. Here’s an overview of how to request letters of recommendation and how to include them with your applications.
Requesting Letters
Law schools aren’t looking for personal recommendations. That’s why the most effective letters of recommendation come from people who can speak to your strength in an academic or professional setting. Those could include professors or work supervisors, along with anyone else who knows you well enough to describe your academic or professional achievements candidly and objectively, such as coaches, RAs, teaching assistants, clients, and colleagues who’ve worked on projects with you.
Approach potential recommenders respectfully and with plenty of time to prepare your letter. Be sure to ask them specifically whether they can write you a “strong” or “positive” letter; if they say no or hesitate in any way, thank them and move on to someone else. But if they’re willing to help, ask them whether there’s anything — such as your personal statement, résumé, or previous work for them — that you can provide to help them prepare. Or they might want you to drop in for office hours or meet them for coffee so they can hear more about your law school or professional goals.
Letters should be as specific as possible in describing your strengths. And, if possible, they should compare you to your peers in an academic or professional setting. Most schools don’t consider general or unreservedly praiseworthy letters helpful.
Describing Your Letters
Descriptions will help you assign the correct letters to each school to which you’re applying. If you aren’t sure how to describe your letters, these examples might help:
Program/Specialty-Specific References: If you interned for the Environmental Protection Agency, you could ask either a professor or your supervisor to write a letter about that experience. Describe this letter as “Environmental Law Programs” if you only plan to assign it to law schools that offer environmental law specialties.
School-Specific References: If one of your professors is a law school graduate, you could ask this professor to recommend you to their alma mater. The description for this letter could read: “Smith School of Law.” You would assign this letter to Smith School of Law only.
General References: For letters that aren’t targeted to specific specialties or law schools, the description could read: “General Use.” You could assign this letter to any law school.
Law schools receive both the LOR Form and the letter, so write your descriptions carefully.
Submitting Letters Via CAS
Please note that to begin this process, you must register for CAS, provide consent for LSAC to handle your materials, and pay your CAS subscription fee.
Once these steps are completed, your recommenders will need to submit their letters only once, directly to LSAC, even if you intend to include them in each of your law school applications. We’ll make copies of each recommender’s original letter to include with your CAS materials, and we’ll include how many letters admission reviewers can expect on your CAS Reports. (You’ll be able to assign which letters you want each law school to receive.)
After you’ve contacted your recommenders and confirmed they’re willing to write letters for you, you’ll complete the following steps in JD Services:
Provide the name and contact information for each of your recommenders.
Indicate the number of letters each recommender will submit, and describe each letter’s use (e.g., for all law schools).
Assign each letter to one or more of the law schools to which you’re applying. You can find information about each school’s requirements by clicking the “LOR Requirements” link beneath the school names on the Letters of Recommendation page. (If you don’t assign a letter to a school, it won’t be sent to any schools.)
Submit your requests for letters to the recommenders by clicking on the “Submit Request” button. Your recommender will then receive an email asking them to complete and upload a letter for you. You can also print out a paper request that you can share with your recommenders. Whether you submit the request electronically or on paper, the request form must accompany the letter we receive from your recommender. (After you’ve completed this process, the status of each of your letters will be updated in JD Services so you’ll know when your recommendations are received.
Submitting Letters Via Other Services
Most ABA-approved law schools accept LSAC’s LOR service. However, unless a law school states that you must use this service, you may choose not to use it. For individual application requirements, log in to your account or contact the law school.
LSAC also accepts copies of letters from an undergraduate institution’s credential services or career planning offices. However, the LOR Form must still accompany each letter, even if the school’s service uses its own preprinted forms in the collection process.
There must be one LOR Form for each letter your campus service will be sending to LSAC. This is true even if the credential service issues a “packet” that includes several recommendations. Be certain that your school’s service understands that each LOR Form you give them must be submitted with the packet to LSAC.
When identifying your recommenders, enter the name and contact information for each individual recommender, not the name and contact information of your campus credential service. LSAC will use this contact information to send your recommender a confirmation of receipt.
If a recommender on file in the credential service office is no longer associated with the institution or has passed away, you should still enter the recommender’s name on your LOR Form. However, enter the contact information associated with your credential service office. LSAC will send a confirmation of receipt to the campus credential service.
Other Things to Know
Letters of recommendation sent to LSAC will remain in LSAC’s records until disposed of in accordance with LSAC’s record retention policy. The letters of recommendation will not be shared with or returned to you, the applicant, at any point in time.
If you intend to reuse a letter of recommendation for an admission year other than the one for which it was written, or for a different law degree program, it is a good idea to contact the recommender as a courtesy to make sure that the person does not mind this reuse. Some recommenders may wish to write an updated letter when you apply in a subsequent reporting year or to a different type of program. A recommender may decide to rescind a letter after becoming aware that it has been repurposed, if permission to reuse the letter has not been requested and granted.