LORs Part 2: The Lukewarm Professor

Categories: Letters of Rec

No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome!

You ask a professor for a Letter of Rec (“LOR”). She hems and haws and sort of turns the responsibility back to you. “You’ll need to give me your resume, final draft of your personal statement, and I’m going to Timbuktu tomorrow so it’ll be about 6 weeks before I can get to it.” she says.

Your response should be as follows:

1. “Thank you so much for making the time to do this for me when you have so much going on. Unfortunately, I really was hoping to have my applications complete in the next four weeks. Perhaps if I’m waitlisted somewhere I could ask you again in the Spring?”

A lukewarm letter “Iz No Gud” as they said in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” I’d rather see you with 2 great letters (and only 2 letters) than 2 great ones and one that says “Jessica was prompt and attended class regularly and her handwriting was legible on all of her exams.”

And now that I’ve posted 2 days in a row on “who should NOT write your LOR”, I promise to post a list soon of people who should write your LOR. Check back often and feel free to ask questions on this blog. I’m happy to answer them for the benefit of all readers.

LORs Part 1 – Absolutely No Family Friends

Categories: Letters of Rec

6 Comments »

This is a gnarly – but essential – topic. So I’ll cover it in several parts.

First, tell all those well-meaning, successful friends of your parents “thanks, but no thanks.” Why can’t that nice judge who has played golf with your dad for 25 years write a letter? Think about what he might say (because trust me, I’ve read it) -

As a friend of Joey’s father for the past 22 years, I have heard stories of Joey’s progress during our weekly golf outings. I have seen Joey grow from a young boy to a college student who is bright and inquisitive. He is unfailingly polite and his parents are very proud of his accomplishments at fill-in-the-blank college. It is my understanding he did very well on his LSATs and that he has been active in community service and in his church. I am confident he will make an outstanding law student.

BLECH. I promise, even if you’ve been out of school for 10 years and don’t want your boss to know you’re applying to law school, we can find someone better to write a letter of recommendation for you. Scared of burning a bridge when someone already offered to write a letter? Tell him (if you’re applying to the law school he attended) it would be so nice if he might make a phone call on your behalf after your application is complete at the school.

Think about why a letter of recommendation is important: The writer is the only person who gets to talk in your application other than YOU. He/She can say things you can’t say about yourself (you’d sound arrogant). Your letter writer must say things about you that he/she knows from personal experience. And the things he/she says must be relevant to your law school application.

I promise to write a lot about this topic this week. It’s too much to cover in one post, but I had to start somewhere.