Recommendations can feel stressful because you can only control whom you ask; you can’t (or shouldn’t try to) control what they say. So spend your energy picking your recommenders thoughtfully, and then accept the fact that it’s largely out of your hands.
Assume that schools prefer academic recommendations unless they specifically request a professional one. An academic recommender is someone who has taught you in a college classroom environment, graded your papers, led your discussion sections, etc. (If you’ve gone to grad school, those professors are also appropriate.)
Law school recommendations are not meant to be character references; they should focus on you as a student. Any thoughts they share about you outside the classroom are just bonuses; they are not required or expected. Recommendations are also not expected to discuss other parts of your application, like your extracurricular activities while in college.
Less is more. Have good reasons for submitting more than the required number of recommendations. In fact, have a good reason for submitting anything as part of your application that isn’t required.
Use LSAC’s Credential Assembly Service to submit your recommendations for your applications. Make sure you have not only signed up for their CAS service but also made the additional payment required for your CAS account. Your recommendations will not be processed unless you have set it up correctly. (And that’s also a more general reminder to read all the instructions on the LSAC website carefully. You are expected to know them and follow them.)
The longer you’ve been out of school, the less admissions officers expect to see an academic recommendation, and the more appropriate it is to submit a professional one. Keep an eye out for the exceptional schools that do prefer a professional recommendation; they will tell you so in their application instructions.
The closeness of the academic relationship always matters more than the recommender’s job title. The Teaching Assistant might have more meaningful things to say about you as a student than the professor does. Recommendations from famous people, politicians, or other VIPs are useless; don’t bother. The only VIPs that might be able to help you are ones that have a relationship with the law school at a high level, like a trustee or a really big donor.
Recommendations should be mainly backward-looking, offering the recommender’s opinion on you as their student (or employee, if a professional recommendation). Recommenders are not expected to predict how you’re going to fare as a law student in particular, or as a future lawyer (unless the recommender also has a law degree), but they are expected to know your past academic work in their class well enough to assess your academic qualities and to discuss how you stood out in the context of that academic work that they observed first-hand.
Anecdotes and stories make a recommendation memorable and “sticky.” A bunch of adjectives, even superlative ones, do not. If a recommender invites your input or guidance for their letter, ask them to give examples that back up their opinions. It also helps if they can put you in the relative context of the other students they have taught.
Never ask to see a draft. If recommenders ask for you input, it’s great to give them input. If they show you a draft, you are absolutely allowed to see it even if you’ve signed the FERPA waiver on the application form. But never give recommenders the impression that you expect to see what they have written about you. That typically doesn’t go over well. It must be volunteered. (Most applicants never see what’s in their recommendations; that’s normal.)
It’s always a good idea to prep your recommenders. You can help them understand your motivations for pursuing law school (you want to signal to them that you have thought through this big decision, and that you are not applying to law school just because it’s the path of least resistance). Help them understand in broad strokes how you are positioning yourself in your application. You don’t need more than a paragraph or two in an email to do that. Keep it simple. You can include it in the email where you ask them if they’re open to writing you the recommendation.
When requesting recommendations, give your recommenders an “out.” Make clear that you value their time, and that they might not have availability. If they express any hesitation, move on and find someone who is enthusiastic about writing you a meaningful letter.
Do not write your own letter, even if a recommender asks you to (“draft it and I’ll sign it”). Admissions officers would not consider that ethical or useful, and even if it were, self-written letters tend not to be very good. (Try writing one sometime. Unless you are a narcissist, it’s hard to say truly stand-out things about yourself and try to do so in someone else’s voice.)
Be mindful that you are asking recommenders to spend some of their reputational capital on you. Don’t abuse that courtesy. And give them four weeks of lead time to write their letters.
Give them a deadline to submit their letters — ideally at least four weeks before you want your applications to be complete, but any cushion is better than no cushion. Your LSAC account will show when each letter has been received. Follow up with any tardy recommenders, politely, as soon as possible after the deadline you have given them.
After you know where you will be starting law school, follow up with your recommenders and thank them. They are part of your network, they went to bat for you, and they actually care about your success. Stay in touch.