Last Updated on September 30, 2026
Quick answer: For law school recommendations, most schools require two letters, and academic letters from professors who know your work carry the most weight. Ask professors from upper-level or writing-intensive courses early, and give them your résumé, personal statement, and deadlines. If you have been working for several years, a letter from a supervisor can also help.
After months of deliberation, you’ve decided to go to law school. As you go through your checklist, you stop to think about the letters of recommendation and wonder exactly which professors to ask. While your law school recommendations aren’t as highly weighted as your GPA, LSAT score, or personal statement, you shouldn’t take the recommendations lightly. Schools use these letters to get a clearer idea regarding your skills, personality, and intellectual capacity, and specific examples highlighting your capabilities could make a difference in convincing admissions officers that you are a solid candidate. Law school recommendations help admissions officers gain an objective outlook on your abilities, academic potential, and what you’re like to have as a student in the classroom.
Start talking to your recommenders about your plans and choices early, ideally while you are still building your law school list. To help you choose the right recommenders who can write letters that positively reflect on your abilities, I have outlined the requirements for letters of recommendation at the top law schools, how to go about choosing your recommenders, the importance of academic references over professional ones, and what you should hope for in the content of your law school recommendations themselves.
Requirements for Top Law Schools
Each law school has a set of recommendation requirements, as well as criteria for who should write the letter. Since institutions usually prefer academic references, picking an athletic mentor or job supervisor who knows you well isn’t the best strategy when planning your recommenders. The number of law school recommendations required also varies – as shown by the guidelines for each of the top 20 law schools:
| Law school | Letter of recommendation requirements (as of Sept 2026) |
|---|---|
| Yale Law School | Two letters required; up to three accepted. Yale prefers letters from at least two professors you have studied with. Review begins once two letters arrive. |
| Stanford Law School | At least two and no more than four letters, sent through the LSAC Letter of Recommendation Service. Recommenders should be instructors who know your academic work, ideally from a seminar or small class. Applicants out of school for a significant period may substitute one letter from an employer. |
| Harvard Law School | Two letters required; up to three accepted. Harvard recommends that at least one letter come from an academic source. Applicants out of school for an extended period may submit employer or professional letters. |
| Columbia Law School | Two letters required. Current students and recent graduates submit two academic letters from faculty. Applicants with substantive work experience are encouraged to submit one professional letter and at least one academic letter. |
| University of Chicago Law School | Two letters required; up to four accepted. At least one letter from a professor, lecturer, or teaching assistant who knows your academic work is preferred. |
| NYU School of Law | Two letters required. Root-Tilden-Kern applicants submit at least one additional letter on commitment to public service; Furman Public Policy Scholarship applicants submit a letter on interest in public policy. |
| University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School | Two letters required, submitted through the LSAC Letter of Recommendation Service. |
| University of Virginia School of Law | Two letters required; up to four accepted. At least one letter from a faculty member is encouraged. Applicants out of school for several years may substitute letters from employers. |
| UC Berkeley School of Law | Up to four letters accepted; most applicants submit two or three. Letters should come from academic sources who know your classroom work. Work supervisors are acceptable if you have been out of school for some time (usually five years or more). |
| University of Michigan Law School | One letter required; three encouraged. Undergraduate or graduate faculty letters are usually most helpful, and employer letters are valuable for applicants with significant work experience. |
| Duke University School of Law | Two letters required; LSAC accepts up to four. One should come from an academic instructor and the second from someone such as a job, internship, or student organization supervisor. |
| Cornell Law School | Two letters required, submitted through the LSAC Letter of Recommendation Service. At least one recommender who has taught you is encouraged. |
| Georgetown Law | One letter required; additional letters welcome. Ideally from a professor who can speak to your academic work; employer or supervisor letters are also acceptable. |
| UCLA School of Law | Two letters required, and no more than two. At least one should come from someone familiar with your academic work, if possible. |
| University of Texas School of Law | Two letters required, submitted through LSAC. |
| WashU Law | No letters required; two recommended and up to four accepted. |
| USC Gould School of Law | Two letters required; up to three accepted. Academic recommendations carry the most weight; employer letters are appropriate for applicants who have been working. |
| Vanderbilt Law School | Two letters required; up to three accepted. At least one letter from a professor or other academic contact is recommended, and employer letters are valued for applicants who have worked a year or more. |
| Boston University School of Law | At least two letters required; up to three accepted. Ideally each comes from someone who taught you in a substantive college or graduate course; employer letters are acceptable for applicants who worked before law school. |
As you can see, some schools accept up to four recommendations while others are okay with as few as one. Use your best judgment to read the instructions and decide how many are suitable – for example, although UMichigan accepts a minimum of one letter, it “encourages” three. This means that you should submit three, unless you absolutely cannot. To stay on the safe side, you should aim to ask at least three recommenders for letters, and then use them according to the variation in requirements for the schools on your list.
Some schools also specify the content they are looking for in the law school recommendations. For example, Cornell would like your recommenders to talk in-depth about what makes you a better candidate in comparison to others. Virginia on the other hand, wants letters that focus on whether you have the analytical and intellectual abilities needed for the rigorous law school environment, your reading and writing skills, alongside skills desirable in a lawyer, such as maturity and professionalism.
It goes without saying that you must choose your recommenders very carefully.
Choosing Your Recommenders
When picking your recommenders, you might have a lot of questions. You could be confused about who to ask, what you should mention, how long you should give them, and what the letters should contain. We have answers for you below.
Who to Ask
Who writes your law school recommendations depends on the school’s guidelines. Carefully pay attention to the language used by each program. Yale states a clear preference for letters from at least two professors who can speak to your academic performance, and in the application world, a stated preference like this works much like a requirement. [1] I know it might seem tempting to ask your job supervisor who can attest to your latest work ethic and skills, but if you fail to follow clearly laid out instructions, you could lose a chance at getting admitted.
UCLA mentions that “at least” one of your two letters should come from an academic reference, and both if possible. This indicates that both of those letters should come from professors, unless absolutely impossible. Duke’s second letter, however, must come from “someone who can address your interpersonal skills, leadership, and involvement,” and in this case, you may ask your professional supervisor or other mentors who are familiar with your abilities.
Long story short: prioritize academic references over professional ones. If you’ve been out of school for more than two years, you may use a professional reference for a school which doesn’t specify that the letter must be from someone you know in an academic context.
Once you’ve read the instructions for all the schools on your list, take some time to think about which professors know you best. Someone who you’ve worked with consistently – such as a thesis advisor or a research supervisor might immediately come to mind. Consider professors who know you best and can easily specify anecdotes and examples of your academic prowess or interpersonal skills. Ideally, you want to pick someone who knows you very well and won’t have to resort to general statements to praise you.
Don’t choose a highly prestigious professor who works at your college who doesn’t know you personally just for their name and fame. It’s important that your recommender can endlessly speak to your abilities. And as many law schools point out, they do not appreciate recommendations from family, friends, or family friends. Of course your parents or siblings are going to highly praise you – they love you and want the best for you! Letters should come from someone who primarily knows you in an academic or professional context.
When and How to Ask
Although the law school application submission window (September – February) is a long one, you should aim to apply as soon as possible, ideally by Halloween, as our ideal law school application timeline explains. With that date in mind, start talking to your recommenders as early as the April or May before you apply, since they might get busy in the fall and not find the time to write a thoughtful letter.
Email your recommenders and set up a time to meet with each of them. Through LSAC’s Letter of Recommendation service, each recommender submits a letter once, and you can assign it to the schools on your list. [3] Don’t just give them your resumé and ask them to base their letters on where you’ve worked and what you’ve achieved. Law schools will already have your resumé. Law school recommendations should act as an added layer – admissions officers should learn something new about you upon reading the letters. The content should come from their personal experiences with you. Provide your recommenders with a list of courses you’ve taken with them, projects you’ve worked on under their supervision, and concrete details about your time together. These specifics can serve as a reminder and help jog their memories about working with you.
As Halloween approaches, send them gentle reminders or check in with updates on your application around September until they ultimately hit submit!
What Law School Recommendations Should Include
Most importantly, each of your letters should include the following:
- Superlative praise: “Grace is the best student I have taught this year”
- Comparative praise: “Compared to other students in my class, Grace went above and beyond her peers”
- Concrete details: “Grace demonstrated her leadership by organizing a class-wide initiative to…”
Before meeting with your recommenders, read over the prompts for your schools once more – what do they want to know about you? Most law schools want the takeaway from letters to be based on your academic skills – law school involves endless reading, writing, and analyzing. So your law school recommendations should include details about your analytical skillset. Ideally, your recommenders should mention specific instances where you took on challenging course loads, actively participated in the classroom, took advantage of office hours, and also detail how you compare to other students applying to law schools or former students who have been accepted.
Law school recommendations also need to demonstrate your people skills. Do you have the interpersonal skills one looks for in a future lawyer? Your recommenders should recall any anecdotes that portray you as someone who works with integrity, communicates well with others, emerges as a leader, and stays committed to a project. Has the professor, for example, watched you overcome a challenge or bounce back from a failure with your head held high? Does she believe you are approachable? How do your peers regard you? A solid letter should thus be the accumulation of your academic abilities and your communication skills.
LSAC Evaluations
LSAC has also offered evaluations as a complement to traditional law school recommendations, so confirm with LSAC and each school whether evaluations are currently accepted. These LSAC evaluations, at some schools, can be used in place of a traditional recommendation. Rather than being free-form as a letter of recommendation, an evaluation is mostly a multiple-choice rating form. Each question on an evaluation has the same answer choices:
Below Average (Bottom 50%)
Average (Top 50%)
Good (Top 25%)
Very Good (Top 10%)
Excellent (Top 5%)
Truly Exceptional (Top 1–2%)
There are thirty questions, grouped under the following six categories: intellectual skill, personal qualities, integrity and honesty, communication, task management, and working with others. After each category of questions, there is a “comments” field that allows the evaluator to write additional information up to 750 characters. Then, at the end of the form, evaluators have the opportunity to enter text of up to 3,000 characters. The form also includes questions about the evaluator. Specifically, it asks whether the evaluator is a “Teacher/Instructor, Employer, Coworker, Friend, Family, Other.” It also asks how long an evaluator has known an applicant and when the evaluator last interacted with the applicant.
Admissions officers have stated that evaluations are not as useful at getting in-depth information about an applicant as traditional law school recommendations. Usually, letters expand on an applicant’s skills, characteristics, and special qualities, and if they were glowing letters, painted a picture of a star. Evaluations, when they are submitted, do not usually go into such detail.
Ultimately, an ideal law school recommendation letter is one which depicts you as an intellectual and dedicated student, who is not afraid to take on challenges. When reading law school recommendations, admissions officers hope to gain a concrete idea of what it’s like to work with you and how you have been an asset in various academic and professional settings. With that in mind, always follow schools’ guidelines and prioritize academic references over professional ones. By capitalizing on the positive impressions you’ve made throughout college, you can choose the right recommenders – ones whose law school recommendations will not only add new information to your profile, but build you up as an absolutely must-have candidate.
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