I am applying to law schools and I need some good reference letters. now, I know that in business it is universally considered de rigeur to write your own letter and have your reference sign off on it. is this the same for law school?
also, are there any good sites with samples for this kind of thing as well as the why-I-want-to-get-into-law-school letter?
My LSAT was 146 (I am going to retest, but just in case) so I’ll need some real jewels for samples that I can redact to my own standards.
thanks
hh
I’ve never heard that you write your own reference letter for business. Most companies I’ve applied to use a form or a checklist or something, and I never see these.
I just needed to get some letters of recommendation for graduate school and both profs insisted on writing their own and giving them to me to submit, with the understanding that I would submit them immediately. Other schools I’ve looked into require that reference letters (and transcripts, for that matter) come directly from the reference in a sealed envelope addressed directly to the school and won’t accept reference letters any other way.
I’d check with the law school admissions offices of the schools you’re interested in before you do something that could cost you admission and/or a hassle.
Robin
I’ve got a recommendation that this thread get into IMHO.
I’d imagine that writing your own letter will vary from field to field depending on what your undergrad major is. In my case, I had three letters on file, all written by the professors who signed them. One professor asked me to keep the reference non-confidential, but that was an individual quirk of his. I was in the humanities - my letters were written by a Political Science prof, a Philosophy prof and a prof who swings from World Religions to Foreign Languages and lands wherever she likes. Perhaps in a more hard-science field like engineering (where a lot of new law school entrants come from due to the patent law requirement of a hard-science background) it would be more expected to write your own letter, but unfortunately, in this case you’re probably going to have to find profs who actually like you.
And while I know you’re not talking about a cut-and-paste job, I just feel I have to advise against “redact[ing a sample] to [your] own standards.” You can find samples online - I know a busybody friend of mine certainly did when she was trying to “encourage” me during the application process (I think she was googling for “law school” “personal statement”). Taking anything from one of them, however, is going to set off alarm bells in the admissions officer’s brain. Believe me, he’s read a LOT of these statements, including the oens you can find on the internet. If your statement reads as unoriginal, you’re going to be in trouble.
Good luck, Harry, and let us know how the application process goes.
- Tom, lowly 2L
If you’re applying to law school, your holy internet trinity is:
“Prestigious” Law School Discussion
Law School Numbers
The first board is the best. The second one is unmoderated, so it is often racist and wrong–but occasionally nuggets of good advice can be found, especially if you’re applying to top ten schools. The third site…well, play with it. It can tell you a lot about admissions that schools don’t say.
Most of these questions (writing your own letters, letter of recommendation etiquette, etc.) can be answered by searching the archives and posting a question to the forums.
On this particular question, it is apparently somewhat common for people to write their own letters. What happens is your write in, then send it to the reference for them to authorize, sign, and send. The school never knows the difference, and since it happens with the reference’s knowledge it isn’t a problem. But god, it must be tough to write you own LOR. Good luck.
You do not write your own LOR and have a professor sign off on it. You have the professor or even a former employer write and sign the LOR. Then, have whomever writes the letter mail it in for you as well, so it doesn’t look like you had much influence in the process (other than asking for the letter to be written for you).
Good luck!
What scoring system do they use now? (When I took it in 1988 the top score was 48, but I understand that back in the '70s it went up to 800, like the SAT.)
Remembering, of course, to give them an addressed and stamped envelope so they have to do no unnecessary work.
The LSAT now scores on a 120 to 180 scale, normalized from the raw result of answering some 100 questions. This site seems to explain the scoring and the resulting relationship of the score to all test takers pretty well.
In 2001-2, a 146 was at the 32nd percentile.
Listen, Ace, we can deal with fantasy when I write my autobiography! 
Seriously, though, thanks to everybody for the good info.
I use the term ‘redact’ to indicate that I will use other letters, etc… for my template. I do not want to and will not plagiarize, because nobody can come up to my excellent standards when I have a good template - once I know what it takes to get a winning score. (I did plagiarize once,though, in high school for my English class. the instructor gave JRR Tolkien a ‘B’. Bloody cheek! No wonder our schools are failing!)
again, thankums to all!
hh
This is, of course, the general practice. But there are many professors who have their top students write their own letters.