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I had requested a LOR from 4 recommenders for one judge who accepts applications via online. All 4 of my recommenders have filled out their LORs to OSCAR. I have not yet submitted my app. I was trying to submit more apps tonight and send it all at once but realized at the application page that OSCAR would be asking the recommenders again for the LORs.

Are LORs not saved the first time they fill it out for a particular judge? I would like to avoid asking my recommenders to fill one out each time I apply to a judge.

I think the recommender can save a draft or template in OSCAR so they're not drafting from scratch every time, but they do have to approve the issuance of an LOR for every app you submit via OSCAR that uses their letter. (I went with a carpet bombing strategy to clerkship apps, and I felt like it must have been really obnoxious to some of my recommenders. Not sure there's a way around it.)

Does your school have a clerkship office? Most of the time all LOR's are handled directly through them.

My school asked that my recommendors all submit LORs to the clerkship office. They would then upload the letters to OSCAR for each application I applied to. For any recommendors that were professors at my school, the clerkship office would customize each individual letter with the Judge's address and change the Dear Judge, to be Dear Judge XYZ, (whatever the Judge's name was).

At one point, I was applying to a ton of clerkships, and felt that my school was taking too long to get the letters uploaded. The school simply made them all just Dear Judge and uploaded them, and called OSCAR to set up auto-upload. That meant that any time I went to submit these letters on an application, they would automatically post.

My advice would be to consult with your clerkship office. If none is available, make sure all the letters are generically addressed to "Dear Judge" and then call up OSCAR to have them set up auto-upload.

clerk1251 wrote:Does your school have a clerkship office? Most of the time all LOR's are handled directly through them.

My school asked that my recommendors all submit LORs to the clerkship office. They would then upload the letters to OSCAR for each application I applied to. For any recommendors that were professors at my school, the clerkship office would customize each individual letter with the Judge's address and change the Dear Judge, to be Dear Judge XYZ, (whatever the Judge's name was).

At one point, I was applying to a ton of clerkships, and felt that my school was taking too long to get the letters uploaded. The school simply made them all just Dear Judge and uploaded them, and called OSCAR to set up auto-upload. That meant that any time I went to submit these letters on an application, they would automatically post.

My advice would be to consult with your clerkship office. If none is available, make sure all the letters are generically addressed to "Dear Judge" and then call up OSCAR to have them set up auto-upload.

Didn't know about auto-upload, but, absent that, getting your clerkship office to deal with all the LOR requests instead of your recommenders is definitely TCR.

Op here. But the LORs are sent to email address of the professor. Is there a way to set it up for my career services?

This thread makes me feel like an asshole. I probably applied to 50+ judges.

Anonymous User wrote:Op here. But the LORs are sent to email address of the professor. Is there a way to set it up for my career services?

Again - these things are very school specific. Assuming your school has a clerkship office, you should talk to them about procedures. If memory serves me, my school would have the recommendors disregard any email from OSCAR and just send the copy directly (via email) to the clerkship coordinator.

Assuming your school is like that too, just email the person and ask them to also "send a copy" to the clerkship coordinator. I'm sure they saved it on their computer, and that way you don't have to make it sound like you screwed up.

In general, I'm not a big fan of career service offices, and I didn't find my clerkship office to be particularly helpful in my effort to actually secure a clerkships. But that being said, they were very helpful when it came to applications. Talk to yours, and find out what you should be doing.

I hate this part of the system, makes it really inconvenient, especially when you're applying after graduation and have non-prof LORs.

anon sequitur wrote:I hate this part of the system, makes it really inconvenient, especially when you're applying after graduation and have non-prof LORs.

Most of my recommenders were in this situation; fortunately, my recommenders were willing to send their letters to my clerkship office (particularly after they'd received a few dozen notifications ) to place on file but, like clerk1251 said, clerkship offices vary in terms of how helpful they're willing to be.

anon sequitur wrote:I hate this part of the system, makes it really inconvenient, especially when you're applying after graduation and have non-prof LORs.

As far as most schools are concerned, mine included, logistically speaking, nothing changes after you graduate. While I applied to many many clerkships as a student, I gave up at some point during my 3L year. I then waited until after I graduated and was working in biglaw to begin applying again. I got an entirely new set of recommendations, and my school handled all of it the same. Instead of going in to bug them about taking so long, I just had to do it by email and phone. That's about all that changed.

Some schools differ in how they handle paper applications, but my school sent them all out for you. All I had to do as a graduate was email them any updated materials, a custom cover letter, and an address. They took care of all the rest. As a student I had to prepare everything and bring it in for them to mail. OSCAR is even simpler though. Don't stress - your school has a vested interest in seeing you succeed and placing you in a clerkship.

Thanks, I hadn't really thought of that, I'll see about contacting the clerkship office at my school.

Recommenders can either write a template or upload a PDF. When they upload a recommendation for someone for the first time they can select whether they want to auto-upload that recommendation for future recommendation requests from that person. They can also select how often they want to be notified (i.e., daily, weekly, never) about recommendation requests. So, if it's not set up properly the e-mails are probably annoying to the recommenders, but if it's set up properly they don't have to do anything after the first time. I think my school sets it up so that they have to approve recommendations each time (which forces me to e-mail the faculty assistant every time I set up another batch of applications), but my non-LS recommenders have theirs set to auto upload basically.