Top Law Schools

As far as LOR's go, would who writes them actually matter? If they were a respected name in the legal/business community, could it help your recommendation? For instance a ceo/coo/cfo of a fortune 500, partner/chairman at a top 100 law firm or a governor/u.s. senator? All of this is assuming recommendation is just as good as if it were written by not famous person.

Yeah most schools prefer academic letters of recommendation (even over big name business contacts). Of course there may be exceptions for Alum and very high profile recommenders but the general rule is academic is preferred.

http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/admission ... s/#letters


Deans of admissions at the T6 write about it here.


(In fact, the blogs by admissions deans are more informative and factual then most of the threads and posters on TLS)

General rule of thumb is that if someone's letter would actually matter and they know you well enough to write one for you, they could also call someone up at the school and take care of business that way. If that doesn't describe the person writing the letter for you, it probably won't give you the bump you're expecting by having a bigwig write it.

bp shinners wrote:General rule of thumb is that if someone's letter would actually matter and they know you well enough to write one for you, they could also call someone up at the school and take care of business that way. If that doesn't describe the person writing the letter for you, it probably won't give you the bump you're expecting by having a bigwig write it.

This is my feeling as well.

Of course, to OP's exact hypo, in which the content of the letter is identical, of course it couldn't hurt to have a Nobel laureate writing your letter instead of newly-minted political science PhD shithead.