AT9 wrote:I've been out of college for two years and I didn't make any meaningful connections with professors, especially any that would be remembered by a prof two years later.
It's helpful but certainly not necessary to have been chummy with your recommenders. Have you kept some of your old graded papers? Did you do any particularly impressive writing for a class or two? Taking a professor examples of the excellent work you did in his/her class is probably the best way to get a strong LOR out of someone that wouldn't remember you. But even that isn't really necessary, unless you're shooting for the very top schools.
Will 2/3 LOR from my attorney bosses be good, or will having no profs weaken my applications? I thought solid letters from practicing and well-respected attorneys would be about as good as it gets, but some of the comments here have me second-guessing myself.
For most law schools LORs count for essentially nothing (unless they're negative), but this is still inadvisable. LORs carry no additional weight just because they come from an attorney, judge, senator, or anyone else. Law school is an academic environment, and to the extent they care at all, adcomms want to see assessments from people who have evaluated you academically much more than anything else. An attorney can say that you're a competent employee, but none of the work you're doing in a non-lawyer position in a law office is as intellectually challenging as good college coursework, and your supervisor's opinions of your work product don't mean much of anything as to your ability to succeed in law school. And submitting only one academic LOR when you're only two years out of school naturally makes one wonder why you weren't capable of getting more than one.
The people writing the letters would be completely familiar with my work since I often work with them directly.
Doesn't matter. See above.
Doesn't the GPA serve that function well enough??
Not really. High GPAs are a dime a dozen. At any number of schools, you can load up on easy classes and make As without ever really having said anything particularly original and insightful. I'm stunned by the number of people I've met over the years who hardly did any meaningful writing in college at all.
What, then, would be the recommended number? At least 1 from a prof and the rest from my employer?
You need two academic LORs. You can include one from your employer, but definitely do not include two.
I'll make sure to get two academic LORs, I'll have to think about getting the third one - not sure if the hassle of getting it is worth the trouble... Plus I got the impression from Y or H dean interviews (can't remember which) that 3 recs were almost frowned upon.... true?
