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I recently completed a Master's Degree (two year program) and am wondering whether it or not it would be a better idea to get letters from faculty there for Law school. I'll still get one undergrad professor because she's written for me before and we communicate regularly, but I think my thesis supervisor(who knew me for two years and is eminently qualified to talk about my academic work) is a better choice.

I tried looking for answers for this elsewhere and didn't have much luck. I know that undergrad professors are preferred, but it seems like someone who spent far more time with me and my academic work and knew more me recently makes a better writer.

abraxas wrote:I recently completed a Master's Degree (two year program) and am wondering whether it or not it would be a better idea to get letters from faculty there for Law school. I'll still get one undergrad professor because she's written for me before and we communicate regularly, but I think my thesis supervisor(who knew me for two years and is eminently qualified to talk about my academic work) is a better choice.

I tried looking for answers for this elsewhere and didn't have much luck. I know that undergrad professors are preferred, but it seems like someone who spent far more time with me and my academic work and knew more me recently makes a better writer.

Though I don't know the TLS answer to this, I had four recommenders (some for different schools). Two were from undergrad, two were from my doctoral work (one who is a JD/PhD) and one who was the VP and President of the Training Council from the school I graduated with. So I would say, IMO, to use a mix. I personally believe that my graduate instructors know my capability for challenging academic work better, and thus am inclined towards using their letters over my undergrad letters, particularly the weaker recommendation out of the two undergrad letters I received. PM me if you'd like to talk more about it; it's a fairly unique situation.

I think schools just want to see letters fom people who can give an informed evaluation of your academic work; there's no reason that has to be UG profs as opposed to grad profs. Grad GPAs aren't valued highly because they don't get reported to USNWR, and not all applicants have them so you can't compare across candidates. But since LORs are qualitative to begin with , I can't see that there'd be a problem. (Especially because grad profs' evaluations would be more recent.)

(I applied with letters from grad profs because my UG was swallowed by the mists of time, and my cycle went basically as expected.)

abraxas wrote: I tried looking for answers for this elsewhere and didn't have much luck. I know that undergrad professors are preferred, but it seems like someone who spent far more time with me and my academic work and knew more me recently makes a better writer.

I doubt this to be true. A professor from a grad program should be in as good, if not better position than your undergrad professors to assess the quality of your academic performance.

For my LORs from an academic standpoint, I plan to ask two professors from my grad program, no intention of reaching back to UG.

I only had LORs from grad school professors. I don't think it hurt me in any measure.