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If you area applying to Liberty or similar, go ahead. Otherwise.... I'm not sure I would.

For whatever it's worth, I know someone who was several years out of school and did 1 church letter, 1 academic letter, and 1 work letter. She now goes to Harvard.

A pastor should be capable of writing a very good letter. Unless it's a crazy pastor, then no.

cinephile wrote:For whatever it's worth, I know someone who was several years out of school and did 1 church letter, 1 academic letter, and 1 work letter. She now goes to Harvard.

So she had Harvard numbers but the church LOR held her back from less numbers-driven Y and S?

I think a letter from your pastor would be fine as long as he focuses on your ability to organize, get shit done, and creatively problem solve and not mention anything about faith, etc. Ask him to write about the nature of your work and your ability to perform it instead of the underlying purposes/faith behind it.

2013applicant wrote:I think a letter from your pastor would be fine as long as he focuses on your ability to organize, get shit done, and creatively problem solve and not mention anything about faith, etc. Ask him to write about the nature of your work and your ability to perform it instead of the underlying purposes/faith behind it.

Agreed. As long as it's written from a secular standpoint, it's really no different than getting a letter from a supervisor/volunteer coordinator.

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It's just not relevant to law school. Admissions committees don't care about your religious beliefs, and talking about them would look out of place in an LOR.

ckyo01 wrote:Thank you all for your responses. I didn't know that having faith mentioned in the letter would be detrimental--I'll be sure to let him know to be secular in his letter.

Would submitting 4 LORs be pushing it, though?

Most schools don't want four. It's unlikely that the fourth letter is going to say anything different about you that the first three didn't cover. IF the school accepts four and IF the letters definitely say different wonderful things, then a fourth isn't going to hurt you. But it probably also won't help.

If you do have your pastor write one, have him write it from the point of view of a supervisor and talk about your organizational/leadership/etc. type qualities, not about your deep faith and your zeal in spreading the gospel or whatever. He doesn't have to cover up the fact that he's a pastor and you were doing churchy things, but leadership is attractive to law schools. Faith is pretty nugatory, outside a few religious schools.

Do you have anything at all non-church related on your resume? I mean, there's dedication and then there's obsession to the exclusion of all else. You want your resume to make you look well-rounded and relatable, not fixated entirely on one thing (whether that one thing is church or basketball or restoring cars).

IAFG wrote:

cinephile wrote:For whatever it's worth, I know someone who was several years out of school and did 1 church letter, 1 academic letter, and 1 work letter. She now goes to Harvard.

So she had Harvard numbers but the church LOR held her back from less numbers-driven Y and S?

Probs. But I'm not sure would hurt if well-written.

cinephile wrote:

IAFG wrote:

cinephile wrote:For whatever it's worth, I know someone who was several years out of school and did 1 church letter, 1 academic letter, and 1 work letter. She now goes to Harvard.

So she had Harvard numbers but the church LOR held her back from less numbers-driven Y and S?

Probs. But I'm not sure would hurt if well-written.

Yeah, my point was just, getting into HLS says either nothing about your app or something negative about your app assuming you didn't choose it over Y/S.

I wouldn't. Since you have 3 already, I especially wouldn't.

It seems like a personal statement would be the better place to address this part of your life than a LOR.