Targeted Letters of Rec Forum

[StopLawying]

Does it hurt if you don't have targeted letters? Think I have 3 strong letters, but they're for all law schools. Should I get a few targeted ones?

And also, how many LOR's should I get in total? I have 3 academic ones, and I've been out of school now for around a year and a half. Should I get one from an employer/place I interned at or are the academic ones enough? TIA

[cavalier1138]

You have enough LORs (you only need two, and I doubt that the third is doing anything but repeating what the other two said, unless you had a really unique project with one specific teacher). And no one cares about targeted letters. They know that you aren't only applying to their school, and your teachers likely can't be specific to one school unless they happened to go there.

[Blueprint Mithun]

Does it hurt if you don't have targeted letters? Think I have 3 strong letters, but they're for all law schools. Should I get a few targeted ones?

And also, how many LOR's should I get in total? I have 3 academic ones, and I've been out of school now for around a year and a half. Should I get one from an employer/place I interned at or are the academic ones enough? TIA

3 LORs is plenty - there are quite a few schools who only want 2. Academic recommendations are also more valuable than employer ones, especially if, as in your case, you haven't been out of school for very long. As for targeted letters, there are a couple of schools (Stanford is one) that say outright that they like them, but for the most part, it's a very minor factor. I wouldn't stress it too much - maybe if you had a professor who attended that school it would help, but it's ultimately very negligible.