When Should I Ask My Recommender To Call? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Question in the title -- is there a best practice for asking letter writers to call judges on your behalf? Before you get an interview? Once you have the interview? After the interview? How should you approach asking your recommenders, and how many judges should you ask for?

[nixy]

I think common wisdom is to have a recommender call before interviews have been decided (so basically right after you've applied), because getting pulled from the general masses is the hardest part.

I don't have any real words of wisdom on approaching your recommenders, but I would throw the rest back on them - ask how many judges do they feel comfortable reaching out to?

[mjb447]

Yeah, a call can probably do the most good when chambers is deciding who to interview. After weeding out clear noes and maybe a few clear yeses, chambers still usually ends up with a large number of "good enough" applications that could go either way. A call can move the needle more significantly at that point than at any other: once you get the interview, the interview is most of what the judge is going to go on.

[Anonymous User]

I was pre-hiring plan, but this should be applicable to anyone off-plan. I had a lot of success when I timed the call/email with my app. I worked with my recommenders to identify a shortlist and they would make contact within a few hours of me hitting submit. I had a high success rate, and the judges who declined to interview me still told my recommenders that they had reviewed my app. In contrast, I didn’t get a single interview from a cold application.

Other applicants I knew with strong recommenders were going through a similar “tell me where I am applying” process. My friends who didn’t have that luxury were strategic in other ways. If a recommender was friends with a judge in *random place*, the applicant was willing to be geographically flexible to get the benefit of that call. Or maybe the recommender had previously placed a clerk with a judge and was able to make an introduction to that former clerk.

Whichever way you slice it, I believe there needs to be intention behind a successful application. Before hitting submit, do everything you can to maximize the chance of getting it pulled. There is nothing more powerful than an email saying “my favorite student applied five minutes ago and I think you would make a great pair.”