When you have been out of school, the question behind a law school letter of recommendation is not which impressive name to collect — it is who can describe your work with specifics.
Start with the people who have watched that work up close: a supervisor, a supervising attorney, or a professor who still knows your writing.
This guide covers who to ask, how to ask, and what to confirm with LSAC and each school.
How many letters do you need?
The honest answer starts with what this page's research covered: it sits on LSAC's test, scoring and fee pages, and those pages say nothing about letters.
The number that governs your file is the one in each school's application instructions, so take the count from the admissions pages of the schools on your list — and treat any rule of thumb you pick up in forums as unverified until a school confirms it.
Whatever the count turns out to be, the ask works the same way.
Letters move on other people's calendars, so recruit your writers before you are deep into applications, and recruit a spare.
Writers change jobs, get swamped and sometimes decline; a substitute who already knows your work beats a late letter from a better-known name.
Timing belongs to the same calendar as everything else you are assembling.
The letters are one moving part of the law school application process, next to the test date you pick and the reports you order, and the logic is the same: work backward from your earliest deadline, and give every writer the date that actually binds you — not a softer one you would rather they had.
Professor or employer?
The professor-versus-employer question is really a specificity test, and a writer's title matters less than whether they pass it: can they describe particular work you produced, particular moments you handled well, the way your thinking has developed?
A letter can only be as specific as the writer's first-hand knowledge, so the question to ask about any candidate writer is how recently and how closely they have seen you work.
Years out of school, that test cuts both ways.
A professor from your degree program may remember your name and little else, and a letter built on thin material reads as thin.
A professor who supervised a thesis, knew your writing well or taught you in coursework you have taken more recently is a different story.
A supervisor who has watched your work for years can speak to it in detail — deadlines met, judgment under pressure, how you handle responsibility — which is the material a strong letter draws on.
The mix, where a school wants one, is that school's call: if its instructions name the kinds of writers it expects, those instructions are the requirement.
Where they leave the choice open, pick the writers who clear the specificity test and stop collecting names — depth of knowledge is what you are choosing for, not quantity.
Should a supervising attorney write one?
If you work in a law office — as a paralegal, a legal assistant, or in any role an attorney supervises — the answer runs through the same test as anyone else's: how directly have they seen your work?
An attorney who has read your drafts, watched you manage deadlines and handed you real responsibility can write with the specificity a letter needs.
One whose main connection to you is the org chart cannot, and a signature does not fix that.
What this page will not tell you is how admissions readers weigh a writer's title — our research did not verify that, and you do not need it to decide.
The part you control is choosing a writer who can be concrete about you.
If that person is a supervising attorney, ask the way you would ask anyone: early, with context on why law school and why now, materials that refresh their memory, and the real deadline.
The same logic covers any professional who has supervised your substantive work — a judge, a government attorney, a director in another field.
The title is not the point; the first-hand knowledge is.
How the LSAC LOR service works
This is the section where being honest about limits is the answer.
LSAC sits at the center of the application plumbing — it runs the test, the score reporting and the subscription-and-report system that the application timeline guide walks through — but the letter service's mechanics were not part of this page's research.
How a recommender submits, whether letters carry an expiration date, how a letter gets assigned to a particular school: none of that was verified here, so build your plan on LSAC's current instructions rather than on assumptions — including ones this page might otherwise have handed you.
The practical advice does not depend on those mechanics.
Ask directly and early, in person where that is realistic, and give writers a clear way to decline.
Hand each one a short brief: your resume, a summary of your transcript, a line or two on the programs you are targeting and why.
Take every logistics step off their plate that you can, check in politely as the date approaches, and thank them afterward — you may want this person's time again for a future application or reference.
Career information, not legal advice. For letter requirements and for how LSAC's application services work today, the authorities are each school's admissions office and LSAC itself — confirm with both before you act on anything here.
Confirm the mechanics before you ask