As you think about whether law school is right for you—or even if you already know it is—what can you be doing now, in college or beyond, to improve your chances of getting in? In this series, “The Short on Long-Term Planning,” jdMission Senior Consultant Mary Adkins offers tips on how to make smart moves in the pre-application stage.
As you begin a new semester, remember that the professors teaching your courses (and the ones you had last semester) are the very people you may eventually want to ask for letters of recommendation.
An important but easily forgotten task when you are your age (sorry, an annoying phrase, I know) is to keep in touch with these people. This is important for a few reasons—one, because if you have gotten to know them well enough to consider asking them to recommend you to law school, they likely mean something to you and vice versa. Good teachers care about their students, and hearing from you is not a burden. On the contrary, most professors you have actually gotten to know will be delighted.
Two, when you ask someone for a letter of recommendation out of the blue after a year or two of not speaking (or emailing), that person may have some difficulty recalling the nature of his or her relationship with you. Recommending someone you have not spoken to in a long time is challenging, even if you do technically remember the student and his or her accomplishments.
Keeping in touch with your former professors during college and after you graduate is a good way to solve this problem. It is also just a good way to be.
This is a guest post by jdMission, a professional law school admissions consulting firm, specializing in helping law school applicants identify and showcase the strongest aspects of their candidacy in their application.
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