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Law school applications: Applying After Taking Time Off
Applying to law school after you have been in the workforce may present some special challenges, but remember that you’re in the majority: over two-thirds of applicants are no longer in college. Among the most common questions for “returnees” involve letters of recommendation and the weight accorded a college GPA that may be years in the past. Many also have concerns about their resume and/or work history.
The second issue is the easiest to address: your GPA takes on less importance the farther away you get from it. By five years out, the law schools will care much more about what you’ve been doing with your life since college than your undergraduate GPA. Note that this only works in one direction: you’ll get the benefit of a strong GPA, even if it was years ago, but a mediocre GPA will no longer define your academic capabilities. Your work experience, and what you have gotten out of it, will almost always be considered a plus in law school applications.
Letters of recommendation require a bit more thought. Should they be academic or professional? How can you track down an old professor? What if the professor doesn’t remember you?
Here are some suggested guidelines for choosing between academic and professional recommendations. If you have been out of school for one to three years, you should still include at least one academic letter of recommendation. Depending on the circumstances, you will probably want to also submit a letter from your employer or supervisor, especially if it will substantially add to the information from your professor(s). If you have been out of school for three to five years, you may still see schools requiring an academic letter. But mostly, you’ll be fine submitting only professional letters of recommendation. If you have been out of school for five or more years, you should definitely forgo the academic letters and instead submit professional recommendations. If you have taken any courses since graduation—through a continuing education or graduate program—you should strongly consider obtaining a recommendation from one of those instructors. Remember: these are only general guidelines. Read each school’s requirements/expectations carefully, and contact the admissions offices directly if you still have questions.
If you are still in school and contemplating taking time off, consider asking professors for letters of recommendation now, while their memory of your academic performance is still fresh. You can purchase the Credential Assembly Service (CAS) from LSAC now and have the letters uploaded there—your account is good for five years.
If it is too late to plan ahead—you are already a few years out of school and are worried about locating a professor who may or may not remember you—you should try the following steps. First, find out if the professor is still here at UMass by visiting the departmental website. If not, then contact the department staff directly to ask what information they might have about the professor’s whereabouts. Usually, they will know where a professor has moved to, and will often have this information for former graduate students as well.
Once you find the potential recommender, be prepared for your initial contact. Refresh your own memory about the course(s) you took with the professor, and how you did (your transcript is the best source for this information). If you kept any work you did for that professor, dig it out before you make contact so you can refer to it. Once you have as much information as possible with which to spark the professor’s memory, make an initial contact via email. Include some specifics in your email to remind them of who you are and how they know you — with dates and class titles. In a sentence or two, share why you think they’d be a good recommender. This should focus on what they would know about your work, not on how great their class was! Include a resume — or even better a link to your LinkedIn profile with your picture. Ask specifically if the professor remembers you well enough and has a favorable enough impression of you to write a persuasive and detailed recommendation. Only if the response is affirmative should you go ahead and send out the necessary materials to the instructor. Do not just send out the materials in your first re-introductory email.
If you cannot locate the professor, or the professor does not feel comfortable writing you a letter of recommendation, you will have to move to Plan B. This may include using professional recommendations instead of academic ones. While this is not ideal, rest assured that it does not necessarily spell disaster for your application chances. Much depends on the quality of the recommendations you do obtain.
Professional recommendations should, to the extent possible, address skills that are applicable to the study and practice of law. A supervisor who has worked closely with you is usually the best recommender. As with academic recommendations, the big name CEO who knows you only in passing is a less credible reference than the no-name manager who can write in detail about your stellar performance on the job. If the employer is unfamiliar or uncomfortable with writing recommendations for law school, refer him or her to our Tips for Recommenders page.
Finally, let’s turn to your work experience and resume. As a general rule, your work experience will be an asset to your application, regardless of what it involves. It demonstrates the maturity of someone with experience in the workforce, and the enhanced perspectives — about people, the world, perhaps a particular industry or area of law — that are valued in the law school classroom and in attorneys. Even if you have bounced around through several jobs (which is VERY common for recent college grads in particular), you should not feel that this is a deficit. Almost certainly, you’ve learned a lot about yourself, your ambitions, and the world through those various jobs. You’ll have an opportunity to describe those insights in your personal statement, if you choose to do so. But no admissions official will be thinking they shouldn’t take a chance on you because you’ve had multiple positions — this isn’t a job application, it’s a law school application.
Regarding your resume, just a couple of tips in addition to those on our resume page: Yes, you can go over one page, especially if you’ve been out of school for several years. And yes, you can separate your work experience into subgroups — e.g., “Relevant Experience” for your office jobs, and “Other Experience” for things like retail, food service, construction, childcare, etc. If you’ve moved your education to follow your work experience on your resume for job applications, you’ll want to put it back up top for purposes of law school applications.
And finally, remember that more bullet points do not make your job look more impressive. Stick to a maximum of three, highlighting your most significant accomplishments and/or responsibilities, and feel free to eliminate bullet points altogether for less relevant jobs that entail duties most of us know about already (e.g., cashier, wait staff, etc.). Make the descriptions of your work proportional to the importance of each job. If you use the same number of bullet points for your summer internship after sophomore year as you do for the permanent position you’ve held for the last three years since you graduated, you diminish the significance of the latter — it gets lost in the forest of bullet points.
If you have other questions about applying to law school after taking time off, you should feel free to contact the Pre-Law Advisor directly—our services are available to alumni on the same basis as current students.
