Letters of Recommendation

Among the many things that make no sense in the world of the academy is the letter of recommendation. What do they possibly show? I’ve been on the hiring side of job searches three times now and….every letter of recommendation is almost exactly the same. Moreover, when you have 150 applications, who even has time to read them carefully? None of these searches have been impacted by a letter of recommendation in any conceivable way. We’ve always gone with what made sense for our department without any real attention paid to the sameness of the letters. For students, it might make a bit more sense. After all, it’s important to know a bit about the students we are admitting to a graduate program. But I am determined they make no difference for law school. In any case, I am basically on board with this call to eliminate the letter of recommendation. It’s behind the Chronicle paywall, but anyone with higher education library access can get to it. I prefer to spend my time on things that actually matter, which definitely shapes my approach to work in higher education. The letter of recommendation world is not something that really matters it turns out. I do all I can to write the strongest letters I can for my students since you can never tell when someone is actually reading them. But they usually aren’t.