2023 2L Summer Position Reference Letters

[KingoftheBritons]

Hello everyone, 

I hope that you have been enjoying your summers. I would greatly appreciate feedback on the following concern that I have: 

Like many of you, I will be applying to various firms/MAG branches in Ontario via the "viLawPortal" and other means. Each firm/MAG branch seems to require at least 2 references from past employers. However, I am unsure if these letters can be addressed to employers more generally or if they should be catered to every employer individually. The later seems incredibly laborious and I would feel uncomfortable asking so much of my references. My intuition tells me that general cover letters are the norm, but I just wanted to confirm this. 

General advice re: reference letter/references is also welcome! 

Thanks! 

Edited July 13, 2022 by KingoftheBritons
Typo

[goodisgood]

I would probably get my employers to do general LORs, and cater my CLs to the firms themselves (especially if there are any you are particularly interested in). You don't need to re-write your CL from scratch every time, just make sure you change to the correct "to" address and if you reference a firm by name, make sure to swap it out. You can have a floater paragraph where you freestyle a bit more based on what interests you about a specific firm. 

Otherwise your experience is your experience. 

[StephenToast]

Speaking as a fellow applicant, I assume that most people would submit generic reference letters. One of my reference gave me a docx file of their letter and gave me permission to swap in the firm's address and name. My other reference kindly offered (I too was uncomfortable to ask) to write a limited number of really personalized letters for a limited number of positions. They started those letters with "I only write a very limited number of references for my students each year. Stephen picked your firm.)

[chilly]

Did not apply to MAG and did the BC recruit, but maybe this might help:  I got a general LOR that I used for all applications except for where a list of references was requested instead (that said, only two places I applied to actually required references and they asked for lists instead of letters).

If you have a good LOR/LORs, I generally recommend including it in your applications even where not required, except where expressly discouraged or the employer asked for something else like a list.

While recruiters and student committees may not always look at them, it's an extra piece to bolster your application and may help if the employer is choosing who to interview out of a group of students with similar GPAs and who are similarly interesting. I had mine brought up in a few interviews.