letter of rec delayed; go ahead an apply? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Current district court clerk applying for 2019-20 COA clerkships. One of my recommenders (a professor) can't update my letter of rec until the end of July. Applications for my top 5 or so choices are already up on OSCAR (and have been for a couple months). My other recommenders are another professor and my judge. Is it okay to apply now, without the letter of rec from the other professor? What I would do is write in my cover letter that I've enclosed a letter from Prof. X, that my judge is serving a recommender and provide his phone number, and say that a letter from Prof. Y is forthcoming, but that he/she is traveling and plans to submit my letter towards the end of July.

The reason why I want to do this is because, like I've said, some of these judges have already been open a few months and I don't want to waste anymore time (my fault for wasting it in the first place, but I wanted to get far enough into my current clerkship that my judge would have enough data points to draw from to recommend me).

Asking for a letter from a different professor is not really an option. I'm a year out of school and the two professors I've already tapped were the ones I had the best personal relationship with and who have seen the most of my relevant work product (multiple classes with both, TA for one, completed multiple writing assignments for each, oral arguments before both of them in my classes, etc). It's hard to see a letter of rec from any other professors ending up as something other than "yea, he/she took my class and their transcript says they did well."

[lavarman84]

I don't see any issue with that.

[mjb447]

Yeah, I think that's fine. Many judges won't need your letters of rec to know if they'd like to interview you, and they can always wait if it's a close call.