As attorneys, most of us know how rewarding it can be to mentor law students. Whether we are supervising their internships, coaching their mock trial or moot court teams, or participating in a formal mentorship program, few aspects of our profession are as personally satisfying as observing the development of a person from student to professional colleague and knowing you played a part in their success.

Anyone who regularly serves as a mentor or supervisor for student interns, however, knows there is one part of the experience that can be daunting: writing a letter of recommendation. After investing your time in a student over the course of an internship, you feel personally invested in their success. You really care about them and their career, and you want to do everything you can to help them achieve their goals. You want hiring managers and other attorneys to see all the great things about your mentee that you see. But recommendation letters weren’t taught in your legal writing course, and most of us don’t deal with them every day. It can be hard to know how to approach the task.

For nearly two years, I served as Administrative Counsel to Chief Justice Cheri Beasley. In that capacity, I hired and supervised dozens of interns—which means I’ve written lots of recommendation letters and I’ve read many, many more. Along the way, I’ve developed a few ideas about writing a strong recommendation letter—some philosophy of approach, rather than a go-by, because every letter should be unique to the person you’re recommending. I hope some of these ideas will be useful to you!

Start how you mean to finish

A good recommendation letter is specific. It contains details about the student’s work product that will be relevant to the position for which they are applying. Rather than simply noting that the student performed legal research for you, it might indicate that they drafted a dozen memos for you, including a particularly useful one on an issue of first impression related to the intersection of state and federal law in the Indian Child Welfare Act.

The problem is this: you might be writing the letter a year or more after the student has completed their internship with you, and you’ve probably had several other interns in the interim. There’s no way you will remember sufficient details to write an effective recommendation letter.

I recommend keeping a thorough record of each intern’s work so that you can refer back to it. Start this on the intern’s first day in your office. Keep a file with a list of everything they’ve worked on, a copy of their work product, and some notes about your impressions of their work and work habits. Was the work responsive to the assignment? Did the student discover and research an extra issue you hadn’t considered? Did they volunteer to take on an extra project that proved useful to you? Did you have a moment while working with them that you felt particularly impressed or proud of their work? Write it down immediately!

When you sit down to write the recommendation letter a year later, you’ll be able to write with a specificity that stands out among a sea of generic letters.

Share the burden

The recordkeeping I recommend might sound like a burdensome extra task, but it doesn’t have to be. I recommend having the intern do most of it. Explain to them on their first day that they are responsible for maintaining a log and portfolio of their work and the purpose for the file. Encourage them to add notes to the file when you have praised them for their work, always remembering that this information will be the basis for their future recommendation letters.

Next, when it’s time to draft the letter, ask your student to write the first draft. If they’ve done their homework about the position for which they’re applying, they probably have a better idea than you do about which of their skills should be emphasized. They know what they’ve put in their cover letter and resume that they want you to corroborate. And they have the motivation to do a great job on the task—it is, after all, their career that will be impacted.

In addition to making your life easier, these two practices have an added bonus: they encourage your student to begin the practice of self-advocacy. It gives them an opportunity to recognize, reflect on, and internalize their successes over the course of their internship. The portfolio not only enables you to look back and articulate why your intern is great, but they will be able to do the same for themselves! And writing about themselves in the third person, from the perspective of a person who is impressed by them and supportive of them, rather than from the first-person, self-critical perspective most of us normally inhabit, will empower them and instill confidence. These are skills your intern will need throughout their career as they negotiate for themselves regarding salaries, benefits, promotions, etc. and it’s not one that always comes naturally.

Keep it professional

A recommendation letter is a high stakes document. It can mean the difference between your intern receiving an interview or not. I advise treating the letter like you would any other work product—like a letter to opposing counsel or a submission to the court.

Remember that humor, sarcasm, and irony don’t translate easily on the printed page. At best, you might make a hiring manager chuckle, but it won’t result in an advantage to the candidate. At worst, the joke lands badly and you’ve only amused yourself at the expense of your mentee. Most of us wouldn’t gamble with those odds when representing a client, and we shouldn’t do so when our mentees’ careers are on the line either.

Follow up

When a student asks you to write a recommendation letter for them, they are telling you that you have played a meaningful role in their professional development. They are inviting you to take a heightened interest in their career. Do so!

After some time has passed since you’ve submitted your recommendation, follow up with your intern. Ask them if they’ve heard anything from the potential employer. Offer to call someone on their behalf if appropriate, and ask if there’s more you can do to help them in their job search. And once your intern has landed in a position they love, let them know how proud of them you are.

And congratulate yourself just a little bit, also, for the small part you’ve played in the development of the profession!  There are few things more critical to promoting professionalism among attorneys than helping to properly mentor and train the next generation of lawyers.