LOCI Format and Length: The Rules Schools Publish, and the Ones They Don't

LOCI Format and Length: The Rules Schools Publish, and the Ones They Don't

Almost every rule you have read about how a letter of continued interest should look is somebody's convention, not a school's instruction. Of the 21 US law schools whose admissions pages we read on September 5, 2026, exactly one publishes a full format specification: Harvard tells applicants to style the document "as a letter, addressed to our Admissions Committee, with the date included at the top," to "limit your letter to one page, double- or single-spaced," and to use "a font size that is comfortable to read (no less than 11 point)." Two others publish a fragment of one: Notre Dame asks for a PDF labeled with "your name, LSAC account number, and document type," and Penn asks applicants to "exercise sound judgment and professionalism in the type and amount of correspondence that you send," which is the closest any other school comes to a length rule. The remaining 18 publish nothing about how the document should look - no page limit, no word count, no font, no margin, no addressee - and no school in the set, at any point, publishes a subject line.

If you are writing to an undergraduate admissions office rather than a law school, the structural questions on this page are the same ones, but the rules quoted below are law school rules and do not transfer. Read the page of the office you are actually writing to. Where that office publishes nothing, you are choosing a convention, and it helps to know that is what you are doing.

This page covers what the letter looks like: length, type, file, addressee, and the labeled parts. Which mailbox or portal it goes to, how often you may write, and each school's timing are on the companion page, what each school's own waitlist page says to send. When you have a draft, the law school waitlist letter rubric reads it against the instructions you paste in rather than against a generic standard.

The short answer, in four questions

How long should it be? One page is the only length any law school in this set has published, and only Harvard published it. Eleven schools in the set publish instructions for the letter or for the written updates that stand in for it; ten of those eleven say nothing at all about how long it should be. One page is therefore a defensible ceiling, not a universal rule, and nothing on any of these pages authorizes a longer letter at a school that has said nothing.

What format? A dated letter, in the ordinary sense of the word: date line, salutation, body, sign-off. Harvard is the only school that says so in writing. No school in the set specifies margins, line spacing beyond Harvard's "double- or single-spaced," or a typeface.

Is there a template? No school publishes one, and no school asks for one. What the schools do publish is a set of tests the content has to pass - most of them about whether the reader has already seen the information. A letter assembled out of pre-written sentences fails those tests by construction, which is why the section below is an outline of parts rather than text to fill in.

Who do you address it to? Harvard says "our Admissions Committee." No other school in the set names an addressee. Several name a mailbox or a portal, which is a routing rule rather than a salutation, and those are on the companion page.

What 21 law schools publish about format

Every cell was read on September 5, 2026 from the page linked in the Sources list. "No published format rule (checked September 5, 2026)" means we read the school's waitlist or admissions pages and found no instruction about how the document should look. It does not mean the school refuses a letter, and it is not permission to ignore the conventions of ordinary correspondence.

Quoted, in full:

• Harvard. "How should I format my letter of continued interest? This should be styled as a letter, addressed to our Admissions Committee, with the date included at the top. We highly encourage you to limit your letter to one page, double- or single-spaced, with a font size that is comfortable to read (no less than 11 point)." · "You should upload your letter of continued interest directly through the Upload Materials section of your status checker. Please be sure to select 'Letter of Continued Interest' from the dropdown options."
• Notre Dame. "Please submit your LOCI as a PDF file. Be sure to include your name and LSAC account number on this document." · "Please be sure to label your document with your name, LSAC account number, and document type." · From the same page's general instructions for application updates: "DO NOT include your Social Security number."
• Penn. "You are welcome to continue to provide updates to your admission file or to write a statement of continuing interest, but please exercise sound judgment and professionalism in the type and amount of correspondence that you send."

The four silences, and what they actually mean

No school publishes a word count. Not one of the 21. Every word count you have seen attached to this document came from somewhere other than a law school.

Twenty publish no length at all. Harvard's one page is the only number on record. A school that publishes nothing has not authorized three pages; it has left the length to your judgment, and Penn is the one school that says so explicitly, in terms of "the type and amount of correspondence."

No school in the set publishes a subject-line rule. Six of these schools take the letter by email or accept email as one of two routes, and none of them tells you what to put in the subject line. Notre Dame comes closest, and its rule is about the document rather than the message: label it with your name, your LSAC account number, and the document type. That labeling logic is the safest thing to carry into a subject line, because it is the only labeling instruction any of these offices published.

Two publish anything about the file itself. Notre Dame asks for a PDF. Harvard's equivalent is not a file rule but a dropdown: the upload has to be filed under "Letter of Continued Interest," which is the same problem - making sure the document lands in the right place under the right name - solved through the portal instead.

Read together, these silences are the finding. The document has a widely shared house style that almost no school has committed to paper. Following that style is reasonable. Believing it is a requirement, and then breaking a rule a school did publish because a general guide told you to, is the failure mode worth avoiding.

The parts of the letter, labeled

This is an outline of the parts, not a template. There are no sentences here for you to copy, and that is deliberate: the one test nearly every school in the set publishes is whether the letter carries information the committee has not already read, and text you did not write cannot pass it. Use this to check that your draft has the parts it needs and nothing it does not.

1. Date line. Harvard asks for "the date included at the top." Nothing else in the set mentions it. It costs one line and it tells a reader who may be holding several letters from you when this one was written.

2. Addressee. Harvard's published form is the Admissions Committee. No other school in the set names one. Where nothing is published, the office, committee, or dean named on the school's own waitlist page is the safest choice, and the page you read the instructions on is where that name appears.

3. Identification. Your name and, where the school routes through LSAC, your LSAC account number. Notre Dame publishes this as a requirement and pairs it with an exclusion: no Social Security number. At schools that take the letter through a status checker, the file is already attached to your record, and the identification line is redundancy rather than routing.

4. Status and purpose. One or two sentences establishing which decision you received and that you are writing about it. This slot exists to orient a reader who opens the document cold, and it is the slot most often padded into a paragraph of thanks. Nothing on any of these pages asks for a paragraph here.

5. What is new since the file was last read. The substantive block, and the one every school that says anything about content asks for. Its contents are facts with dates: grades, a degree conferred, a promotion, a publication, a role. What does not belong is anything already in the file - a retelling of the personal statement, a restatement of your resume, or a reason you gave for applying in the first place.

6. What you want from this school specifically. The block that says why this school rather than another, sourced to something you actually did or attended rather than to the school's marketing language. This is a different block from 5 and should not be merged into it: 5 is about your file, 6 is about their program.

7. The statement of interest. One sentence, at the strength that is actually true of you. This is the slot with the most published guidance and the least published prescription: the schools that mention it invite you to say where they stand, and none of them tells you what to promise. Whatever you write here has to be consistent with anything else you send that office this season, including anything you may later write about money.

8. Close and signature. An ordinary sign-off. No school publishes a rule for it.

9. Attachment note, if any. If you are sending an updated transcript or resume alongside the letter, say so in one line. Emory publishes the related test for the attachment itself: if you send an updated resume, "highlight what is different from the previous version you submitted."

Parts 1, 2, 3, 8 and 9 are mechanical and take a few lines each. On the only published page limit in the set, that leaves parts 4 through 7 to fit inside one page. That is the real length constraint, and it is arithmetic rather than advice.

What the parts are for, in the schools' words

Every sentence quoted here is from one of the pages in the Sources list. None of it is our own strategy advice, and none of it is a claim about what any letter will do.

Part 5 exists because the reader has already read your application. Harvard asks for "any relevant academic, professional, and/or personal updates since the Admissions Committee last reviewed your application." Notre Dame asks for "any new or significant information that speaks to your potential." Northwestern's list is concrete - "Updated resume with new accomplishments," "Notice of any job promotions, honors, or other accolades you have received since submitting your application." NYU asks for "all 2025-2026 grades and graduation honors." The common word across all four is since.

Part 6 exists because these offices say they are reading for fit and for whether you would enroll. Chicago invites a letter "discussing the reasons why you are interested in studying at UChicago Law and how our curriculum and academic environment will help you achieve your personal and professional goals." Notre Dame asks for "your level of interest in Notre Dame for your legal education, as well as any specific interests."

Part 7 is invited, and it is invited conditionally. Harvard's sentence has an if in it: "If HLS is your first choice for the fall, it is helpful to share that in your letter." Duke says it is "particularly interested in people who seem enthusiastic about Duke and eager to enroll." Neither asks for an unconditional commitment, and neither tells you what yours should be.

Part 4 is not asked for by anyone. No page in the set requests an opening paragraph of thanks, an explanation of your interest in law as a career choice, or a summary of your background. Notre Dame's page does list "your motivation for law as a career" among the things a letter can include, which is the closest any school comes, and it is permission rather than a request.

Before you send

Open the school's own waitlist page the week you write, not the version of it you read in March, and check your draft against the sentences on it rather than against a general format guide. Three checks cover most of what these pages actually publish: is the length inside any limit the school states, is the file in the form and under the label the school states, and does the substantive block contain something the committee has not read. Where a school publishes nothing, write it the way you would write any professional letter and keep it short enough that a reader can finish it between two other files.

When your draft is ready, the law school waitlist letter rubric checks it against the instructions you paste in - whether the update block is genuinely new, whether the school-specific block is sourced to something you did, whether the statement of interest is consistent with the rest of the letter, and whether the draft fits the length and form the school published. For the rest of the law shelf, the law school personal statement review covers statements, addenda and why-school essays, and the law school essays hub indexes them.

Each school's authorship, AI and assistance rules are its own, they differ, and several are published nowhere near the waitlist page. Georgetown, for instance, publishes that "while you can (and should) receive and incorporate feedback on drafts, the only person who may be engaged in the actual writing is you," and UCLA publishes that "the use of any artificial intelligence tools to assist in the completion of this application is prohibited." Read the rules that apply to you before using any review, and submit only your own writing.

Sources

All pages read on September 5, 2026.

• Harvard Law School - Application Toolkit: The Waitlist and The Waitlist Before May 1
• Notre Dame Law School - For Waitlisted Students
• University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School - JD FAQs
• University of Chicago Law School - Waitlist Process 2026
• Columbia Law School - Application Information Update
• Cornell Law School - JD FAQ
• Duke Law School - Waitlist
• Emory University School of Law - JD FAQs
• Northwestern Pritzker School of Law - FAQs for Applicants on the Waitlist
• NYU School of Law - JD Waitlist Information
• University of Texas School of Law - Admissions FAQs
• Berkeley Law - After You've Applied
• Georgetown Law - JD Admissions FAQ
• Stanford Law School - JD Application Process
• Yale Law School - Application Process
• UCLA School of Law - First-Year JD Applicants
• Vanderbilt Law School - JD Admissions
• WashU Law - Waitlist Update session
• University of Michigan Law School - JD Admissions FAQs - read through a public text proxy; the page carried no waitlist-letter text on the day of the check
• Baylor Law - Apply - read through a public text proxy; no waitlist-letter instruction on the pages we could read
• University of Virginia School of Law: the waitlist FAQ returned a security challenge to our requests on September 5, 2026, directly and through a public text proxy, so no rule is stated for Virginia here.