Writing letters of recommendation is the service-to-the-profession ritual that faculty members seem to dislike the most. Practically once a year, someone in these pages writes an essay calling for the elimination of such letters in the hiring arena. But we see promotion-and-tenure letters — evaluating candidates’ scholarly record as part of their advance to associate or full professor — as even more complicated and vexing to write.

Are these external validations of someone’s scholarship even necessary? It’s not in our power to decide. But you would think, after decades of P&T cases, that higher ed at least would have ironed out the many problems inherent in the commissioning, writing, and use of such letters. Alas. Our aim here is to suggest ways to make the letter-writing process less onerous and more valuable — for the reviewer, the candidate, and the administrator who initiated the exercise.