Is this a good letter of recommendation?

[jaw5xs]

I have a question about a potential letter of recommendation and whether it would be beneficial to my application. I worked at a government agency in D.C. every summer and winter break throughout college and some of high school even. A while ago, my boss introduced me to a very high up individual there and I have stayed in contact with him and he has been like a mentor to me ever since. He is a Presidential Appointee. He has a degree in Econ from Harvard and a Ph.D in Econ from Stanford. He was also a graduate professor at USC. My major is Economics which is why I was initially introduced to him.
My question is would this be a good recommendation even though I haven't directly worked for him in the past? Also, how many recommendation letters are too many? I was thinking about getting three.

['blueskies]

it's probably not going to be a good recommendation because schools are generally looking for someone who can speak to your academic abilities (or to a lesser extent your work qualifications and capacity), so some guy who you have never taken classes from or worked for probably won't make for a good recommendation.

To answer your last question, 3 recommendations is a good amount.  Probably 2 academic and 1 professional is a good balance if you can't get 3 academic.

[bigs5068]

In all honesty I am not sure if admissions committees really even look at LOR's, personal statement etc. I remember stressing out about those when I was applying, but in the end my numbers got me into the schools I expected to get into. If you look at lawschoolnumbers that seems to apply to all applicants and admissions decisions seem to be based on nothing more than your LSAT/UGPA. Schools do claim to put considerable weight into LORs and personal statements, but I wonder if they even look at those materials. 

In response to your question 3 letters is good and if you have more that is great to. All schools have a maximum number of recommendations they will accept and I would imagine it is best to submit the maximum amount of LORs if they are from reasonable sources.  Regarding the recommender you specifically mentioned he probably would not be a great reference since you never worked for him or had in him class, but as I said it seems unlikely a school will put much weight on the LOR.