Can a News Article Change Your Life?

"A man's life in these parts often depends on a mere scrap of information." ~Clint Eastwood, as the Man with No Name in A Fistful of Dollars, 1963

It's amazing how a little snippet read in a newspaper or blog or heard on a radio news program (here's where I make a plug for NPR!) can impact one's future if combined with a little initiative. Recently, while participating in an online chat session with some admitted students to UB Law School, one of them asked what they should be reading to prepare for law school. The most common answer they received was, "Read the newspaper." Sounds simple and obvious, right?

From a career development standpoint, one of the most important critical skills you can develop is the ability to ferret out opportunity from information. If you’re not sure what you might like to do for a summer internship, or for a next job move, start paying close attention to the news, whether in the paper, journals, radio, web pages or television. You will find that certain stories catch your attention more than others. Chances are, there are legal participants somewhere in those stories. Sometimes, they are even quoted or highlighted. Why not take that scrap of information and turn it into your next step?

A couple of years ago, one of our UB Law students wanted to find a summer job dealing with technology and China. She started to keep up with current news, and quickly learned that IBM was working on a deal with the Chinese Lenovo corporation to take over their laptop production. In the course of her reading, she found that two law firms were quoted in a few articles about the deal, as well as the in-house attorney for IBM handling it. She contacted each of the three attorneys by name, and told them that she had been following the deal in the news and was interested in helping them out. This was long past the fall-recruiting season; it was at least March. She wound up with three offers, and ended up splitting her summer between the Baker & McKenzie (a MEGA large firm) Hong Kong Office and IBM's North Carolina Office. She had to turn down the offer from the London firm of Herbert Smith because she just didn't have enough weeks in the summer! I guarantee she was the only law student in the country who read that news item and thought to use it to ask for a job. Talk about great odds!

Bottom line, pay attention to what you pay attention to! If you are already drawn to it, chances are, it is something that you will enjoy exploring more deeply, and you will most likely discover an interesting career path with a bit of intuitive, strategic thinking. It could even turn into a fistful of dollars!