Celebrate Graduation!

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” ~Henry David Thoreau

I would like to congratulate all our graduates! You have worked hard, learned well and reached new heights. These three years may seem to have flown by, but I remember when you were all 1Ls in the CSO Orientation, listening to the 2Ls and 3Ls talking about their jobs, wondering whether you would ever sound so confident and knowledgeable. And now you do. You are about to enter our Noble Profession at last!

I have a special message for those of you who are looking for jobs. Graduation can be bittersweet for those who have yet to secure a job offer. Questions from parents, relatives and friends about “what’s next” can take some of the joy out of the day. It is an understandable question, but for law graduates, who have the bar exam ahead of them, a premature one. The timing of legal jobs is thrown off by that 3-month postponement of your availability. For a great number of employers, there are later timelines for offers:

1. August/September, when you’re ready to work full-time.
2. November, when the bar results (in New York) are announced.
3. January/February, when you are admitted to practice.

These jobs are often with District Attorneys, small/medium firms, public interest agencies, almost any category! Even large firms and judges have hired later. The timing of an offer is not a measure of the quality of the job, nor of the candidate! As these times approach, I hope you will keep the CSO updated on your search so that we can help you on your way, and encourage you in your pursuit.

So in addition to my heartfelt congratulations, I want to encourage you to savor these celebratory days. You have earned every minute of them! Remember that Commencement is just that--a beginning. Not a deadline.

And to everyone in the class of 2008...you ROCK!! Keep in touch!

Summer Idea #1: Join a Bar Association!

"The only real training for leadership is leadership." ~Anthony Jay

This is the first in a series of ideas of things to do, besides work, intern, sleep and watch movies over the summer.

Remember back in high school when everyone told you that you needed to have a lot of activities to round out your college applications? Then, the same rule applied for law school? Know why? Our noble profession, as any great profession, thrives and grows through leadership and participation. Those colleges and law schools looked for future leaders to help shape the profession and to represent us well in society. As you transition from student to lawyer, start looking to bar associations and other professional groups as your next step. They can help you find the perfect job, and cultivate a ready-made network of peers at the same time!

The summer is a great time to join (you don't have to pass an exam or anything...)! There are hundreds and hundreds of bar and trade associations that would love you to join them as a student member. They are organized around many themes: geographic (national, state, county, city), demographic (gender, ethnicity/race, sexual preference), or practice (sector, practice specialty, function). Usually, membership for students is free or very nominal, and buys you incredible benefits that can help you as you move forward in your career. Although stated benefits of these groups often differ slightly, here is a short list of reasons to join (all of these are phenomenal job-search strategies too):

1. Periodicals: Usually, there is a newsletter or bar journal included in your membership that will help you keep up on current legal issues in the field, and start introducing you to familiar names in that circle.
2. Events: CLEs, receptions, dinners, committee meetings, etc. You’ll be in a room full of lawyers that do what you want to do, where you want to do it! Talk to them! Some organzations, like the Hispanic National Bar Association, and the American Intellectual Property Law Assocation, to name just two, host student job fairs for members!
3. Leadership Opportunities: Often, you can join a sub-section or committee of the organization, or at least introduce yourself to the chair of one, and offer to help. If you can contribute your energy and enthusiasm to a project, it is the best way to make a great impression!
4. “Virtual” Presence: If your intended job market is far away, an affiliation with
the local bar can give you the savvy, networking and recognition that you need to keep linked up with that market.
5. Practice Expertise: By participating with a professional organization, you’ll start to talk the talk and sound like a lawyer!

Sound good? Here are two really great lists of bar associations. Hieros Gamos hosts a fantastic one that is geographically organized, and includes all of North America. Click on the state you’re interested in and an incredibly robust list appears. FindLaw provides a good supplement to this one, that is more national and specialty-oriented. Of course, neither is absolutely exhaustive (I noticed that the American Association of Nurse Attorneys, isn’t on either of them), so Google up one that suits your interest.

And don't forget our UB Law Alumni Association! They offer all the same benefits and more for students and alumni. For more information, and to join, click here. Those clubs that you joined back in high school were good training for this!

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!

Spring Has Sprung, Summer is Coming!

"April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go."
~Christopher Morley, John Mistletoe

Walking to the Jacobs parking lot on Saturday, I saw a robin
nesting in the flowering tree outside Park Hall. After a teasing us for a few months, Old Man Winter has finally released his grip on us, and Spring is really here. Little shoots and buds, birds and insects are waking and emerging.

And so are legal employers! Even though some of the more visible jobs hire a year or more in advance, remember what it was like looking for a job before the wacky paradigm of the “law school job search” warped our expectations. Before law school, you didn’t go to the Gap to apply for a job, only to tell them that you want to start in 10 months! Employers hired you closer to when you were ready to start.

Small firms, public interest agencies, solo practitioners, and all kinds of great summer and graduate employers fall into this “real world” category! Especially if they don’t have a designated HR or recruiting person/department, if they post jobs at all, the vast majority of them don’t think about summer until the snow is all melted and they see their first robin!
What does that mean for you if you’re looking for a job right now? Here are some things to do:

1. Don’t give up on the CSO’s postings on Symplicity. Jobs continue to roll in all through the month of May and into June.

2. Now is the time to recontact those employers that may have told you that they “weren’t looking right now, but they’ll keep your resume on file.”

3. Don’t be afraid to approach a small law firm or solo practitioner and ask if they need extra help for the summer. They are much more equipped to make a decision about their needs now.

4. Public interest volunteer positions can sometimes be the best and most hands-on experiences. Even if you can only afford to volunteer one day a week with a Legal Aid Office or Public Defender or DA, it will look just as good on your resume. Check the employer section of Symplicity (employer type=Public Interest) or PSLawNet.org or Idealist.org for organizations to approach.

5. If you haven’t come to the CSO with an update on your search lately (or ever), come on in! Everyone’s search parameters are different, so we can sit down, help you devise the most efficient strategy, and help find you contacts and leads.

6. If you’re graduating, realize that employers may still not be able to make a decision about their needs until you’re ready to start work. That will be AFTER the bar exam. Graduation is an unfair and illogical deadline to give yourself to have a job offer. (You can quote me to your Mom and Dad). Don’t beat yourself up on the timing, and keep your eye on what your ultimate dream job is!

After a long winter, it feels wonderful to look forward to summer! Enjoy this time of year (exams notwithstanding), don’t panic, but get do excited about getting some great experience! Look around, explore, inquire, ask, seek. You might discover an opportunity, secret and wonderful, hidden in plain sight, just like my little robin in the tree outside Park Hall.