Pragmatic, Out-of-the-Box Advice on Finding a Job in the Legal Field

I participated recently in a distinguished panel at Georgetown Law School talking to some of the best and brightest law students I've ever met. The topic was focused on in-house counsel careers and the panelists hailed from various industries and non-profits in the DC Metro area.  Many of the students were pursuing their LLMs, spoke more than two languages and were eager to get a jump start on their legal careers. The legal job market has changed significantly over the years, and it was here at Georgetown with these students where I was able to better understand the challenges they face finding their dream job.  Bloomberg Business reports a steady increase in the employment placement rate for law school students still far below the all-time high in 2007.[1]  For those continuing their job search, be it entry-level, mid-level and beyond, there are three fundamental guiding principles you should consider adopting.

Optimism.  

This might be a hard pill to swallow for some but optimism is a choice not a genetic personality trait that defines you. Some of the only things I have complete 100% control over is my perspective and my attitude.  The same goes for you.  Attitude is a choice.   Perspective is a choice.  Many say that you are most influenced by the 5 people closest to you.  Are they positive influences? Are they encouraging you to pursue your dreams? Do they support you in your aspirations?  In the book, Switch on Your Brain, Dr. Caroline Leaf tells us that 75-98% of illnesses are a direct result of our thought life.  Our DNA can be directly altered based on our thoughts.  That is powerful stuff!                                                                  

Determination

When I was a 2L in law school, my dream was to work in a law firm in Paris, France.  I was convinced that I would land an internship in Paris, and I forwarded my resume to over 100 law firms. In addition to receiving beautifully written rejection letters, I won a BARBRI bar exam voucher for having received the most rejection letters of all my peers.  I had almost let my dream die when one fall day, I opened my mail box and sat on my apartment building stoup across from law school preparing myself to read yet another rejection letter.  I was shocked to read they were interested in offering me an internship and wanted to interview me in Paris.  I made travel arrangements, scheduled the interview and reached out to the firms I had yet to hear back from and scheduled 4 more interviews.  In Paris, I walked into a Top 100 Law Firm and asked if they accepted summer interns, and they offered me one on the spot.  I received four job offers that summer and worked at two different law firms in Paris. 

How easy would it have been to give up? Extremely. How do you think the other students saw me? Crazy.  Why didn’t I give up?  Because I knew it was possible,  I knew I could do it and I would not allow others to define my success. What would basketball be like today if Michael Jordan decided to quit the game after he didn’t make the varsity team? What if Thomas Edison believed his teachers when they told him he was “too stupid to learn anything”? Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas”. One of the hardest lessons to learn and accept is belief in you particularly in spite of what others think of you.  

Resiliency

Resiliency is the ability to recover after rejection or discouragement. This is a tough one, and I admit to struggling in this area. Fear can either define you or you can overcome it. In the game of job seeking, the odds are greatly in your favor – you only need one!  Like many things in life, it’s a numbers game.  The more you play the game, the better the odds are of landing a job. This is simple math even a lawyer can do it.

While in Paris, the first law firm informed me that they needed to cut my internship short due to a lack of resources. Truth be told, one new partner was not particularly happy to see an American every day (despite my French fluency skills and love of their bread and coffee). Later that day, I got into action by mobilizing my network. By the end of the day, I had potential opportunities in the US, Hong Kong and France. I ended up finishing the summer at another firm in Paris where I drafted my first contract for a Kosher food festival. It was this gig that developed my passion for commercial transactions with emphasis in digital technologies and manufacturing. Over the years, I’ve hired that same firm to assist in handling legal matters in-country when I was EMEA counsel for a large corporation. There is a secondary lesson here – never burn bridges because you never know who you treat poorly today will become your boss tomorrow.

Perspective is a choice. Attitude is a choice. A rejection letter can be hard to swallow. Don’t let it define who you are and what you are capable of. Keep moving forward and know that the 'no' you get today gets you that much closer to the 'yes' about to come.

 [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-06-20/the-employment-rate-falls-again-for-recent-law-school-graduates