Grond wrote:Matthies wrote:You need to get out into the working legal community and meet working lawyers and judges, your classmates don't have jobs to offer you these folks do. Join the local bar association as a student member, get involved OUTSIDE of school, see if there are Inns of Court in your town.
I also would not rule out working for a solo, one of the best choices I made. I got to everything, and I mean everything, in that job, learned a ton more about actual practical hands on experience then I did when I was at larger firms. Plus he introduced me to tons of people, having been practicing for 30 years he knew all the movers and shakers and made it a point to introduce me to as many as he could.
The key is finding a good solo who is willing to mentor you and not just use your free (or low paid) help. Simplicity and random e-mails s NOT how to do it. You need to get to know lawyers/judges, they will know who has a rep in town for being a good mentor and who will just work you to death.
If you can't find anything paid this summer see if you can volunteer for someone and get credit for it as an internship. But seriously, you're doing it wrong. Simplicity and random e-mails is what everyone else is doing, you need to stand out from the heard, you do that by getting to know people who can personally recommend you for jobs no one else even knows about it. If you do or do not find something for this summer you should make networking your top, or second to top priority.
Welcome back, exiler. How was the bar?
Well I I'll just say I hope I don't have to do that again.
As to the getting a job thing. Look, I'll be blunt for a couple of reasons: I've been where u all where, I've done that, and I've worked in the legal profession for a few years (went to LS part-time worked during the day). If you're asking yourself should I apply here, or bother this guy about a job i have not heard from in three weeks, you're not going to make the cut as a lawyer in the long run. Does not mean you can't change, but folks the honest truth is law is more like sales than it is accounting, you can't just expect to the do the minimum and get paid 100k plus.
Go getters, the folks that stick their necks out and take the ianative win. Even over grades and everything else. There is only so much waiting for a senior associate to give you work a firm will put up with.
The point is if your timid now, or unsure what to do or shy about sticking your neck out, get over it NOW while you're in school. Cuase you won't last long at a firm if you're not persistent about finding, creating and making work. Law IS sales, most of time you create legal work for your clients, not the other way around. If that dose not make sense to you it will after a summer of working at a firm. Partners become partners because they are good at making/creating business (i.e. legal work where there was none before), not necessarily because they are good at the law. You can be a great lawyer, but the shitty legal mind across the hall whose good at creating business will be telling you what to do in a few years. That's how it works at firms. There are a TON of people who can do legal work, only a few who are really good at creating it. Those folks win even when they lose.
I highly doubt you're going to do nothing for 1L summer.
