PSA: Network, and network early. Forum

[Lincoln]

Getting a job, whether it's your first one (1L summer), second one (SA), or third one (lateral/clerkship), may in large part depend on your ability and willingness to reach out to people who will help you get noticed.

I've certainly had some lucky breaks in my legal career, but to a large extent those breaks happened because I put myself in a position where I got to know people who could help me. I got my SA through a recommendation from my 1L summer, after my supervisor reached out to a former colleague, and I got my clerkship through a recommendation from my firm, when a colleague encouraged me to apply to a judge he knew personally and then dropped my name to the judge.

Since I started at my firm two people have reached out to me asking about working at the firm. One was someone I knew in law school and one was totally out of the blue but who had found me on the website and noticed we had some things in common. Both reached out to me prior to OCI, so I forwarded their résumés to recruiting, they were slotted into the regular recruitment process, and both ended up with offers (one accepted). Had they not reached out, or not reached out until after OCI, there is little change I could have done anything about getting them an interview.

TL;DR: Reach out to anyone and everyone you know (or don't know) that may be in a position to help you, and do so before you really need to. And no, don't send me your résumé.