Keith Lee
It continues to be a tough market out there for law students and recent grads. A general malaise still envelops the legal industry. There are signs of optimism here and there, but no tangible, overall recovery. Too many law students continue to scramble for too few jobs. Many of them are struggling and grasping for straws.
Many established lawyers look at the current employment landscape for new lawyers and say “not my problem.” Which largely, it isn’t. They’re busy looking after their own. But some lawyers (myself included), think it’s important to reach out and try and help new lawyers as best we can. For me, it’s because I remember what it was like graduating into the morass of the legal industry back in 2010. So this past week, I helped organize an event for current law students in conjunction with my local bar association.
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The event started with a panel discussion with lawyers from small, medium, and large firms, along with an in-house counsel for a large corporation. A local judge moderated the panel. We talked about how we all ended up where we did. The hiring processes. How students and new grads can stand out on the job (in a good way, not in a show-up-on-ATL way).
Some question the value of bar associations, but I’ve found them to be great resources. Bar associations are essentially a lawyer’s professional community. And as I have noted before, if you invest in your community, your community will invest in you. By joining a local bar association and dedicating real time and effort to it, you can begin to develop the relationships you need in order to thrive as a small-firm practitioner. Extending these same sort of opportunities to law students only follows suit.
After the panel discussion, there was a social event held in conjunction with the small-firm section of the Bar. Twenty or so law students mixing with sixty or so lawyers. I was circulating about, chatting with many of the other lawyers there that I know. Talking shop, asking about families. The usual.
I was keeping an eye out on the law students while doing so. I was curious how many among them would take advantage of the opportunity that was presented to them on a silver platter.
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FYI to law students: many lawyers find chatting with you to be a chore. Especially at Bar functions. Most of the lawyers are there to relax or socialize with other lawyers. Suddenly a law student desperate for a job comes up and starts digging for information. It’s not exactly endearing.
But this event was different. This event was explicitly marketed as a lawyer/law student event. The lawyers that showed up knew that law students would be in attendance. They might not have been eager to speak with law students, but they were ready. Yet many of the law students stayed clustered together, unwilling to branch out and try and interact with the lawyers at the event. But you can’t stay in your shell, being a lawyer is a sales job.
Not all of the law students were this way, of course. One student came up to me and said he had a great conversation with a local judge and two other attorneys who practice in the area he wants to pursue. He told me he was going to follow up with them for lunch this week (holla J). Another student met with a partner at firm she was interviewing with the following day, along with connecting with other female lawyers who were interested in her summer plans (hey C). Other students came up to me and thanked me for helping create this opportunity for them. I was happy to do so.
But if you want to find success as a law student or new lawyer, you can’t wait for opportunities — you have to create them. If you’re waiting around for someone to just drop a job, clients, or relationships, in your lap, you’re going to be waiting for a long time. And even when opportunities are presented to you, like this event, it’s still your personal responsibility to take the initiative and put yourself out there.
You won’t always be met with a smile or a welcome. More often than not, you’ll likely get shot down. But if you don’t ever try, then you’ll never find the opportunities that might exist.
Be bold, put yourself out there.
Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter at @associatesmind.