Law Schools

How Law Students Can Stop Screwing Up Their Alumni Networking Emails

How can you ask a complete stranger for a job . . . without asking for a job? It's pretty simple.

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Well, this was quite a week.  It seems as if Americans managed to, at least partially, restore democracy and provide a check on creeping authoritarianism — though as a native Floridian and current resident of Tennessee, I feel like my people let the rest of the country down, a feeling that is relatively common for the Floridian in me.  However, it is important to recognize that if Davidson County (i.e., Nashville and its environs) represented the entirety of Tennessee, we would be talking about Senator-elect Phil Bredesen and Governor-elect Karl Dean to the tune of 42 and 35 percentage points, respectively.  And the extent of our national restoration seems to be growing on a daily basis as ballots continue to be counted, despite the efforts of some who, before entering politics, oversaw the largest Medicare fraud in American history.

Now that we can all stop hitting refresh on FiveThirtyEight every five seconds, law students across the country can now focus on the important matters before them.  No, not vigorous outlining in preparation for exams (though that is vitally important), but rather, networking.

As I have mentioned before in this space, there are three levels of networking.  In my experience, the most difficult for law students is the second level, reaching out to alumni — either law school or from your undergraduate institution — contacts.  This is often because students are encouraged by those of us in Career Services to engage with alumni contacts via email, which creates the quite reasonable quandary of how one emails a complete stranger to get a job . . . without asking for a job.  This distinction is key because when reaching out to alumni, you do not want to start your email like this:

Dear Mr. Smith,

Can I have a job now?

If you are wondering why this would make for an awkward email, put yourself in the recipient’s shoes and think how you would react to a stranger reaching out to you unsolicited and asking for a job.  Such an email might be a step up from the ubiquitous Nigerian email scammer, but it’s a small step.  The end result would be that your email gets circulated around the office a couple of times as the subject of derision before ending up in the trash.

Instead of being blunt, students have to be a bit coy.  Rather than asking for a job, introduce yourself and explain that you are very interested in the particular area in which the attorney practices or the geographic region in which they reside.  Ask your contact how they got to their current legal position.  If you are reaching out to attorneys in private practice, mention something appealing about their firm — when in doubt, mention a firm’s culture; everyone always loves to tout their firm’s culture.  I should note that students must absolutely do their research about their target and his/her employer before reaching out.  There is no quicker way to have your networking efforts hit a brick wall than to tell an alumnus how much you respect their firm’s real estate practice when the fact is that the firm does not dabble in that area of the law.

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Next, make sure you keep your email short.  This is not the time to pen an epic poem.  Your entire life story is not required nor is a full regurgitation of what you found out about the firm from their Vault profile.  Someone who is currently at a particular firm probably does not need to be told by a law student the history of brothers who founded the firm in a decrepit Chicago flat in 1880.  You can accomplish everything you need to say in a maximum of four sentences.  Introduce yourself and mention what your connection is to the recipient. Explain your interest in the type of work that the attorney does, or from where they are doing it.  If you live close to the employer or will be in that area at some point in the not too distant future, mention that and see if your networking target would be open to meeting in person.  That. Is. It.

Finally, try your best not to get discouraged.  The networking process is difficult in and of itself, but the frustration level can increase exponentially when emailing strangers and then not hearing anything back.  If you find that some of your emails are not garnering a response, do not take this as an insult.  As law students will soon find out, lawyers can be remarkably busy and an unsolicited networking email from a random law student rests near the bottom of one’s priority list unless you happen to be related to a billable client.  I often tell students at Vanderbilt that much like batting in baseball, if you hear back from one out of every three emails you send, that can seem like a disappointment, but in actuality, a 33 percent success rate is a remarkable success.

So take a break from following the saga of uncounted Maricopa County ballots and start crafting your networking emails.  While writing to strangers might seem odd, it can be vital in landing a job.

Nicholas Alexiou is the Director of LL.M. and Alumni Advising as well as the Associate Director of Career Services at Vanderbilt University Law School. He will, hopefully, respond to your emails at abovethelawcso@gmail.com.

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