Final Steps in Career Planning

The final steps in the career planning process involve establishing priorities and developing a timetable for the job search. Many law students omit these steps because it seems self evident to them that after they have looked at their own skills and reviewed the market they can proceed directly to the job hunt.

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The importance of ranking priorities is that it gives you focus. It forces you to organize your job search in a manageable and rational way. Similarly, establishing a timetable for the job search early in your law school career relieves the panicky feeling that you must find something anything in the last month.

Developing a Ranked List

It makes sense to begin your job search with the highest priority and to proceed down the list. Many law students have problems identifying specific employers during the job search process because they have not taken the time to set priorities during the career planning process.

It is not necessary to rigidly follow this list of priorities. If a job opportunity comes up that falls under another listed priority while you are still working on the first, you can pursue the job if you want to. The idea is to make the process work for you, not you for it. The paradigm merely calls for you to devote the greater part of your energies to the categories at the top of your list, and pursue other avenues only if your first ones do not pan out.

So, how do you rank priorities? At this point, you should have selected quite a bit of information from your analysis and your evaluation of the job market. All you have to do is to convert your original list of market choices into an ordered list based upon what you have learned about yourself and the market. Your investigation may have uncovered one or two new alternatives. You will also probably want to drop some of the alternatives you had initially considered based upon what you have learned.

At this time, rank-order your possibilities on a sheet of paper . List no fewer than five or more than ten. The reason for these limitations is to impose a degree of manageability to the list. If the list is too short, you may find yourself unemployed and out of options, an unfortunate combination. If you have too many options, your job search will not seem to have any clear definition. You may find that you have not forced yourself to make choices, but rather merely rearranged a big, unmanageable list.

Maintaining Options

As you go into the job search, your task will be to identify specific employers who meet the criteria defined by your ranked list. Begin with option one and proceed down the list.

As you near the end of the list, but before the list is exhausted, you should add additional options to the list. Hopefully, you will not reach this point. It is better to be prepared for the worst case scenario, however, than to find yourself out of ideas as well as options.

Developing a Timetable

You began the career planning process before you came to law school, but it does not stop when you matriculate. Many students spend a significant amount of time during the first year of law school going through the steps explained in the last three chapters. They begin the job search during the second year of school and complete it sometime during the third year. If this is the rule, then the Rile is the exception.

In reality, the process is much more complicated for most law students. For one reason or another, many law students do not begin the process of career exploration until later in their law school careers, some not until graduation. The closer in time that you are to the date you start work, the more compressed the entire process will be, and the greater the temptation to shortcut the career planning process.

Many law students discover that experiences during law school alter their original vision of what they want to do. Career planning choices made during the first year of law school may not hold up during the third year. For this reason, it is almost always necessary to review your analysis at least annually. In fact, this is something that you should do on a regular basis throughout your legal career. We all change, and our plans should keep step with our identities.

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For many law students, the planning process can be interrupted by diversions into the job search process from early in law school: part-time jobs during the school year, summer jobs, or even full-time jobs taken temporarily so that you can earn enough to complete law school.

In short, it is not always possible to proceed on a straight line through the career planning process. It may be necessary to jump forward and deal with elements of the job search (e.g., to look for a job, you have to have a resume.)

In one sense, jobs you obtain during law school represent another facet of the career planning process. You could call this a testing process. As you engage in the career planning process and form opinions, these may be viewed as hypotheses subject to testing in the crucible of the marketplace.

The fact that you may pursue jobs during law school does not alter the fact that career planning is the first step in the process of obtaining employment after graduation.

The longer you wait to begin the career planning process, the more compressed will be the time frame, and the less flexible will be the options. There is no one "right" schedule for the process for all students. It will be useful to understand the cycle of this process in order to maximize the effectiveness of your efforts.

It may be helpful at this point for you to draw your own timetable. This will give you an easy point of reference as you proceed through the career planning process.

One way to develop a personal timetable is to start at the end of the process. For instance, if you know when you plan to start working at a permanent job, you can work backwards to the point in time where you are now.

This simple technique can help you to avoid considerable stress as you proceed through law school. Aside from the demands of study and your personal life, the question of what to do after graduation looms ever-present in the background throughout your legal education. For some, the pressures associated with making career choices can produce acute anxiety.

The best way to negate such stress is to plan for it. Anticipate your most stressful periods. Spread out your activities. Get control of your career before it gets control of you.

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