The way that most law students gain job experience is to work during the summers they are in law school. It's tough to get a job the summer after your first year, but try. If you can't get the job you'd really like, take one that gives you experiences you can use to promote yourself next year. Before putting it on your resume, translate whatever job you get into a valuable experience in which you developed important skills.
If you can't get a paying job, take an internship with a governmental agency, work for a potential client, do anything that requires you to think and to interact with others in the workplace. You may have to do some digging to land an internship, but it's worth the effort. One prosecutor told me, "For our last three openings, we've either hired from within or hired lawyers who had interned with our office. No one wants to take a risk on hiring an unknown quantity with so many qualified people looking for jobs with us."
Internships (sometimes called externships when organized by law schools) are most useful when they are planned in a way that enables you to work toward a goal or to develop a skill. Cindy Slane, director of field placement programs at Quinnipiac College School of Law in Hamden, Connecticut, works hard to make the externships she supervises meaningful for her students. "A lot of legal employers think taking on an extern would be a great way to clean up their filing backlog and other 'grunt' work that isn't getting done. The structure and rigor in our program results in the supervising lawyers taking their mentoring roles more seriously." Cindy sends each potential externship supervisor a copy of the goals and objectives, as well as the course requirements, of the law school's extern program. "Each student must complete a detailed assessment of his or her legal skills and a learning plan for the externship semester. Students must identify what they hope to get out of their externships by choosing focus areas, such as management of legal work or improving legal research, and target skills they want to develop. Then they and their supervising attorneys must identify means by which the externship will develop their skills."
The first hands-on legal work that many lawyers do comes during their involvement in a law school clinical program. Clinicals are law school courses that focus on a particular type of law for people who can't afford private lawyers-prisoners, the poor, those with mental disorders. Students learn the substantive law in the classroom, and then apply it with real clients in the real world. Often in real courtrooms.
The full-time job experiences you gain before going to law school are just as important as your summer or internship experiences. Maybe more so. If you've been out working, even in another industry, capitalize on it. You have gained experiences that will give you perspective many other candidates will lack.
There is a tremendous rush by most law students to get into law school and to get on with their careers. Slow down. Law school will still be there in a year. Take a year "off." Defer your admission to law school or apply to law school while you are working as a paralegal or a bank trainee or a Peace Corps volunteer. It will make you a more interesting person, it will make you appreciate law school all the more, it will probably improve your law school grades, and it will make you more attractive to legal employers. If you jump from high school to college to law school, you may have proven that you are an excellent student, but most employers want someone who can approach problems in a practical, not just academic, way.
It doesn't matter what you do between college and law school, but working in some law-related position will have the added benefit of furthering your examination of law as a career. If you work in a law office you should pick up an insider's knowledge about what practicing law is all about. What working conditions are like? What different types of lawyers do on a day-to-day basis? What kind of lawyers you might want to work with-and not work with? Your time working will also give you good substantive experiences that you can talk about on your law school application and in job interviews.
Extra Credit
Another way to set yourself apart is to participate in any activity that shows your ability to write, speak, think, or just work hard toward a goal. If you write book reviews for a local newspaper, speak to elementary school students about the evils of drugs, or play Championship Bridge or chess, it will reflect well on you as an applicant for a legal job.
Everyone who's made it to the interview stage has something going for him or her. Certain minimum qualifications have been met or you wouldn't be interviewing. So wow them. Show your drive, your special spark. Ask intelligent questions about your prospective employer-questions that show your interest in that employer. Everyone wants to be wanted. If you can articulate persuasive reasons why you really want to work for the particular employer, it can make the difference in landing the job.
Russell Jones, a name partner at Molloy, Jones & Donohue in Tucson, Arizona, says that he looks for honesty, integrity, and factors that indicate whether the person will stay with the firm if hired. "It's hard to predict loyalty, but indicators such as whether a candidate has held one job for several years are considered, as is his or her reason for becoming a lawyer. If her primary reason is to make money, then she probably won't stay with our firm forever because other, bigger firms can pay lawyers more than we can." In addition, he looks to hire lawyers "who will put their clients' needs before their own."
One way to figure out in advance how you stack up is to prepare your resume now. Pretend that you're about to interview for your first legal job. How would you sell yourself? What would you emphasize? Where are the holes in your resume? Think now about how to fill those holes so that you'll have an even stronger resume before you really need to use it. As a means of setting goals, sit down now and write the resume that you want to have when you're applying for real jobs down the line. Keep that ideal resume in mind as you make decisions about how to spend your time, which activities to become involved in, where to seek employment, and what activities to pursue while employed.
For example, many states have law student intern rules that allow law students to present certain arguments in court. Research those rules and press your summer employer to let you give a real argument to a judge. Quite a nice merit badge for the resume. Advance planning and follow-through like that will give you the focus you need to prepare for the job market of the future.
