Because of its importance, you should start preparing for this job search before the start of your third semester of law school. Ideally, you should plan to visit your placement office in late July or early August, before the start of school, so that you can do some research on which legal employers you want to work for and which ones may be interested in hiring you. Use the NALP Forms and other research materials discussed previously for these purposes.
Late July through early August is also a good time to call prospective legal employers directly to informally inquire as to how many people they expect to hire for summer clerkship positions and what types of individuals they are looking for to fill these positions. This period is also ideal for preparing or updating your resume and identifying good writing samples. If you found a summer job after your first year, you may want to use one of your written projects from that job (being careful to preserve any client secrets or confidential information, of course). Memoranda and briefs you drafted in your legal research and writing class can also serve as good writing samples. (If necessary, you should also revise the sample to correct any grammatical mistakes or typographical errors contained therein.)
Once you have identified somewhere between 30 and 40 prospective legal employers, follow the general job-hunting tips. Make sure that you devote your energies to getting hired by legal employers you want to work for and whose past track records indicate that they may be interested in extending you an offer. Under the NALP Guidelines, a prospective employer is required to leave job offers to law students extended in the fall open until December 15, provided that the student reaffirms her interest in the offer within 30 days of the date of the offer letter. If the law student was previously employed by the employer, the NALP Guidelines call for a November 15 deadline.
Hopefully, you will receive one or more job offers. When you receive an offer, immediately send the legal employer a letter confirming your interest in the position and explaining that you will get back to the employer with a firm response to the offer as soon as possible, but no later than the NALP Guideline date. Depending on how strong your interest is in working for the employer extending the offer, you may want to cut back on your interviewing. It is generally a good idea, however, to at least explore the possibility of working for another employer.
Some legal employers will let you split up your summers, working for one employer during the first half and another during the second half. However, such an arrangement usually will not be in your best interests. In deciding which students to offer permanent jobs, most employers will (all things being equal) extend offers to those students who have spent the most time working for them. Such students will be more familiar with the decision-making principals of the employer and may be perceived as more loyal and dedicated to that employer. Thus, if you split your summer, while you may have theoretically increased your chance of getting one permanent job offer, in reality you will probably have to perform significantly better than your fellow summer associates at each workplace to obtain an offer.
- See 38 Tips of Advice for Summer Associates and Summer Law Clerks That No One Ever Gives You: How to Be a Good Summer Associate and Not Get in Trouble for more information.
After you accept your job offer and show up for work on the first day, there are some key principles to keep in mind.
- Plan to work hard from the start. First impressions count heavily in determining which students ultimately get permanent job offers. Continue to work hard as the summer progresses, assuming that you are being continually scrutinized.
- Each legal employer will generally have a certain format or style for the work its employees generate. Normally the preferred format or style is set forth in a procedure manual. If you are given such a manual by your employer, read it thoroughly and do your best to apply the information set forth therein.
- Attempt to do well on each and every project you are given throughout the summer. Do not try to figure out which attorneys have more input into the hiring process than others and adjust your efforts accordingly. Often it takes a negative comment from only one attorney to prevent a summer associate from getting a permanent job offer.
- After you finish each project, ask the assigning attorney whether she was satisfied with your work. If she tells you that it has some problems, offer to correct them and do so promptly. In other words, make sure that every attorney you work for is satisfied with your final work product.
- Participate in the social events your legal employer has for its summer employees. This will help you develop social relationships with the employer's attorneys and your peers. Such relationships will enable you to determine whether you want to work for the employer in the future, and also will help you to know people from whom you can seek much needed advice when a question arises. (Do not overdo the socializing, however, since the bottom line for most employers is how good your work is, not your play.)
- Do not make the common mistake of taking on too much work, particularly toward the end of your summer job. What counts for summer work is the quality of the product, not its quantity. One summer associate two of the authors worked with got a permanent job offer even though she spent virtually her whole summer working on a single, complex project. If you take on too much work, you will run the risk of having to leave your job with some of the projects being incomplete or poorly done. Few things upset an attorney more than having work he had previously delegated to another given back to him unfinished or not even started.
