As they walk farther down the law school path, spend time studying in the library with stressed-out classmates, receive their first set of grades and start to listen to 2Ls and 3Ls, they become less and less receptive to Career Services — and other shields start to go up.

With that in mind, to keep law students engaged with career services for as long as possible during their law school careers, building relationships with 1Ls and getting them invested in their career services office early is essential. There is no better way to do this than to connect with incoming students RIGHT NOW, in July/August when they have few obligations, are excited to start law school and are eagerly seeking resources to help them succeed once they arrive.

If your career services office wants to send out an engaging email to incoming 1Ls in July — what should that look like? How can you make your outreach effective and compelling? And how can you ensure that your communications are compliant with NALP’s Principles and Standards?

Experts say that if you want to successfully market to millennials, your content must be personal and customized.

So, a reliable way to connect with incoming 1Ls is to send something specific that they can engage with and that can spur them to think about the type of legal career they are likely to succeed in. But be careful about getting too engaged! It’s important to be in compliance with NALP’s Principles and Standards.

The NALP Principles and Standards specify that:

“Law schools nevertheless should not begin providing one-on-one career counseling or application document reviews to first-year students before October 15.” NALP Principles and Standards, Part V. D (1).

“Educational and professional development contact with 1Ls is permitted at any time at the discretion of the school.” NALP Principles and Standards, Part V. D (2).

Sending out the LawFit career assessment in the summer is an ideal way to connect with incoming 1Ls personally, in a way that caters to their individual needs while staying in compliance with NALP’s Principles and Standards. You can get a head start by sending 1Ls the LawFit assessment as part of your professional development efforts –and wait until October 15 to go over the results, one-on-one.

Sending the LawFit Career Assessment to 1Ls in July/August also signals that you are attuned to their needs, recognize that they each have unique goals, strengths, and career paths — and that your team is eagerly planning for their arrival on campus. We hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity to set the tone for a productive, three-year relationship between new students and your Career Services team.

While fall semester excitement and initial 1L meetings may start you off on the right foot, winter break can create an out-of-sight, out-of-mind mindset that stalls what was beginning to be a strong relationship! After all, winter break lasts a full month – most students want to collapse, get some sleep, celebrate the holidays and — NOT think about law school for a while.

How can you ensure that the career search and your Career Office stay on students’ radar during the holiday break? How can you pave the way for a strong relationship in spring?

Sending short, personalized email communications will show you are there to advise and help — but are not calling students to action during break. The last thing you want is for your students to get the perception that your office thinks that they should leap full-time into their job searches without taking time off to rest and rejuvenate. Instead, you can send an email asking how the student is doing, wishing them an enjoyable holiday break, and reminding them that your team is available to help, as needed.

Personalized emails get read more frequently and get more responses! Try to incorporate something you talked about in the initial 1L meeting, i.e. “Are you back in Cincinnati? The last time we talked, you said that you were going to meet with your parents’ friend, who is a family law lawyer. Did you connect? Do you have questions as you prepare?”

These thoughtful, short emails accomplish three important things:

1. Show the student that your office is thinking about them and is helpful, approachable, and a reliable resource

2. Remind the student that their job search is something they need to begin thinking about — without being pushy or demanding

3. Create more familiarity, paving the way for the student to feel comfortable meeting with you when they come back in the spring

During winter break, some of your students, regardless of whether they are 1Ls, 2Ls, or 3Ls, may find themselves not knowing where to begin in their job searches. Often times, this is because they don’t know what kind of law they want to practice and do not even know how to start figuring it out.

Your office can send a clear signal that is it ‘OK not to know!’ You can send your students an offer to complete the LawFit Career Assessment when they have time, over break! Students who would otherwise be intimidated or embarrassed that they don’t know what they want to do often come out of their shell and start communicating with you, once they get the chance to complete this personalized assessment.

We at LawFit hope that you and your students have a happy and restful holiday break – with some long-overdue time to recharge.

Please ask us to share success stories about students and the schools who have successfully been using LawFit!

Your Career Development team can make a big difference by focusing the conversation away from grades — and toward career exploration. This is a VIP time for 1Ls to focus on their career search, see it in a new light, and start to build interest in career paths they may not have considered before.

Telling stories about alumni who were disappointed in their 1L grades, yet built successful legal careers, is a great way to ease 1Ls concerns and guide them in the right direction. At this time, 1Ls want assurance that their careers aren’t doomed — just because their first semester grades were not what they had hoped for.

As career services professionals know, the antidote to bad grades is FOCUS. A student with a clear sense of the type of law they want to practice is in a great position to succeed, even without top grades. If a student is dedicated to building her career in tax law, for instance, she can attend tax law conferences where she will meet professionals in the field who can help her advance her career, she can write her journal note about a tax law issue, extern in local offices that practice tax law, intern in tax law offices over the summer, talk with a few alums — and build a resume that screams tax law.

The problem is — few law students have this focus! Many of them don’t know what they want to do.

Offering students the Law Fit Career Assessment is an easy, fast, and effective first step! During 20 minutes of answering questions online, students will delve into their strengths, interests, and learn to think critically about different practice areas. The Millennial generation wants personalized attention and advice: Law Fit provides it, via an instantaneous 30-page custom report!

If you want to get 1Ls engaged with your Career Services office in the spring semester, reach out to them with this concrete tool, add your personalized guidance — and spread the good news that focus and self-knowledge about one’s talents and aptitudes can overcome concern about grades – and help build confidence!

How can career services offices motivate students to focus on other job search strategies, beyond OCI? Here are three proven methods:

1. Profile/Highlight alumni working in exciting practice areas in non-Big Law settings

Landing a job outside of big law usually takes more work, planning, and patience than landing a job through OCI. The process for landing a non-OCI job can seem nebulous – 2Ls may have no idea how to get started. Providing tangible examples of alumni who have successfully navigated this career path can demystify this option and have a huge impact.

Telling stories of alumni with interesting legal jobs in exciting practice areas will illustrate for students how they can launch successful careers outside of the OCI/big law process. It will also show them that there is plenty of ‘career action’ outside of big law and that many grads are doing really interesting work in a wide variety of contexts. The more you can drill down into the specifics of how these alumni got started on their career paths, the better.

2. Announce career fairs and official summer programs available to your students

As much as career offices understand the importance of networking and building a strong personal brand, students like to participate in official career fairs and they like to apply for positions in official summer programs. At law schools where OCI typically only leads to success for higher-GPA candidates, many students can start and/or end up feeling left out. A key way to overcome this is to highly publicize other career fairs and official summer programs that all students can participate in and apply for. If you announce these fairs and programs along with OCI Iinformation, students will see that there are an array of options open to them.

3. Emphasize non-OCI deadlines

If you have been working in Career Development for a while, the odds are that you have had a few students come into your office in October, having just realized they have struck out of the OCI process. They may be confused – or panicked – about what to do next. As eager as you may be to help these students, you all would be MUCH better off if only they had talked to you in July!

Get your students to engage earlier by making non-OCI deadlines a major point of emphasis for your office. Announce early and often that popular programs such as DOJ honors have a September deadline and that if students wait to see how OCI works out for them before taking action, it will be too late.

It can be a daunting task to capture the attention of 1Ls and rising 2Ls and to get them to FOCUS EARLY on (and EXECUTE) the job search steps that will help them land a suitable position for the summer. If you are looking for a new, low-touch tool for your 1L/2L toolbox, please ask how the LawFit Career Assessment has been helping our law school subscribers since 2014.

Take advantage of it! As 2Ls drop in to discuss OCI, steer the conversation toward career fit by exploring what they really want out of their legal career. Even if a student comes in asking how to draft a thank you note to a law firm, you can use this opportunity to ask what their dream job might be, after law school. Student visits that start with small questions about OCI details can result in getting them thinking about their careers in the longer term and encouraging them to create job search plans outside of OCI.

Often times, the anxiety that law students feel during OCI does not arise from a concern that they won’t get a law firm job, but instead stems from the feeling that they do not truly know what they want to do with their law degree. As a result, in many ways, OCI can be the best time to engage students about career fit. The LawFit Career Assessment can help you and your team maximize this engagement and make these conversations more effective.

Students who take LawFit complete a 20-minute online survey that explores their interests and strengths and gives them a sense of which practice areas are likely to be the best fit. Students receive an instantaneous 30-page custom report by return email. This report provides details about their strengths and what each practice area entails. It also graphs/ranks practice areas based on how well each one fits an individual student.

LawFit can help you provide the perfect antidote to Big Law Tunnel Vision: a broader and clearer view of what each student’s career success paths is likely to be!

In October,

the ABA holds its pro bono week
NALP holds its PSJD Public Service Mini-Conference and
Equal Justice Works’ Conference and Career Fair takes place.

As a result, law schools across the country have created programming highlighting jobs available in the public interest and government fields.

Public Interest month is a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with students after OCIs.

After OCI, career services offices often lose touch with students who:

Can feel dejected about their job searches after receiving callback rejections;
Are public-interest minded, but may believe that their Career Development office is not knowledgeable about or interested in these career paths.

This is an ideal opportunity for CDOs to address both of these concerns — and re-engage students who need new career options. Planning panel discussions and designing a professional- looking poster can help you launch an ‘official initiative’ that will let public-interest minded students know they are supported, by putting a spotlight on new opportunities they can pursue.

October is the time to open up these conversations! Following your public interest programming, invite students to your office to talk about public interest job paths and discuss which ones might be a good fit for them. Show them how to search for public interest organizations on PSJD, and talk to them about networking with your alumni and local public interest attorneys. Of course, have them take the LawFit Career Assessment, so they can learn in detail (and be confident about) the unique qualities they can contribute to a public interest or government position.

Dedicating a week or a month to showcasing public interest allows you to introduce positivity to job search conversations. Instead of thinking only about job opportunities that are lost after OCIs, students receive the message that great opportunities are still available since public interest, and government employers have later hiring timelines. And students who have always been dedicated to careers in public service from the get-go will feel supported and accepted, as their law school creates a forum designed for them.

Start by hosting employer panels full of happy public interest and government attorneys who are thrilled with their jobs and did not land them until 3L year or even after graduation. This will turn the conversation away from any negative fall-out from the OCI process, by encouraging students who are still looking to THINK, early-on, about a career that will lead them to career satisfaction.

Lawfit is seeking writers to join our Marketing and Communications team. We are looking for individuals who are passionate about writing and looking to contribute their talents to making a positive impact in the legal profession. This role is for a highly motivated and detail-oriented person who enjoys telling a story that captivates and inspires. You will work with amazing, dedicated folks to develop content (news articles and blog posts) that supports our blog. The hours are flexible and you can work remotely. Time commitment is approximately 1-2 hours per week.

As our mission is to help lawyers and law students make better career decisions, it’s critical for us to publish frequently and be an authority on the subject.

If you covet the written word, love the art of story telling, have a creative command of language, or simply love to write, then we need you. Volunteers in this role will prepare blog posts, feature articles, and other pieces as needed. Your work will go live once it’s been reviewed by our staff.

Come build your portfolio while learning more about the legal field.

Requirements

Excellent editing, proofreading, and writing skills.
Must have a J.D., be currently enrolled in law school, or work extensively in the legal field.
Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to work independently and as a member of a team.
Ability to work rapidly and meet deadlines under pressure.
An outstanding attention to details and ability to multitask.
Access to computer with internet connection.
Knowledge of social media.
Experience in Marketing, Communications, Public Relations, Journalism or English a plus.

Benefits

Build your resume and gain references for future employment opportunities.
Be part of a highly-motivated organization.
Opportunity to work from the comfort of your own home.

Compensation

This is an unpaid part-time volunteer position.

How to Apply

Email a cover letter to lawfit12@gmail.com outlining why you would be a good fit for Lawfit, your resume, and one writing sample. Please put “Blog Volunteer” in the subject line.

How can Career Development offices get ALL these messages across to their students?
It is difficult to get students to prioritize networking when their energy is directed towards their work day. Hosting an alumni networking event this summer is an easy way to encourage students to get out and meet practicing attorneys. If your school sets up the event, students will have an array of contacts, without having to set up individual networking meetings.

Scheduling a networking event doesn’t even have to put a dent in your career office’s budget! Bars in any given city will often reserve space for a large group — for free –without imposing a drink minimum.

Networking events do not even have to tax your office’s resources, if you can find a dedicated alumni in the city in which you want to schedule the event — and a few dedicated students who can encourage them to coordinate the event. You can even design a new position that students can use on their resume: “Summer Networking Leader” and equip them with the resources to plan an event on their own.

If you are coaching students on how to succeed in the workplace, Millennials respond best to short form digital videos. Talk to the tech team at your school to create a plan for a few short videos that equip students with important professionalism tips, such as 1) asking what the deadline for a project is, 2) not being shy about asking questions if they get stuck on a research question, and 3) being proactive about meeting lawyers at their organization or firm.

As students meet with counselors in your office before heading off for the summer, bring up professionalism in the workplace and tips they can follow to ensure their own success.