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Hey everybody. In this episode of Law School Decoded, let's talk about what you as a law student should expect on the journey to your first ever legal job. Let's get started.

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Welcome to Law School Decoded, the podcast that pulls back the curtain on what it's really like to succeed in law school. Let's get started.

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So we're going to do a bunch of podcast episodes about what your job search in law school and beyond will look like. I am extremely passionate about the process of looking for the career that is right for you. And I've talked to dozens and dozens of law students about it over the years. I've also been on the side hiring side, both in-house and in an AMLA 100 law firm environment. So I am passionate about helping people pursue the career that they believe is right for them and maximizing their chances of success and securing an offer for one of those jobs amid a sea of many, many applications. So in this episode, in one of the early episodes I'm making, I want to talk to you law students out there. And I want to give you an idea of what you should expect on the journey to your first law school job. When you are in law school for three years, you are also going to be simultaneously looking for your first job. You're going to be applying for jobs online. You're going to be networking with people. And it's going to be a process that for many, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, will cause some stressors. It's a process that is not easy. It's a process in an environment where you have put a lot of pressure on yourself to pursue a particular career path that might be right for you and that you want. And if you've made it to law school, you're high performing. You're someone who has succeeded in a lot of areas of life, no doubt. And you are someone who has high expectations for yourself. So with that in mind, you're going to put a lot of pressure for yourself in the search for your first law job. That's natural. A lot of law students do that. What I want to preview for you is why the process can be stressful for some law students. And I want you to be aware of that so you can be ready to manage that stress. So you can be ready to face it head on and say, this is not a surprise. This is something I can deal with. This is something countless lawyers have dealt with before me. This is something my peers are dealing with, whether they show it or not. And so I can take a deep breath here and I can deal with it too. So what are the things that make the law school job search process a bit stressful? Number one, it takes some time to find your first couple of law jobs in particular. When you are searching for summer positions and postgraduate positions, it can take, in most cases, many, many months, in some cases, years, particularly for that first postgraduate job. Because it can take some time, there's some anxiety building up. I don't have a job and it's getting close to summer. I don't have a job and I'm a 3L and getting close to graduation. You've invested all this money in law school, all this time in your legal academic career, and you don't see the path to the beginning of your actual legal career. That process takes time. And because it takes time, it's stressful. Because you don't get the quick success that you get in so many other areas in life, the process is stressful. Expect that. Take a deep breath and expect that you are not going to get a summer job overnight and you are not going to get your first law school job overnight. Expect it to take some time and reduce that stress based on that expectation. The other thing that you should expect in your law school job search is rejection. Every single lawyer, every single budding lawyer, every single person looking for any kind of legal career job is going to face rejection at some point. Even the people at the top of your class will not be well suited for every job that they may want. Everyone is going to face rejection at some point. And on the journey to a first job, most law students face a healthy dose of rejection. You will approach potential employers and find out they aren't hiring for the position that you believe is right for you. You will find out that they have already hired someone for the position that's right for you. You will find out that they do not want you for that position in that application cycle during which you applied. You will get rejection letters. These used to come in the form of good old snail mail letters in the mail when we were all mailing in our applications. Now, of course, the rejection is going to come electronically, or you're just not going to hear back at all after you apply for a job. You're going to network with people who tell you, I don't have anything for you. I don't have a job for you. I don't have advice about how you can pursue the career you want. I'm sorry. You're going to apply for jobs. And amid hundreds of other applications, you're going to get back a communication that says, you have not been selected to move on further in this process. You are going to interview for jobs. And after those interviews, usually several rounds of them, you'll get back a communication, usually a phone call, that says, I'm sorry, but we're going with another candidate. Rejection is stressful, especially for young professionals who haven't necessarily faced it before. Take a deep breath and get ready for it. Everyone faces this. And as we'll talk about in other episodes in particular, rejection isn't something that really should get you down because there are a lot of fish in the sea. There is no one job that is perfect for virtually any law student. For most law students, there's a small subset of several great career paths and jobs out there. And so when you're rejected to one, that's not necessarily a no to that career path or even to that employer. I was rejected by the law firm where I ended up working for nine years after law school. I was rejected by them initially. I approached them about a job and they said, we don't have anything, much less a job for you. I kept at it. I kept in touch with a couple of the partners, and eventually, when I emailed them just to keep in touch during my third year, they said, Hey, we were just about to post something. Why don't you come in and talk to us about it? And guess what? They never even posted the job. They just interviewed me and it was a good fit. It was what I had wanted throughout law school. I I had the interest and the drive that they were looking for and the background. So they hired me for it because it was a good mutual fit. And I didn't have to go through that big rejection process because it was the right time and it was the right role for me. So expect rejection, but know that no matter how many you get, it's not the end of the road. You will make it to a career that is right for you with persistence, with hard work, and with networking and with applying to jobs in the right way, with practice interviewing. Sometimes rejection is helpful because it will help you get better at things. When you're rejected, you can reflect on how did I interview? Did I come off as a lawyer would? Did my application have errors on it? Did I connect with the right people to become part of this community of lawyers such that they had a natural inclination to pick me? Through rejection, you will learn how to get better at those things. You will make your resume better, your cover letter, and your presentation and interviews every single time that someone tells you, sorry, but you didn't get it this time. It is that failure that will make you a better applicant and get you to the career path that is right for you. So expect rejection, but don't get down about it. Here's another thing that causes a lot of stress in your law school job search. It will seem like every other law student who you go to school with practically is successful and does not face rejection. You will see students who walk in to one interview for on-campus interviews and the stars aligned, and of the 300 people who applied to that summer associate position, they are the one to get it. You will see students who get offers from prosecutors' offices, from judges, from law firms, and you're gonna hear about it. And you aren't going to be one of those students. It's gonna seem like everyone else is getting job offers left and right, everyone else is getting interviews, everyone else is getting all sorts of different opportunities, except for you. Now, of course, I'm exaggerating. When I say everyone else, I do mean a small subset of your class, but it's going to seem like it might be more than it actually is in terms of the number of students getting those opportunities to come their way. Why is that? Well, those are the students who just happen to get lucky and who happen to find the right thing early. And maybe they have exceptional resumes that help set them up for that success. Maybe they have exceptional grades to help set them up for that success. Maybe they have exceptional connections. The reality is though that you're attentive to them because there are only a few of them and their stories stand out. People are excited for them. It's an exciting thing. And so people talk about it. Word spreads. They're done with their job search, at least for a little while, so they can just sit back now while everyone else is churning to find that first legal career or a summer job. So it can be stressful when you're facing all that rejection, and others seem to be successful at their job search. But don't get down because not as many people are having success as one might think. People don't talk about how they just got rejected for one of many jobs they applied for. They talk about when they get a job. And so that's what you're naturally hearing about. But the reality is that many more people are hustling to their first job just like you are. And those who have found jobs, particularly early on in your law school career, are the exception to the rule. Another source of stress is that you're going to be confused about what kind of career you want. You're going to think, I want to work in big law, I want to work in criminal defense, I want to work as a prosecutor, I want to be a judge, I want to be an arbitrator or a mediator. The reality is you don't yet know because you haven't had a front row seat to what day-to-day life is like in that career. So you're going to be testing the waters and trying to figure out as best you can what you think is the right career for you, what you think is the right first job for you. But the reality is you're just trying things out. You're seeing what career path might be best for you. That can cause stress because you're uncertain about what it is that you want. You really don't know. When someone says they do bankruptcy law, what they do every day, when someone says they do litigation, how that's really different from life as a transactional lawyer. You should try to become as informed as possible to reduce that stress. Try to learn as much as you can about different areas of law by reading about them, reading what their lawyers do, reading the blog posts related to that area, reading the journal articles, reading whatever it is, talking to lawyers who are in that area and asking, what is it that you're doing day to day? When you start work in the morning, what's the first thing you do? What do you spend most of the day doing? And then how do you finish the day? What are the big events in your work? Are you reading and writing a lot? Are you talking a lot? Are you in court? Are you closing deals? What does this involve? Are you reading contracts? Are you editing contracts? Are you drafting things from scratch? What is your life in this area? You should learn as much as you can because it will help you aim towards the career that you think you want. But again, you're just going to be trying to figure that out until you're actually in the seat and learn, oh yeah, this was the career for me, or uh-oh, I don't like this at all. I need to make a pivot. You should also expect stress in law school because of other demands on you. You're going to be studying a lot. You're going to have a lot of case law to read. You're going to have papers to write. You're going to have personal things going on. You're going to have plenty of things going on in your life in addition to this job search. Many of my podcast episodes are about how to succeed on exams. And the approach that I suggest to outlining, to reading case law, and to taking your exams does take time. There is no way around it. So if you're going to invest that time in studying and in yourself as you should be during this time, there are going to be a lot of demands on you. And so applying for jobs and networking and seeking out your career is going to be something that can cause stress because it's one more thing you've got to do. How do you reduce that stress? My advice there is try to focus on the things that are most productive for your job search. What is most productive for your job search? Is it printing 100 copies of your resumes and cold sending them to law firms and blasting off applications via law firm websites? Probably not. What's most productive is meeting with people who have the job that you want, maybe four or five years ahead of you in their career. Learn what it is that they do when they get to work every day. Learn whether they like it, learn what they like about it and what they don't. Learn how they got to where they are because that's where you want to go. Meet as many of those people as you can and meet their bosses, meet their law firms, meet their government offices, whatever you can do to get to know that practice so that hopefully you can at some point take that person's spot. Maybe not literally. Maybe they just happen to have another opportunity at that firm or a similar firm, and you go into that application process knowing what you want and why you want it, and maybe even having connections to help get you there. Or maybe you actually take that person's spot. Not uncommon that lawyers are moving up, particularly as associates at law firms, and the law firm is going to need another more junior associate to sit in the seat vacated by that person. And if you've met that person, if you've built a genuine connection with them based on mutual professional interests, you are much more likely to have a fast track to sitting in that seat than many other students. Maybe not, but you'll be targeting exactly what you want to do. So when you are engaging in activities to promote your job search, think to yourself, how productive is this? If it's just blasting off resumes and blasting off applications without regard to whether it's the right fit for you or whether you've done anything to put yourself in a position for success, it may not be as productive. However, activities that get you towards exactly the career that is right for you may be more productive, and you should focus on those. So the bottom line here is you should plan for law school to be stressful and in particular for your job search to be stressful. It's a long process. It's a process filled with rejection and frustration, especially for people who often are used to being very successful in their law school careers. But the perfect job is out there for you. It may be that you are rejected for the job that you think is perfect for you. I can tell you that for almost every lawyer I know, things work out. After you get that rejection letter, you're going to find your way to another opportunity that is a good one for you. You're going to pivot and you're going to search for something that is a better fit for your interests and for your skill set. So keep looking. It could be, as in my case, that you even end up at a firm that initially told you, we don't have anything for you. At that very firm, a friend of mine got a job a few years later. He didn't start there. He started at a firm doing something he didn't want to do. He then went to another firm to do work that he wasn't quite as interested in, but it was a better growth opportunity. And he was only there for four months before he got hired at my firm. And why did he get hired at my firm? Well, because he kept coming around. He said, I like the job that Andrew's doing. I want to learn how to do that. I want to follow that path. And as I moved around within the firm, he found an opportunity to step in and do the same work that I was doing because there was enough of it. So consider how you can engage in activities that are going to maximize those connections and get you to where you want to be. In many other podcast episodes, we're going to dive into how to set yourself up for success in your job search and how to continue to engage in efforts to reduce this stress. But for now, my advice is take a deep breath. It's a long process, but it is all going to work out. It's hard to see that when you're in the weeds and in the middle of it. But many, many lawyers before you have succeeded in finding the thing that's right for them. And when they don't, they work a little bit more and they continue to press towards the right career choice for their interests and skills. Thanks everybody for joining. I hope this was helpful and look forward to digging into this more with you and other episodes.

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That's it for today's episode of Law School Decoded. Visit us online at Lawschooldecoded.com and make sure to subscribe. Until next time, keep decoding the law one step at a time.