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Hey everybody. In this episode, I'm going to encourage you as a law student to make a spreadsheet to help with your job search. Let's talk about it.

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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 when you're in law school, you are going to be searching for your first legal job after graduation and during your summers, like clerkships while you're there and while you're taking classes. And that can be a lot of work. You're reading cases, you're getting ready for exams, and you're also starting to figure out what do I want to do after graduation and how am I going to get there? In this episode, I have a really simple tip for you to support your job search. And it's something that you can do today as you're listening to this podcast, and it's probably going to help you immensely. My tip is make a spreadsheet that is essentially your project plan and going to track your efforts to network with people who will help you find a job. That's my simple strategy for you. You can make that spreadsheet today in Google Docs or on your computer. And in that spreadsheet, you are going to track who you are networking with to find the way to the career that you want and what you are doing to network with them and notes about those efforts and about things that are important on that journey. Now let's take a step back. The traditional way that law students have looked for jobs is fundamentally wrong, in my opinion. Many law students will just look for posts online and apply to them. They'll send out cover letters and upload their resume everywhere and just apply to any jobs that they can find and hope for the best. And when they do that, they are one of hundreds of applicants who are anonymous to that employer. They've done nothing to build any special connection with that employer, to put their resume on top of the pile. They've done nothing to indicate to that employer, hey, this is you're my dream job. This is the exact kind of practice that I want to work at, or the exact government agency that I want to work at, or the exact nonprofit. Instead, you're just one of a million, and we all know how the lottery works. You're probably not going to get picked. That's just how it is. So instead of going through that, instead of just relying on things like OCI and online applications to get jobs, a better strategy that I talk about in a lot of these podcast episodes is identifying a small number of practice areas and locations that you want to target, figuring out what those targets are, and then making very meaningful networking connections to those firms and those people so that you can get a job in that area. Now, why do I say create a spreadsheet? Well, because the truth is it's hard mentally to go about this networking process. And the actual networking process is only going to take about 15 to 20 minutes as you meet people for quick chats or do quick phone calls with them. So there's not much you can do outside of those conversations to network, right? Well, you need to figure out who you're going to meet, why you want to meet them, and you should probably log what you've been doing to try to meet them. So a spreadsheet or a project plan can be really helpful at keeping you accountable. It's something that we use in business to make sure that we are accountable. If you're working on a trial someday and it's got a lot of moving parts and different attorneys and paralegals working on it, you're probably going to make some kind of project plan. Think about this as your project plan for finding a job. What is this spreadsheet going to do? It's going to keep you organized. It's going to ensure that the information about who you've met and who they were and whether it was helpful or not, whether you need to follow up with them isn't forgotten. Without that kind of project plan, it's easy to be disorganized and not sure about what the status is with things. The spreadsheet will help keep you organized. It's also going to help keep you accountable because on that spreadsheet, you're going to write who you want to meet with and what you are doing to meet with them and what the status of that outreach is. If you've already met with someone, you need to continue reaching out to them. Well, they're going to be on your spreadsheet and you have can have a column indicating what your next steps are with that person. So it's going to keep you accountable. If you don't have that spreadsheet, it's easy to just kind of let keeping in touch fall by the wayside, even with someone who really matters for you. If you do have that spreadsheet, you've got an action item glaring at you, saying, hey, you need to reach out to this person. You need to touch base with them. You need to keep in touch every few months to let them know about your continued interest. And again, this is similar to how you're going to manage projects when you're a practicing lawyer. Imagine you decide to work in private practice and you need to do work to get client referrals or something like that. Well, you might use a spreadsheet like this with all your friends from law school on it who could refer you cases that you want to reach out to, or people in the community who could refer you cases who you want to reach out to. This is a similar thing. This is a similar approach. So what should your spreadsheet look like? It can be really, really simple, folks. The first thing is the tabs at the bottom. You may want a tab for each kind of different practice area that you're interested in. That's probably what I would do. So if you only have one practice area that you want to do, you really want to be a prosecutor, you're probably just going to have one tab for that. If you're interested in being a prosecutor, but could also go for working in white-collar criminal defense, you just really want to do criminal stuff however you get there. Maybe you have one tab for your prosecutor contacts and one tab for those white-collar criminal defense contacts who work at private law firms. So you have a tab for each group to keep people organized based on who they are and what they do. In those tabs, in those workbooks, what kind of information are you actually going to have in the columns? Well, you're going to have a column probably for the employer name. Where do these people work? And who works there? Those are the two key things. Who are these people? What are their names? And what are the names of where they work? What is their job title where they work? Are they an associate? Are they a public defender? Are they a partner? Are they the managing partner? Are they the hiring partner? Are they the sole owner of the firm? Put down those details so you don't forget it. What are their common connections with you? Is the next column that you can put in there. So we're going to talk about this in other episodes, but did they go to the same law school as you? Did they graduate from the same college as you? Do they just happen to have lived, you know, in a similar place where you lived? Do you actually have a common personal connection with them who can introduce you to the person? Do you have some kind of common interests that you're aware of or some kind of common threads that you become aware of as you talk to that person and network with them? Note that. Maybe you're both parents. Maybe you're a parent in law school and this other person has a child that is of a similar age to yours. That's notable. So whatever their connections are to you, you can put it in there and you can keep that column updated for each person. Of course, you're going to want their contact information, email, phone number, however you are talking to them. The next column can and should have the date of your last contact with that person. When did you last speak with them? Why do you want that? It's what's going to hold you accountable to keeping in touch and actually making the connection in the first place. If that column is blank because you haven't met with them yet, maybe it's time. Maybe it's time for you to reach out and say, hey, I'm really interested in talking to you for 20 minutes about what you do because it's exactly what I want to do. You're in the exact position I want to be in. I would love to hear about how you accomplish that. That's a totally normal email to send someone. When you send that email, note it in your spreadsheet. You might say, well, come on, I've I've got that record in my email, right? I could always go look it up. But no, it's not in a centralized place where you can just fire it up in the morning when you're drinking your coffee and look at it and say to yourself, have I met expectations or not? Have I reached out to this person or not? Also, if it is an important person who you want to continue reaching out to and the date of your last contact with them is six months or more, it is probably time to reach out. What you are doing is sales. You are selling what you have to offer a law firm and saying, hire me. That is sales. Salespeople keep in touch. I'll tell you, people try to sell me things all the time. They keep in touch. I hear from them. Even if I say no to them, I might hear back six months later, three months later, a year later, just to say, hey, just wanted to keep in touch because I know you could be a potential buyer of what I have to offer. Remember that when you're networking with people, they in all likelihood are not going to have a job for you. If they do have a job, you just happen to reach out to them in the one week a year when they happen to have something open. But just timing-wise, it's unlikely that you do reach out at that exact time or that they're the person who really knows necessarily what their office's or firm's current status of hiring is. They may have no idea. So put the date of your last contact in there because you're going to want to follow up if this is someone who's important. So you could even have a column for the date of your next contact and ideas for what that contact might be. You want to reach out organically. You want to reach out normally. You want to reach out as a friend, as someone who's connected to this person after you meet them. And so you might have a column that says, hey, we talked at, you know, this last phone call we had about a topic I could use in their practice area for my law journal article. Next time I reach out to that person, I'm going to mention whether or not I went with that topic or whether I went with something else and thank them for sharing it and tell them why I reached that decision after looking into it more. Of course, if you did select it, that's a great thing to follow up on. They'll probably remember it once you mention it, maybe. And so you'll have a chance to tell them, hey, you made a meaningful difference for me. I'd love you to continue doing that by giving me a job. So make this spreadsheet, make it yourself, figure out what columns are going to help you keep in touch with people. Then, of course, each row is one of those contacts. You should put on there any contacts who you think could be useful to getting you to where you want to be in your career. Talk about another podcast, but I think a lot of the people who are really helpful to meet are literally in the exact role around the same level that you want to be in. No, they're not hiring managers. No, they're not decision makers who are going to pick who gets hired or not, but they just got there recently. They just got to that role that you want. And so they are in the best position possible to tell you, hey, here's how I got here. And by the way, here's how other colleagues of mine, other peers around the same level got here. And so I can give you those secrets about what the paths are to get to where we are in case you want to pursue those paths. Those people, I think, tend to be a bit more useful than people who are further away from the job that you want, even if they're managing partners, even if they're hiring partners. Of course, if you can meet with those people and they can help you, that's great. I highly encourage it. But be mindful that those people who are closer to your situation might empathize with you more, they might know more, and they might be able to help you more. That has happened to me in my career, and I've seen it happen to other people. So don't hesitate to talk to those folks, even though they aren't the hiring partner. They may be more accessible to you, they may give you more time, and I think they'll also have really, really good tips for you. So once you identify someone who you want to meet, you're gonna put their name on the spreadsheet and you're gonna put where they work on the spreadsheet, and you're gonna reach out to them on LinkedIn or via email with a message to say you want to meet with them and you're gonna log what your last contact was and you're going to chat with them and log how that conversation went and what your next step is if they're going to be helpful to you. If they are not going to be helpful to you, you can note that. And then you probably mark their row in gray, like gray. So you can still read it, but so you can look at your spreadsheet and easily know, eh, this is not someone who I want to reach out to again in the future. I don't think they can necessarily help me. Keep the information on there so you don't forget it. You don't accidentally reach out to them again or something. And maybe you look at your spreadsheet again later and you think, gosh, my needs and interests have shifted in some way. I think this person could potentially help. Now I do want to have a conversation with them. Now I do want to sit down with them again. So is there a good time and way for me to re-engage with that person? Your spreadsheet can help with that. How do you find people for this spreadsheet? Well, in all sorts of ways. The first thing you have to do is figure out what you want to do. You can't just randomly put attorneys on here and expect to have success. If you want to be a real estate lawyer, you're probably not going to spend much time meeting with criminal defense attorneys. That's not going to be useful to you. You're probably not going to meet with public defenders. That's not going to be useful to you. So instead, you're going to put real estate attorneys on there. Well, how do I find the real estate attorneys who I should meet with? Google, folks. Get on Google and Google two things: real estate attorney and then the city where you want to be. So if you want to be a real estate attorney in Des Moines, Iowa, Google that and see who comes up. Another resource that you can look at is the Chambers rankings, particularly for private practice jobs. So Chambers is just one publication that ranks attorneys in practice areas. And so the way attorneys get on this is every year, Chambers sends out a message and says, hey, attorneys, if you want to be ranked, let us know why. And they say, attorneys, tell us what your accolades are in this area. Tell us about the trials you won. Tell us about all the big client wins that you've had, brag about yourself. And then Chambers looks at all those brags and they put attorneys into bands. So they have like level one bands, level two, level three, level one being the best. So they note kind of who are the firms and practice groups who are really excelling in this area, in this practice area in particular jurisdictions. And they even note individual practitioners who are really, really strong in those areas. Now, again, those senior practitioners who aren't as close to you in law school to your job search, they may be helpful to meet with. But I would look at who they are and then look at the practice groups at their firm. Look at how big the practice group is, how many other people are in it? Who are the other new attorneys in it who might be able to help you? Do you have anything in common with them that you could use in a message to them to say, hey, I'd just love to meet and learn more about what you do and how you got there? Anything that you can do to personalize it and to build those connections is going to help. But when you find those people, put them on your spreadsheet and note whether you're going to reach out to them or not and why and what the status is. Keeping this spreadsheet is one of the few things that you can do to memorialize your networking efforts, keep track of your networking efforts, and keep yourself honest. Folks, I work out of spreadsheets like this every day in my job. Sometimes they're more complicated. A lot of times they're way more complicated than this because I'm executing on project plans. And when you have multiple people working on project plan, you do this to share information with them about what you are doing, why, and what the status of it is. People want to know that in a business environment like what I work in. So another benefit to this is that if you're struggling with your job search or if you want to get help from somebody, you can show them your spreadsheet and you can say, Hey, look at what I've got. I can just send this to you and you can see really, really quickly what I am doing to search for a job and give me tips. So maybe you go to your career services office and you say, Hey, I've been trying to reach out to this person on my spreadsheet, but they haven't reached back. Well, what if that person in your career services offices says, hey, our school has a connection with that person? Why don't I drop them a text message? I think I could probably get them to meet with you. Boom. Your spreadsheet can help communicate that information to your career services office. You could talk about it with other lawyers who you meet with and get close to. Say, hey, these are the people I'm networking with and trying to meet. Like, do you have any other recommendations? Like, that's a great question you can ask in networking meetings. Anyone else you think I should meet with, given my interest in this in pursuing a career in this area, who else should I be talking to? Write down the names of those people, put them on your spreadsheet if they're not already there, and look into whether you should sit down with them. So you can tell I feel very strongly about project planning. And I believe that project planning sets you up for success. There are very few things that you can do to control whether you get a job because you don't control the final decision. You don't control an employer's offer to say, we want you. We are selecting you from the pack. But you can set yourself up for success. You can put your best foot forward in interviews. You can come off as a professional. You can come off as someone who wants the job that you are applying for for reasons that make you a stellar candidate and someone who the people interviewing would want to work with. You can do that. You can also keep track of where you are networking and who you are networking with to be productive about what your goals are that you are trying to achieve. So do that. Write it down because it's one of the few things that you can control and that will actually help you on that journey to your first job. Maybe you'll even use a spreadsheet like that as you pursue other jobs. So keep yourself organized and accountable by making that spreadsheet. I hope you've already started working on it before the end of this podcast. Thank you, everyone, so much for your time. We'll see you next time.

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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.