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In this podcast episode, I am going to encourage you to make genuine connections in support of your search for your first legal job that will launch your legal career. 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 I'm doing this series of podcast episodes about networking while you're in law school to help you find your first job. Because I truly believe that by networking, you will increase your chances of getting the job you want. You will help you yourself find your way to the job that is right for you. You're going to learn more along the journey to networking to that job that is going to help you make more informed decisions about what that first job will be. And you're going to open up more and more options for yourself by pursuing a job in that way. So I'm making all these episodes about why networking is important and how it is important and how to do it and how to do it effectively. Because I think a lot of law students hear from their career services offices or otherwise, you need to network to find that job. And you hear me saying that. You need to network to find that job. But often I think law students ask a question like, how? Like, what do I do? How do I get started? And how do I do this effectively and well so that I'm not wasting my time and not wasting the time of the people I am networking with. The answer to questions like how do you do this? When do you do it? Why do you do it? Those are a bit harder to answer. There are answers to those questions, I believe, but it does take some discussion and some knowledge of how networking operates to do it effectively. And so I'm making this series of podcast episodes to help you understand how to make networking work for you based on what your individualized interests are for a career after law school. And in this episode, what I want to encourage you to do is to make genuine and real connections with lawyers to find your first job. Genuine and real connections. That is the simple point of this podcast episode. I believe that the stronger the connections you make with a lawyer are, the more likely that lawyer is to help you along with your search, to give you advice when you need it, to give you assistance, to go too bat for you, to remember who you are. So making genuine and strong connections with lawyers who are important for you to meet is more important than making numerous weak connections or familiarity with lawyers. And that's what I see a lot of law students doing, and where I see law students messing up, including when they network with me, including when I did it in law school. I would reach out to a lawyer and say, hey, I may be interested in your practice area, would love to meet up. And it was very transactional. I wanted a job, and that was clear. I just wanted that. I didn't really have an interest in making that genuine professional connection with someone that would be ongoing and lasting potentially for the entirety of our professional careers, or maybe even personally as friends. So without that, I was just going into these meetings saying, hey, do you have a job for me? And of course, the answer was almost always no, because of timing, because I wasn't asking them at the right time when a job was open at their particular firm, or they had just filled a job that was open, or I wasn't really well qualified for that job, or I hadn't done what I needed to build up my resume to be a good candidate for that job. So as a result, when I was just kind of looking for that really short-term, near-term satisfaction and result out of networking, I wasn't getting it. And that wasn't productive. What you want to do with networking is make friends. You want to make connections who will go to that for you professionally. Professional friends. That's what you need to make. People who actually genuinely care about your well-being. People who are interested in seeing you succeed. And to do that, to make those connections, we need to have several moments of contact with people. We need to have several conversations with them. We need to get to know them really well. We need to get to know what's important to them in life and professionally. We need to know what they like sharing with their professional connections. A lot of people like talking about their kids and where they are in life and where they are in their career. You need to know all those things. And so what I don't want you to do is to engage in professional spam. I don't want you just sending messages to every single lawyer in the city where you want to practice or the law firm where you want to be saying, hey, I want to meet you. I want to talk to you. I want to get to know that's not going to be productive. Because what you're really saying is, give me a job. And if that is your goal to get a job, you're going to fail. Because you cannot control that. You can't control whether someone is going to have a job to offer you and whether you're the person who will get it. What you can control is whether you have a genuine interest in meeting people, whether you want to build a meaningful and lasting connection with them. And if you build that foundation, if you succeed at that, you will astronomically increase your chances of getting the job that is right for you through that person. If you are more short-term in your thinking, you're more likely to fail because the person won't have a job for you and the interaction is done and you move on. And guess what? When they do have a job for you, if you just kind of spammed them, met them once, did coffee and moved on, never kept in touch, weren't interested in them, they're probably not going to think of you when another job comes up at their firm or at their government office or whatever it might be because you didn't build a genuine connection with them. You wanted something, you wanted something immediately and it wasn't there, so you moved on. That is disingenuous. That isn't making a real professional connection. So a few strong connections with the right people are going to be more important than many, many weak ones like that that don't get you anywhere. To be sure, some of the strong connections won't lead to a job either. Some of them won't. But you never know. They might later. Look, I still keep in touch with people who I networked with early in my career, send them a LinkedIn message everyone every now and then, send them a text every now and then to say hey, see him at Bar Association events and say, Hey, how you doing? Like really appreciate you talking to me a few years back about my interests. Because I never know. They may have a job in the future and they say, hey, that guy who's known me for a few years, he would be really good for this. We need to keep in touch. People who I had those short-term transactional connections with, those connections are lost and probably not going to be useful to me. Those people aren't going to think, ah, I have a problem. I need to call him because I didn't genuinely care about getting to know them professionally and getting to know what they wanted people to know about them professionally. So be actually interested in the practice areas of the people you meet. Be actually interested in learning what they do day to day and be able to explain why you're interested. Now you might say, hey, I have no idea. I think I'm interested in real estate law, but I don't know too much about why. Try to find out. How do you do that? You go read blogs about the practice area. You go read blogs and articles that this person has written online that you want to meet. You go learn about the interesting news headlines in that area. You try to talk to lawyers and figure out what are you doing day to day? And ask yourself, would I like doing that? Would I like doing what you do? Lawyers only do a combination of three things. Read, write, and talk. That's it. That's all lawyers do is read, write, and talk and listen. I'll say. Talking is listening. Discuss, I'll say. They read, write, and discuss things. And so you need to ask every lawyer what proportion of your day is reading? What proportion of the day is writing? What proportion of the day is discussing? How has that changed as you went through your career? Maybe early on as an associate, you started out writing a ton of briefs, and then later on, you're taking a bunch of depositions, or just bringing in client work or advising clients and discussing and talking and solving problems. What are you doing day to day? And then ask yourself, would I enjoy solving those problems in that way? And then as you talk to more lawyers, as you network with more people in that area, you can say, hey, I understand that you all have lots of discussions with clients about topics like X, Y, and Z. You have lots of discussions with clients about workforce issues, say if it's an employment lawyer, or you have lots of discussions with clients about customer service issues because you're helping them be compliant and avoid disputes with those customers. I'm really interested in helping clients through that. I think those would be kind of fun problems to solve. And this is why. Because I think I can be creative in solving them. And that seems interesting to me. Is my understanding of your practice area right? Or is yours a little bit different? Are there nuances to it? How would you characterize it? You can have a genuine conversation about that. Another thing you should do is be genuine by asking questions. Don't talk about yourself in these networking meetings. Talk about them. You're going to learn from them by asking them questions, asking what is your day like? What are the hardest parts? What are the easier parts? What are the things you enjoy? What don't you enjoy? In the last five years, what has been the moment that has brought you the most professional satisfaction? What has been the most professionally frustrating and wanted to make you pull your hair out? Learn by asking those questions. If you can and they want to, ask them about who they are personally. The way that I do this in an inclusive way in my work environments with clients, with everybody today, is I ask, hey, what do you like people to know about you personally at work? That's an inclusive way of asking because it gives them the chance to share whatever is important about them without me coming off as prying into areas that they may consider private and personal and not want to share with people professionally. But when you ask the question that way, what do you like sharing with people who you work with, or who you network with in this case, with who you know professionally? They may say, oh, well, I'm a parent, I'm a mom, I'm a dad, I have several kids, here are their ages, here's what they're into. So all day outside of work, I'm driving soccer practice or gymnastics, whatever it may be. That's important to them. It's what they work for. So they may want to talk about that. And the more you know about those things on a personal level, the more you have connected with this person and the more they are likely to care about you and care about helping you find your job. And by the way, this is just the normal way that people in this world should interact. I am encouraging you in this podcast to just be a normal person. You just have a professional angle to what you're doing. You're trying to build that foundation of genuine connections because you know that on top of one of those connections, you are likely to be able to build a career. So don't reach out randomly, just send your resume or ask for a job. Don't be looking for that immediate need or that immediate return on the investment that you make. Instead, try to build genuine connections. Ask questions in the meeting. Your initial message to someone, just to meet them, can be as simple as, hi, name. My name is Name. I see that you practice in this particular area. I am a second-year, first-year, third-year law student, very interested in potentially launching a career in that same practice. I was wondering if you might be able to meet for a few minutes to discuss so I can learn more about it. Something as simple as that can be your initial message. And then in the meeting, just have a conversation, a normal conversation where you're asking questions. Now, of course, you'll talk about yourself a bit, but don't make it all about yourself. Make it about them. Ask those questions like we went over. Come up with them in advance, but you don't necessarily need to write them down and have a script. Just have a natural conversation. Be curious. When you have trouble in a meeting coming up with questions, you might say, Andrew, I need to outline my questions because, you know, I have trouble coming up with questions in meetings. I'm going to give you a trick for that. One, you can write down your questions in advance. I don't think you necessarily need to have them in front of you during a networking meeting, but it it's not the worst thing in the world. Maybe you have them in a padfolio on a post-it or on a piece of paper. So you can flip to it if you want. Say, hey, I just I had written down a few other questions I I knew I I wanted to make sure I asked you today. And that's fine. That's not too awkward. Well, in any kind of meeting like this, when you're having trouble figuring out what to ask, remember that there are really only like five questions in the English language. Who, what, when, where, why, how. Who, what, when, where, why, how. That's actually six. So those are the questions that you can cycle through to learn more about anything when you're talking with someone. Who? Who do you work with? Who are your clients? Do you work with other lawyers at your firm, or are you more working alone? Who are you working with at other firms? Are there opposing parties? Or are you working more collaboratively towards the same goal with other parties, for example, with transactions? What do you do when you get to work? What do you work on? Do you read? Do you write? Do you discuss things? What do you do leading up to a trial? What do you do leading up to a transaction? Are there different phases? Does the work change over time? What do you do as you get further into practice? Do you start drafting things as a younger lawyer and then get further and further along, and then you're taking more of the lead on matters and taking more of a lead on trials? Or do you jump right in in this practice where you are trying cases right away? What do you do? Ask, how do you do it? Is this litigation where you are writing lots of briefs and submitting things to the court and arguing on paper? Or is it litigation where you are taking lots of depositions and doing tons of discovery? Or is it litigation where you just kind of go to trial pretty quick and the cases are pretty light and you don't need to get too much in discovery? How does it happen? Why do the disputes arise? Why do the transactions happen? Right? So who, what, when, where, why, how? Those are the questions that you can ask. Even when. How long do these cases last? That's kind of a when question. When do people file them? It's kind of a timing question. Do the cases last for a month? Like you go get a restraining order, a preliminary injunction, and then they're usually done? Or do they last for years because they're massive disputes, or do they last two weeks because there's just a quick hearing and they're done? How long do the case cases last? So remember those are the questions that you can ask. And when you're in those networking meetings, you can cycle through them in your head and build off them naturally in the conversation. Who, what, when, where, why, how. So remember those questions to build that genuine connection. Now, I don't, after you hear this podcast, I don't want you to be hesitant about reaching out to people to network with. When in doubt, reach out. I am not saying that you should refrain from reaching out to people because you don't have much in common with them. Not at all. I'll do a whole nother podcast about how to find people to reach out to. But when in doubt, reach out. Here's something I can promise you. If you don't reach out to a person, you won't get a job from them. You won't get any benefit. If you do reach out to that person, the worst thing that can happen is they don't respond. Or you don't build a connection that's very meaningful after spending an hour meeting with them. And you're just right back to square one, going and meeting other people who will be that foundation on which you conduct your job search. So there's no harm. When in doubt, reach out. What I'm saying in this podcast is that after you reach out and as you reach out, have an intention to build a genuine, strong connection with that person. And once you start building that connection, keep reaching out. Not every day, not every week. I mean probably like once a quarter is a decent case cadence with most people with whom you have a strong but appropriate professional connection as a law student. We'll do a whole nother podcast about excuses and reasons why you can reach out to people who you networked with. But I can promise you, if you don't reach out after that first connection, you're done. The connection will be lost over time. It will become more and more attenuated. The person will forget who you are, the person won't care about you as much, and you're not going to get anything out of that connection in terms of building your career or advancing your career. So you do need, if you're going to be genuine, if you care, to continue reaching out. And we'll talk about ways that you can do that naturally. Because you probably haven't done it before. When you are in practice, when you have professional friends, you'll do it more often. And it'll probably be easier if it's something that you have to do and want to do. So the purpose of this podcast was just to tell you a very simple thing. Be genuine with the people you are networking with. Care about them. Care about what they have to say. Listen to them. Want to form a genuine and lasting connection with them that will last for years. That will last for years. I'll tell you, one thing that's really satisfying to me is that there were a couple people I networked with in law school who were super helpful to ultimately helping me find my first job. And honestly, I don't really keep in touch with them anymore. I'm not even sure that some of them are practicing law anymore. But what's really cool is occasionally I've seen them at events around town. And of course they remembered me because I figured out how to genuinely reach out to them a few times in law school for advice, for their connections, for their tips to see if their firms had a job because I thought one might be coming up, or I saw a job posted at their firm and I said, Hey, we've been talking. We're genuinely connected. I was interested in maybe applying this, wondering if I'm a good candidate or if I can do anything to strengthen my application, right? That's a key message. That's a key point. And you can only send that message genuinely if you've already built a genuine connection. If that's your first message, this person's not going to go out on a limb for you. They're not going to go talk to the hiring managing partner or the recruiter and say, hey, let's give this person a good look. They're not going to go out on a limb for you at all. But if you've built that genuine connection before you send that message, they are more likely to go to the recruiter and say, hey, just want to let you know, I have met this person. I have met them. And they seem to be interested in what we do. And they seem pretty normal and nice and they got to know me. And so I just want to suggest that we give this person a good look. That can make all the difference. So when I was in law school, I made a really good connection with a professor in a practice area that I wanted to practice in. And I was having trouble finding a job. I worked all through 3L trying to find the job that I wanted. And finally, a really great firm in town and an amazing practice area that I wanted to be in, an amazing group of professionals in that practice area. They had an opening. And I had tried to network into this firm in a few different ways because it's where I it was my number one choice of where I wanted to be. So when I believed they had an opening, I found out about it through my networking. I got an interview through my networking. But you know what? After that interview, I was so excited. I was like, I want to increase my chances. So with that professor who I had built a genuine connection with, I'd been telling her for like a year, hey, I'm interested in this. I want to do well in your class. I want to learn about the area. I want to do my law review note on this area. She knew that I genuinely cared about what she did. And so I prepped for the interview a little bit with her. I told her the interview was happening. Any tips for me, you know, as I go in, anything to be ready for, anything you're aware of at the firm. I don't remember her having much for me. But here's what I do remember. After the interview, I remember I had a class with her and I went up to her after class and I said, Hey, I just wanted to let you know I had this interview, you know, today or yesterday. You got to let her know right away. That and it went really, really well. And I'm just still super excited about the possibility of working there. She said, Let me go ahead and write them an email. She said, I've never met anyone at this particular office or firm, but look, I do what they do. And I'm more than happy to write a quick note to them, to the managing hiring partner to say that this candidate is genuinely interested in you. This candidate has been talking to me about it for a long time. This candidate did well in my class in the subject matter area. I don't know exactly what she said, but I got a call about the job and got an offer like a day later. And so I have to believe that her doing that didn't hurt my chances. A professor's word carries weight. Professors are smart people. They worked very hard to get where they are. They are very successful. People listen to them. This is why people hire professors to be expert witnesses. This is why they are professors. So I don't think it hurt my chances that she reached out to that practice area, even though she didn't know them. But think, if I didn't know that professor at all and had just kind of sat in the back of her class and not expressed any interest in that practice area, if I just went up after class one day and said, Hey, professor, would you mind send a letter or a rec for me for this job I just applied to and interviewed at? She'd be like, Who are you? I don't know that I want to do that. I don't really know who you are. Why would I advocate for you? You're putting me in a tough position. No, I built that foundation. And when I had a moment when it would really help me, I relied on that and called in a favor at the right moment. And it worked out. And it it probably helped me a little bit, maybe. It certainly didn't hurt. So build those genuine connections because you will use them at the right time. Build those genuine connections, not because they're going to lead to immediate success, they won't, but you cannot control that. And you need to focus on the things you can control. When you build that foundation, you will be able to build on it. Some connections probably won't be useful to finding that first job, but others will. And by the way, again, you may use some of those connections later. If you genuinely care about people, if you genuinely get to know them, if you keep in touch appropriately, then you are going to have a professional foundation that can take your career in all sorts of different directions. So build it. Put in the time, care, and be genuine. Good luck. I hope you're excited to continue the search for your first legal job and to launch your legal career after listening to this episode about networking. We will 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.