Month-by-Month Career Planning for 1Ls
September-October:
- According to guidelines adopted by the National Association of Legal Professionals (NALP), to which Chicago-Kent College of Law, as well as all other ABA-accredited law schools subscribe, 1Ls can not come into the career services office until November 1st and cannot send resumes out until December 1st.
- Attend career development workshops presented by the Career
Services Office. Despite the guidelines set forth above, 1Ls can attend career development workshops that are offered during the fall semester and are encouraged to do so in order to start considering their career interests and options. Information about upcoming programs can be found
in the Career Services section of the Record and on the Career Services bulletin board.
- Research various career paths; talk to attorneys and upperclassmen; come up with a list of pratice areas and practice settings that interest you. Give some real thought to what brought you to law school.
November:
- Peruse the wide range of resources available in the Career
Services Office and in the career services section of the Chicago-Kent library to learn what is available that will most benefit you. Check out general career planning guides and books about legal
careers that interest you. The Career Services Office has an entire
section devoted to general career planning and several categories devoted
to specialized areas of law.
- Meet the Public Service Organizations Reception: this opportunity to meet government and legal aid employers is held every year at Loyola Law School. A coalition of Chicago area law school career service offices organizes this event. It is a chance to meet and talk with representatives of orgranzations where you might extern or volunteer over the summer or during the school year in your 2nd and 3rd years. The date for this event will be posted in the Record.
- Interested in a postion in the Federal Government for your 1st summer? Some of the applications are due in the fall. For opportunities, check the Government Honors & Internships Handbook in the Document Library of Symplicity (you will receive a Symplicity password in early November).
- Develop a legal resume. We have a handout entitled "Legal
Resumes and Cover Letters for Students," which tells you how you can create your first
legal resume. Schedule an appointment with your assigned career adviser
to review your legal resume to make sure it's the best resume possible.
Your career adviser can help you translate your non-legal jobs into skills
that legal employers want.
- Continue self assessment: What would you like to do during
the summer after your first year?
Consider: Volunteering at a legal aid or government agency; work as
a law clerk at a private firm; researching for a professor; participating in a Chicago-Kent clinical experience; or taking summer classes
- Begin networking: Holidays are a great time to network.
Ask your uncle about his next door neighbor's firm. Find out what
your boyfriend's sister likes about working in the State's Attorney's
Office.
- Midwest Public Interest Law Career Conference (MPILCC): In November, students sign up to attend MPILCC, an annual conference where students have the opportunity to interview with and meet public interest employers. The conference is held every year at Northwestern Law School during a Saturday in February - only the sign-up occurs in November. Watch the Record for announcements about registration.
- Get comfortable with Symplicity. Ask your Career Adviser to walk you through the different features, or simply explore on your own. Symplicity has many wonderful features beyond the job postings. Set up a Search Agent or look through the many useful resources in the Document Library.
- Read the Monthly 1L Newsletter: November Edition
- Don't forget to study! Strong first year grades help
open doors.
December:
- Concentrate on exams! First year grades are important
to most employers. They provide an easy way for firms to compare
candidates.
- If you wish to apply to large law firms -- 150+ attorneys
-- or Intellectual Property Boutique Firms -- get cover letters
and resumes out during December. (Please be aware:
there are only a handful of first year jobs in this sector of the market; generally 10-15 in the Chicago market for all 1Ls). Competition for these jobs
is extremely fierce. A list of large firms that will consider
1L applications is available online through the National Association of Legal Professionals (NALP) under the Advanced Search option.
- Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI): 1Ls interested in working for a legal aid organization over the summer may want to apply for a summer financial stipend of up to $5000 through PILI. Although applications are accepted on a rolling basis, the earlier you apply, the better your chance of being selected. Be sure to speak with your career adviser about opportunities for summer funding for public interest postions.
- Send applications to federal government positions that you have identified in the Federal Government Honors & Internship Handbook some of which have December or early January deadlines (see November above).
- Apply for diversity scholarships, summer positions and fellowships, including the Judicial Internship Opportunity Program and the Association of Corporate Counsel externship program. See the Record for more details on these opportunities.
- Request reciprocity. If you are going home for the winter break, and are considering working in your home area over the summertime, request to receive reciprocity at a local law school. Reciprocity gives you access to another law school's career services office, and sometimes includes a temporary electronic password for that school's job posting system.
- Network over the semester break and start conducting informational interviews. Go to networking events at the local bar associations and law firms. Contact alumni to set up coffee meetings or phone converasations. See the guide to "Informational Interviews" which provides
the basics for getting started. Talk to practicing lawyers and
lawyers in alternative careers. Informational interviews will
help you determine the type of work you want to do and the type of employer
you want to work for. You'll learn what employers look for in
candidates.
- Read the Monthly 1L Newsletter: December Edition
- Continue to read everything you can about careers in the areas
of law in which you are interested. You may be surprised to find
out that what sounded so interesting to you at first glance, isn't,
and other areas which you may have passed over are really fascinating.
You'll never know until you research it.
January:
- Continue to explore your options for the summer after your
first year. If you haven't yet prepared a legal resume and had
it reviewed by a career strategist, do so now.
- Develop a persuasive cover letter targeted to the areas of
law in which you're interested. In targeting firms you can look
for things like size of firm, types of practice (i.e., transactional
or litigation), and the practice areas available (i.e., environmental,
patent, etc.). Look at the "Legal Resumes and Cover Letters for Students," for assistance, and ask your Career Adviser to review it.
- Send cover letters and resumes to mid-sized firms (25-100).
(Smaller firms (2-25) should be targeted in early spring). Although
most will not hire summer clerks until April or May, a handful will
hire in late winter or early spring. Always follow up your letters
with a phone call. Make an appointment with your career adviser to learn how to identify employers, or use the Chicago Area Law firm List (f/k/a the 4 or More List) in the Document Library of Symplicity.
- If you would like to do legal volunteer work over the summer,
call or write to your targeted legal services or government organizations. For a list of legal aid organizations, visit Illinois Pro Bono.org and click on "Directory."
- Opt into Resume Books A Resume Book is exactly what it sounds like, a collection of resumes
that can be distributed to employers on request. Our resume books will
collect the resumes of students and recent graduates in a particular
class (e.g. 1Ls) with similar interests (e.g. immigration law, real
estate law, or working in the northern suburbs), and then notify
employers who fit those criteria that the books are available for
review. Information on Resume Books will be distributed via email and in the Record in late December after exams, and Resume Books will be available for 1Ls in January.
- Set up an appointment with your Career Adviser. If you have not already been in to see your Career Adviser, come to the Career
Services Office to talk about your job search plan and your long-term
career goals.
- Continue informational interviews.
- Read the Monthly 1L Newsletter: January Edition
February:
- Practice Tracks: every year this opportunity to meet attorneys who practice law in a wide variety of areas - from Antitrust to Zoning - is held at the Chicago Bar Association (CBA). The event is organized by a coalition of law school career service offices in the Chicago area. Check the Record for the date.
- Continue the cover letter and resume campaign, now with smaller firms.
Make follow-up phone calls to previously contacted employers.
- Continue to follow up on volunteer opportunities. The law school is a member of PSLawNet, which provides a large database of paid and unpaid pubic interest job opportunities. See the
Resource Specialist for information about accessing their Web site. The Public Interest Resource Center is a student organization which matches volunteers with opportunities.
- Attend the Midwest Public Interest Law Career Conference (MPILCC): In November, students signed up to attend MPILCC, an annual conference where students have the opportunity to interview with and meet public interest employers. Even if you did not sign-up to attend MPILCC, you can still attend the conference and meet with employers through "table talk." The conference is held every year at Northwestern Law School during a Saturday in February.
- Talk to 2Ls and 3Ls about what they did during the summer
following their first year.
- Work your contacts!! Many students who find paid legal
work after first year find their job through contacts.
- Keep checking the job postings on Symplicity.
- Read the Monthly 1L Newsletter: February Edition
March, April, May:
- If you haven't met with your career adviser by now,
it's time to make an appointment! The better we know you,
the more we can help!
- Keep going to Career Services programs, including Employer Receptions. These programs are great ways to learn more about job search skills, to create job success strategies and to meet practitioners and other useful contacts.
- Re-contact smaller firms (2-25) that indicated they were
not hiring until spring and apply to those firms not previously
contacted.
- Follow up on clerking job listings in Symplicity --
April and May are peak hiring months for summer law clerk jobs.
- Start thinking about next fall.
Attend the "What's Next?" program in April
and review preliminary information on our Web page.
- Consider a part-time legal volunteer position combined with a
paid non-legal position. Many 1Ls combine part-time jobs, legal and non-legal, paid and unpaid to make a full summer for themselves.
- Register for summer job fairs, like the Loyola Patent Fair and the Cook County Bar Association Minority Law Student Job Fair. See the Record for more information.
- Consider summer school. It's a great way to lighten
your courseload during the fall so that you can make time for the clinic,
an externship, a clerking job, or another type of legal experience.
- Opt into Summer Resume Books. See January above for more details.
- Watch the Record for information about applying for judicial
externships, clinic positions and faculty research assistant positions.
- Read the Monthly 1L Newsletter: March Edition and April Edition
- Don't get discouraged. Paid legal employment can be challenging to find during the summer after the first year. Don't give up!
A number of law firms are still seeking clerks in June.
- No matter what your plan is, have a back-up plan. Make the most of your summer
by having a contingency plan.
June, July, August:
- Work. Whether paid or volunteer, research or assisting an attorney, get some legal work experience this summer.
- Continue self assessment. What do you want to do with
your law degree? Learn about your options. The more information
you gather and the better you know yourself, the more satisfying you'll
find your legal career.
- Update your job application materials. Add your summer job(s) to your resume. Edit your cover letter to describe new skills and experiences. Polish your writing sample. Add spring grades to your transcript. Contact your references to let them know that they still are your references and to make sure their information is still correct.
- Research the Fall Recruiting employers. Review Symplicity for information on the employers participating in our Fall
Recruiting program. Meet with your Career Adviser to determine if Fall Recruiting is right for you and to create a strategy. Decide whether you are primarily interested in transactional
work or litigation and learn about the role associates in large law
firms play in this type of work.
- Relax! Enjoy this break! No matter how you spend
your summer, you have at least two more years of school and another
summer during which you can develop your practical legal skills.
© Fall 2010 Chicago-Kent College of Law, Institute of Technology
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