In your role as a counselor you can do a great deal to assist these highly educated, work committed couples in negotiating their way through difficult decision making.
Tips for counseling students about obtaining good letters of recommendation for judicial clerkships.
Is OCI Dead or Is This Just the New Normal? On-Campus Interviews (OCI) in 2012
Mary Crane offers tips to interns, new hires, and summer associates for starting their careers with fewer stumbles and with a greater understanding of the factors that lead to long-term success.
Student development theory can empower us to identify, understand, and address a problem; it also serves as a way for us to explain what it is we see and then determine how we can bring about change.
New tools can help students build a strategic online presence as well as assisting in their job searches.
The NALP Small and Solo CSO Interest Group has developed a new resource on the NALP website -- a pool that lets members share programming resources and ideas through a shared resource pool.
The first encounters 1Ls have with career counselors can set the stage for later success.
To make your first career services program a success, examine the 5W's -- who, why, what, where, and when -- and then partner with colleagues.
If you would like to teach law students and lawyers to stop committing social gaffes on social media (and perhaps learn more about social media yourself), the NALP E-Guides on E-Professionalism can help.
Career development professionals have unique opportunities to promote student professional development by working with students individually — not just through programming or a formal curriculum. Here are some mechanisms career development professionals can use when interacting with students individually.
This past April, the Massachusetts Law School Consortium sponsored an event for member schools’ students called The JD Advantage — Exploring Career Paths You May Never Have Imagined. This was the first event of its kind for the Consortium and set the stage for future events focused on educating our students about the multitude of career paths beyond the traditional practice of law. What follows is a summary of the steps our Consortium took to plan and execute the event. We share this guide in the hope that other state and regional law school groups and consortia will be interested.
Before we can even begin to coach students who are military veterans, we must ensure that we check our own biases and predispositions about the veteran law student.
Partnering with faculty and CSOs to improve the clerkship advising process.
A positive attitude is a great start to building a more productive workplace, and you should encourage your team to develop ways to bolster individual and group happiness.
For career service professionals in charge of our departments’ employer outreach, the task of creating an employer outreach strategy to access these emerging legal career employers seems daunting. With the field being so broad, how does one even begin to formulate an employer outreach strategy? Assigned this enormous endeavor for my career services department, I decided to tackle this task by tweaking a successful employer outreach strategy I have been using for traditional legal employers. With a few key changes, I created a four-step process that breaks down outreach to emerging legal employers into bite-size, digestible pieces. Hopefully, ...
Neil W. Hamilton's Roadmap: The Law Student's Guide to Preparing and Implementing a Successful Plan for Meaningful Employment is an excellent resource for career counselors as well as students.
Most students may think they don't have time to build a professional network but career counselors can help them understand how to get there with one contact, one hour, one step at a time.
Legal recruiting professional and part-time improvisation teacher Emily Lindholm explains how a little bit of improv could go a long way in figuring out recruiting during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
McDermott Will & Emery’s Hannah Fabrikant and Rochelle Weiner explain how to keep mentor-pairs engaged at law firms.
University of Alabama School of Law’s Glory McLaughlin looks at some of the silver linings related to the positive outcomes from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the public service and public interest legal communities.
Authors Leanne Fuith and Laura Friedman explain how to take a whole-school approach to law student professional identity formation.
The University of Nebraska College of Law’s Tasha Everman and Drake University Law School’s Kathryn Overberg explain how collaborating with other organizations can bring benefits to your career development office and the law students you advise.
Strategies and guidance for students pursuing work in the public sector.
How can career services offices support students in evaluating law firm diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging programs?
It is so important as a career counselor to meet the student where he/she/they are whenever possible. Here are some tiny career counseling stories (sticking to my 100 word or less rule) which illustrate this point.
The JD Career Advisors Section is for NALP members who have an interest in or responsibility for the career development of law students and alumni.
Some advice for students on preparing for and obtaining a job as a public defender.
Some tips on interviewing from hiring partners and recruitment managers.
A knowledgeable counselor can help make sense out of the fellowship maze, enabling students to embark on fellowship research and the creation of an application game plan...
By teaching students the theories behind our decision-making process on résumé revisions, we can teach them to fish, as opposed to catching the fish for them.
This article will first address counseling the patent student and the address counseling the trademark, copyright, and licensing student.
"Plugged in" Millennials need to be encouraged to take advantage of all networking opportunities, not merely those online.
The author's own career provides an example of the most common but least discussed path to public service.
Here are some tips and free tools to help both career counselors and students manage the information flow.
Here are tips to help law school career services professionals to build credibility and counsel alumni more effectively.
One of the ways to add value to the career counseling process is through some carefully crafted questions about workplace attractors.
The job market has been brutal and may seem to some to be akin to the environment of a zombie apocalypse where the streets are barren, the future is uncertain, and fear is experienced every day. Here are some tips for equipping students not only to survive but to thrive in this market.
Learn how using some form of "grit" assessment with students throughout law school can provide helpful feedback to students as they encounter different challenges.
As law schools step into the world of online learning, legal career professionals need to be prepared to work with online students and to anticipate new ethical questions that may arise in the delivery of career services.
How can career counselors manage student expectations and set students up for success without sounding doom-and-gloom about the current state of things?
A career counselor offers job search advice to a graduate.
The University of Ottawa recruits and trains student Career Facilitators who extend the capabilities of the CSO by helping with everything from résumé review to creation of student handouts.
As with government agencies and nonprofit organizations, private public interest firms offer students the opportunity to use their law degree as a tool to advocate for the public interest, but how do students identify opportunities and conduct successful job searches?
The field of gaming law is increasing in popularity and offers a surprising wide array of practice opportunities.
Here are some ways even a newcomer to career counseling can quickly develop a rapport with students.
The ABA’s Standard 509 Reports reflect that law schools across the country have increased enrollment of international JD students. From the perspective of a career counselor, this means understanding and counseling on legal career pathways for non-citizens, offering support on non-immigrant visa issues, and providing professional integration and job search resources. As counselors, we need to be knowledgeable about employment options and challenges impacting our international JD students. If you are fortunate enough to be on a campus that offers services for foreign nationals, it is very helpful to refer students to advisers trained on visa i...
Kudos to those of us who counsel students on public service careers — we have helped to get the word out about this important and stable sector. So, now what? How do CSOs support these enthusiastic students and prepare them for the federal job search?
While doing employer outreach, you can glean important information that will assist students with their job searches.
The content of recommendation letters is in a judge's mind before a candidate even walks in the door.
New York Law School’s Sare Mills offers advice for newer career counselors about how to apply marketing techniques when advising law students.
Brooklyn Law School's Dina Adler shares another set of short stories about career counseling.
Melissa MacDougall outlines challenges and benefits of rural clerkships and encourages advisors to engage students in full discussions and explorations of clerkships in all areas.
Professionalism is foundational to legal training, yet it is rarely integrated into the formal curriculum. Daily choices made by 1Ls, however small, form habits that shape how peers, faculty, and employers see them. Is it time to spell out those behaviours we have been expecting students to ‘just know’?
Traditionally, students think about fall recruiting programs as being strictly for summer associate positions. Now is the time to re-educate them to the possibility of part-time clerking positions as avenues to permanent positions down the road.
The nature of career services work is cyclical. Here are some tips for handling the busy months of February and March and the solitude of April and May.
Web-based enterprises offer JD students and graduates an unprecedented opportunity to circulate their resumes electronically. Here are some tips for avoiding pitfalls (and some explanations for those who wonder why some resumes appear the way they do).
Here are two key tips to help you begin your journey as a career coach.
How can we remove the invisible obstacles that prevent students from taking advantage of the resources we offer? Here are a few tips.
Law school career counselors can help students and graduates find clear and accurate information they can use to make good decisions about their student loans. Here are several things every graduate should know.
What is different and why in the Principles & Standards applying to working with 1Ls?
Assessing these four factors can enhance the effectiveness of career counseling.
Students pursuing legal services, public defender, or prosecutorial positions are likely to encounter "stress interviews" that are deliberately designed to put candidates into stressful situations. These tips can help students succeed despite the stress.
Here are ten tips for integrating fellowships into existing CSO programs.
Here are some tips for deciding when to teach and when to go ahead and help a student fix details.
InterviewStream and MediaNotes are helpful but different mock interview tools CSOs can use in student training.
Career services professionals can guide students to write more mature and persuasive cover letters by being alert to this "invisible elephant."
Those who counsel alumni interested in becoming law professors need to know how to help these alums navigate the law teaching market.
5 tips for job searches in a difficult market
When thinking of effective employer outreach networking activities, most people think of events outside of the law school, but a lot of networking can be done without leaving your law school. Here are some ideas.
Create an inclusive environment for Indigenous students by learning the history, making territorial acknowledgements, taking the time to learn, showing up and listening, and identifying available resources.
A career services office can maximize its support of MLS students through personalized outreach and individualized counseling, programming, a specialized student/alumni job board, and conscientious inclusion into the greater law school community.
Methods for dealing with the imposter phenomenon or imposter syndrome, including understanding your coping mechanisms, how you respond to failure, starting the conversation and putting yourself out there.
Career counselors can play an important role in advising students who are questioning their interest in a federal career.
Legal aid practice can bear a closer resemblance to law school career advising than it may appear on the surface. Trust and validation can make the difference between discouragement and empowerment.
Mental Performance Coach Jayne Rossworn explains how legal careers advisors can use concepts that help athletes bounce back from injury to help law students thrive after job search setbacks.
UNT Dallas College of Law’s Katherine Mikkelson offers tips on career services professionals who are having the relocation conversation with their public service-leaning law students.
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University’s Jaime Gay offers five tips for improving your interactions with the law students and new lawyers that you advise.
General principles and considerations, plus a checklist, to help newer career services professionals learn to work through the high volume of resume reviews efficiently and thoroughly.
This article discusses how to advise judicial clerks on their search, from self-reflection through offer acceptance.
Review of Career Match: Connecting Who You Are with What You'll Love to Do by Shoya Zichy, AMACOM, 2007
Best approaches to first-year orientation programming.
Achieving a balance of experience in international law, international human rights law, and domestic public interest law will support the widest range of international public opportunities.
Public interest fellowships are unique opportunities for graduates to pursue their passions and take on significant responsibilities early on in their careers.
From the Employer's and Law School's Perspectives
Is there anything first-year students can do before November 1 that will not violate NALP guidelines? Yes!
Analysis of one of the major challenges facing law schools, as increasing numbers of alumni find themselves unemployed and seek assistance from their law schools.
Former LLM Section renamed.
These tips can help when counseling international students and foreign-trained attorneys as well as others who may feel "left behind" unless they are creative and proactive in their job searches.
At one law school, some of the students who are not in the top 10% formed a unique group called the B90 group -- and the group had 100% employment in legal positions over the summer of their second year.
Candidates who want to transition to the public sector or public service need to be able to point to specific examples of where they have worked or volunteered in this area.
"Podferences" have helped this career office provide more students with current advice on markets abroad from lawyers who actually live and practice in these international markets.
Students who are still looking for either a summer or post-graduate position can help further their searches even during spring break.
Here's how one career advisor answers her students' questions about informational interviews.
Listening closely to students' preferences and concerns and helping them realistically assess the pros and cons of being out when applying for internships or jobs is central to effective counseling of LGBT students.
The first 12 in an exciting new series of small books about emerging legal careers are now available from NALP.
Ways for new career counselors to approach questions from student about brand management, networking, salary negotiations, and more.
“How do you successfully convert a CV into a US-style résumé?” is a common question expressed by all foreign-trained LLM students and their career counselors. Writing any kind of summary of your professional experience, education, skill set, professional development, etc. is not an easy task. We all know that our JDs are often struggling with résumé drafting, as well. Add to that challenge the confusion about what is the actual difference between a CV (curriculum vitae) and a résumé, and you are left with a difficult task on your hands.
Dena Bauman and Kathryn Liss offer four steps for how to help law school students focus, and even prosper, in a remote work environment.
How can one best support students who are interested in pursuing a non-traditional career path? This author offers a Canadian perspective.
As is the case in working with students, working with faculty is about relationship building and establishing trust. Tips for engaging faculty.
Jessica R. Natkin and Jessica L. Hernandez offer an advance look at Let’s Coach All the Lawyers: An Essential Primer for Professionals Developing Legal Talent, which is a new book that can be used to foster growth and move beyond common issues in the legal workplace.
James Leipold reviews the 2023 edition of Neil Hamilton's Roadmap: The Law Student’s Guide to Meaningful Employment .
Five tiny career counseling stories (100 words or less) offer a humorous look at several counseling incidents that also provide a valuable lesson learned.
Navigating the complexities of law school and launching a career in the legal field can be daunting for first-gen students. This article includes tips to help PD professionals provide exceptional support no matter your role.
Corporate alumni programs have emerged from organizations’ back offices and have become true front and-center efforts. These programs have proven to be strategic assets for business development, brand building, and talent management. You should build a programmatic structure and then find a solution that fits those needs.
This article highlights ways that career services offices (CSOs) can help students harness the power of generative AI tools and AI-powered applications effectively in their job search, while avoiding common pitfalls.
By staying engaged throughout the summer and providing practical guidance rooted in real world expectations, we can help our students make strong first impressions, avoid missteps, and build lasting professional relationships. In doing so, we not only support their individual success, but we also strengthen the reputation of our institutions and the legal profession as a whole.
How to Successfully Advise Students Seeking Public Interest/Government Opportunities. January 20, 2016
A review of the book Getting Unstuck: How Dead Ends Become New Paths by Timothy Butler
I have seen some 1Ls who may have been struggling their first year really blossom during the summer and gain a lot of confidence, and come back with a new outlook for the academic year their second year.
Review of Lessons from a Headhunter ... with Heart, by Patricia Comeford and Gina Sauer
Here are some tips for helping students acquire the traits public interest employers are seeking and land public interest jobs.
Students who use their law school summers strategically may be able to compete for more advanced international public interest positions upon graduation.
When counseling students with disabilities, it is important to tailor guidance based on a student's individual needs and interests.
While these tips focus specifically on students from China, they may also be helpful in working with international students generally.
Here are some resources that can help LGBT law students evaluate potential employers.
Here are a few resources and ideas for helping public service-minded students who want to begin the process of exploring international opportunities.
These tips will help students craft more effective cover letters.
This five-part outline can help students move closer to their public interest career objectives.
Alumni programs are becoming the new normal at law firms, but offering dedicated confidential resources to discuss such career-related topics as becoming alumni remains more cutting-edge. Within most law firms, there have always been quiet, closed-door conversations about alternative career paths. Now a growing number of firms are embracing the fact that most lawyers will not remain in the firm for the entirety of their careers and firms are investing in career counseling infrastructure. Alumni managers and career counselors cite a number of benefits to offering these programs.
Every February, previously calm career services offices are upended by spring recruitment as they are flooded with employers and highly emotional first-year students. When I began my role as a career counselor, I had a unique experience where I was the career counselor running the office, seeing students back-to-back-to-back without my team. As a result, I rushed through a 30-minute meeting in 15 minutes, discussing students’ specific questions as soon as they walked in the door. What I later realized was that my initial eagerness to help students hindered my counseling sessions. Once the dean returned, I started to observe his counseling ses...
Career advisors don’t pick favorites when it comes to students, but if we did, it’s likely the students who transfer in as rising 2Ls would be at the top of the list. Transfer students tend to be enthusiastic, determined, and a little bit gritty. But there is a challenge inherent in working with these students, given the tight timeline between when they are admitted and when on-campus interviewing begins. If you implement some best practices, your transfer students have a better chance of being successful at OCI.
Students are protesting, and many may turn to their public interest advisers for advice or support.
Here are some suggestions for guiding students on more professional and more effective use of email.
PSJD offers lessons in how you can develop the untapped potential in your job database to counsel students and reach out to employers more effectively.
One of the most uncomfortable situations career counselors find themselves in each year is engaging recent graduates who have not passed the bar or face another admissions hurdle delaying their entry into practice. Here are some suggestions for locating and helping to support those alumni.
Strategic data collection helps public interest advisors evaluate their resources and overall impact and effectiveness in supporting public interest careers.
Those of us in career services should do what we can to avoid over-editing student application materials because displacing our students' voices in these important documents creates several significant risks.
Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart’s Kelly Druten Green offers a series of steps to help measure the return on investment for legal training programs.
NALP, 50th Anniversary, Executive Director, Jim Leipold, column, 2021, 1971, history, future, pandemic, 2020, remote work, virtual, coronavirus, events, happy, celebration
Here are some best practices for career service offices (CSOs) to ensure that transfer students are seamlessly integrated into the student body and also know how to take advantage of the career resources available to them.
Case Western Reserve University School of Law’s Keith Dye shares three principles for advising law students about their careers.
NALP Resources for Native and Indigenous Students
summer associates must take their clerkship experience seriously and get to know the firm both personally and professionally. In turn, the firm should expend the same effort. It takes effort on both sides to make the program work effectively.
Here are tips for career counselors who find themselves occasionally having to deal with awkward conversations with students and alumni.
Because for many bloggers the world that they create is very personal, they can forget to censor the information that they reveal - never considering that a potential employer entering their name in a search engine might land on their blog
The value of an informational interview can never be understated because it often provides valuable insigh not readily obtainable from traditional sources.
Self-assessment requires that job seekers be honest with themselves about who they are, what they want, and where their strengths lie.
Knowledge management and pricing analysis offer new career paths in the business of law.
Studying generational differences does not justify treating people differently based on age, but it can be a tool to help understand differing expectations and thus better serve students.
Make sure students know what you are doing to reach out to employers; effective communication encourages students to ask questions about employers and markets.
This career advisor's past experience as an attorney defending criminal cases has proved useful in helping students think about what employers want.
Here are some tips for advising students when appearance or personal hygiene may be the reasons for not getting past an interview.
combining traditional and unconventional approaches to help students develop their professional identities
Law school alumni have so many directions to go! And career counselors have just as many techniques, tools, and maps we can offer our seekers as guidance.
The truth is that introverts can be very good at networking; they just need to approach making connections with people differently.
How can law school career services professionals incorporate bar association resources into the work they do and also get students involved with bar associations? Here are some tips.
The goal of a professional coffee chat is building rapport with a professional to obtain information about a type of work and about the best ways of positioning oneself for consideration by relevant employers.
When a public service-minded student is considering private sector options such as summer diversity programs, counselors should help students to understand the pros and cons of different avenues and make informed decisions.
Legal career professionals, whether working in law schools or in employer settings, may be interested to know about the efforts underway to encourage the adoption of the uniform bar examination.
A career counselor learned an important life lesson.
Communicating these key points is a critical part of career counseling for international LL.M. students.
Here are suggestions for addressing the most common issues arising for career advisors who are working with second career students.
Even a budget-strapped, time-squeezed career services office can take these steps to ensure that alumni actually do make useful networking connections.
Here are some suggestions for taking LGBT counseling or recruitment to the "201" level.
understanding financial aid and loan forgiveness options
Given changes in federal loan repayment assistance programs, law schools should assess how well their own LRAPs are filling gaps in the federal programs.
University of Denver Sturm College of Law’s Alexi Freeman and Kristen Uhl Hulse offer best practices for supervising law students in remote work settings.
Georgetown University Law Center’s Sunita Iyer reflects on methods for helping law students prepare for on-campus interviews (OCI) held virtually.
What can career counselors do to help students feel less untethered as they navigate changing public service employment opportunities, or even fears of discrimination?
Two new publications related to attorney hiring by small law firms are now available online, one directed to law school CSOs and the other to small firms.
When an international student or attorney comes into my office, my goal is to make her leave better positioned than she was when she entered. That’s why she sought my help. However, being “better positioned” can be interpreted differently, and what the international student understands by this expression and what we mean by it is often very different. As career services professionals, we must be comfortable offering guidance with empathy, but also learn when “tough love” is needed.
Academic advisors lean on basic principles to help them answer these tough questions, and law school career counselors are more than capable of using them as well. Having some basic knowledge in academic advising can not only help counselors assist students in these matters but also help in the relationship-building process.
One of the ways that a law school's employer outreach professional can be invaluable is by bringing back to the CSO information about what firms look for in entry-level hires.
Our digital age has made applying for jobs easy, but it's also made it easy for students to skip the steps that will make their application stand out.
A particular challenge in advising occurs when we discover that a student is considering reneging — or has already reneged — on their acceptance of an offer of employment. This presents singular difficulties, in part because it creates conflict among the career services office’s loyalties. Probably the easiest way to deal with a reneging situation is to stop it before it occurs. If this potentially no-win situation confronts you, here are some points to consider.
Chapman and Cutler’s Shannon Burke shares some of the program highlights and what to expect at the 2022 NALP-ALI Professional Development Institute, Dec. 1-2 in Washington, DC.
With inspiration from the New York Times, Brooklyn Law School's Dina Adler shares short stories about career counseling.
Alisa Benedict O'Brien shares some of the "hot topics" discussed and navigated by small and solo career services offices in the past academic year.
Three NALP members write about their experience creating a public interest counseling program from scratch.
This humorous article looks at how counselor’s guide students for the job search process. However, they can't prepare them for everything. Mistakes are going to happen!
NALP Bulletin+ article by Executive Director Nikai L. Gray discussing the evolving recruiting timeline for Big Law firms.
It is important to encourage even students participating in OCI to stay active on other avenues of their job searches ... The second round of interviews and potential lack of an offer through OCI can be devastating.
We are both contributors and stakeholders in cultivating a supportive environment within the entire law school community for non-U.S. trained attorneys.
How can someone who wants to move into career advising learn about opportunities and market himself or herself to law schools?
Suggested law school career services strategies for coping with the impact of changes in the employment market.
Career services professionals are well situated to play an integral role in the bar admissions application process.
As I share success stories of happy lawyers, I emphasize that a career is a journey, comprised of work experiences and relationships that accumulate along the way.
This new book addresses offers helpful advice on many aspects of the legal job search but also has a few limitations.
Here's how to help JD and LLM students create lasting and mutually beneficial relationships.
Teach introverts to Pause, Process, and Pace to achieve networking success.
These strategies can help women re-entering the workforce gain the confidence they need to succeed.
It can be more difficult to establish a rapport when interviewing by phone or Skype, but these tips will help.
Law school career professionals need to be cognizant of the decision-making challenges faced by millennials and design individual approaches for helping students learn to make professional decisions.
Here are some suggestions for collaboration both within and outside of your law school to better serve public interest minded students.
A first step in providing career counseling to law students who are veterans is to realize that each is a unique person with individual needs.
Even busy 1Ls with little or no prior work experience can find opportunities that will help them demonstrate their commitment to public interest work and their understanding of the clients public interest organizations serve.
There will always be challenges in any job search, but the alternative job search requires more specific adjustments along the way to make sure that a student's job search strategy and documents are a fit for the position sought.
Career services professionals can play a key role in helping students learn when and how to negotiate a job offer.
Law students seeking a public service position face a challenging market, but these resources can help.
Here are six ways students can continue to advance their job searches during the summer months.
Identifying, assisting, and tracking alumni judicial clerks can seem a bit like trying to herd cats, but there are benefits both for the alumni and for the school. Here are some suggested strategies.
Here are some tips for career counselors and law students on the art of effective grant seeking.
Individuals with Asperger's are on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, yet career counselors may want to keep some factors in mind.
Here are four important ways to support students who do not receive an offer from the organized recruiting process.
How can we as career professionals work to encourage self-initiative early on and motivate our students to engage in their job search process? The best place to make such an impact is through our one-on-one advising. But before I address ways we can inspire self-initiative in our students when we advise our students directly, let’s first discuss why motivation may be lacking in the first place.
With increased competition in the legal market, many LLM students wonder whether a JD might give them more leverage. This article identifies factors students should consider when assessing JD programs and preparing applications.
As a career and professional development coach at a law school near a major military installation and within a stone’s throw of two major medical schools, I have observed that one of the more challenging coaching problems seems to be on the rise: the student who enters law school with a significant other who is either a medical (or other professional) student or military member, whose next career or education requirements will drive the couple’s next chapter. We are good at developing search strategies that get a student to their launch job quickly and effectively, but these “trailing partner” searches involve special circumstances that can s...
With many jurisdictions having canceled and delayed bar exams, and many states offering practice pending admission/provisional licenses for new law grads, University of Akron’s Alisa Benedict O’Brien highlights resources and strategies for career services professionals to consider in this unique post-grad world.
As the UBE gains traction and is adopted in additional states, this scenario may become more common in our offices. Whether a 3L approaches you well in advance of graduation or springs this news on you the week prior, the resources and suggestions shared here should provide a solid basis for you and the graduate to develop a fruitful job search strategy.
Although an overwhelming number of the borrowers who have applied for Public Service Loan Forgiveness have been denied, there are several steps those hoping to obtain loan forgiveness can take to better ensure they will qualify.
Here are some tips for helping students write effective cover letters.
Here are seven habits to increase the effectiveness of public interest advising.
Some career clerks are hired after applying to a job posting, but many use their professional networks.
In this article Seth Mills and Elizabeth Peck interview each other as participants in this program during the 2022-2023 academic year, with the hope that by sharing reflections on their experiences, other NALP members will consider participating as mentors or mentees.
University of Kansas School of Law’s Meredith Wiggins offers tips for career advisors about managing the expectations of law students.
University of Baltimore School of Law's Dina R. Billian explains how students being their own staffing agency serves them and alumni in positive ways.
Reviewing resumes, cover letters, and other application documents is a key aspect of being a career counselor. This guide is meant to help provide a framework for how to conduct effective document review while still honoring your own style of feedback and communication.
When I returned to law school counseling in Spring 2023, I reframed my mindset that the mission of the work is to help law students become adults who can clarify their own values and goals. During my time away, I worked for a startup that supported young adults running for local elected office. That helped me realize how much young adults yearn to be heard and seen for who they are, and they genuinely want guidance to reach their goals.
Career services professionals have a duty to inform students of the many compensation systems small firms may offer. Clearly, there are more benefits available than an initial glance at national salary statistics may indicate.
Northeastern's program for unemployed graduates may spark ideas for other schools — and for some employers involved in outplacement — as they seek to help sustain the spirit of lawyers searching for jobs in a difficult market.
Social media tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, when used wisely, can help law students position themselves in the job market.
These six tips will help students get past their reluctance to network.
Can Twitter be a useful networking tool for job seekers, and, if so, how does one get from virtual networking to in-person contacts?
While winter break offers a welcomed reprieve, it also presents an ideal opportunity for law students to devote time to strategic professional activities that will further their career goals.
Whether or not your CSO has a dedicated alumni counselor, there are ways you can move from reactivity to proactivity in alumni career counseling.
As career services professionals prepare to work with 1Ls, it is important to incorporate familiarizing students with the intricacies of navigating the legal profession into first-semester programming.
These two questions can be important coaching tools to add to your toolkit.
Counseling today's public service minded law students is a lot about student debt.
Sharing these ten steps with alumni can help them manage salary negotiations more effectively.
This author didn't expect his attempt to buy a home to become a refresher on effective career advising practices.
A creative writing class offered unexpected insights into career counseling.
Four strategies to strengthen the bonds between career services offices (CSOs), faculty and the students they serve.
AmeriCorps openings for law graduates have historically been unpredictable, and today may seem more confusing than ever to career counselors.
Law school is not for the faint of heart, and for a growing subset of law students who are married to active duty servicemembers, the traditional trials of law school include additional challenges. These students require unique resources from career services and a specialized understanding from potential employers to help them navigate military family life and a successful legal career.
Working with law students interested in rural opportunities? Read some tips and advice from small town practitioners from Christi McCauley of Thompson Rivers University Faculty of Law.
Members of NALP’s Professional Identity Formation Work Group share findings from the 2020 Report on Survey of Law Firm Competency Expectations for Associate Development.
By becoming aware of public service funding options, counselors can help students make their dreams a reality.
Gap year clerkships, which are slated to begin one year out from a student's date of graduation, are increasingly common but can be particularly challenging for public interest law students.
A career on Capitol Hill can be a great choice for law graduates interested in policy. Here are five tips for pursuing jobs on the Hill.
Tommy Latino explains Organizational Portfolio Theory and how it can be applied to the job search.
White & Case LLP’s Graziella Reis-Trani and Sidley Austin LLP’s Sharon Light explain how law firms can use alumni relations programs to build a winning case around career transitions.
Holland & Knight LLP’s Precillia Soares explains the benefits of staying in touch with law students over the summer.
it is incumbent upon all career services professionals to provide their students with the most effective advice, techniques, and strategies with regard to small firm hiring practices.
Many NALP members enter into career counseling with a JD but no formal training in career counseling. This special feature offers tips on the skills required.
Here are some tips for helping students acquire the skills public interest employers are seeking and land public interest jobs.
You're in a meeting with a student and it's clear there are some deeper issues. Here are a few possible ways of leading into the topic of a student's need for personal counseling.
What's the best advice for someone who wants to pursue a career in public policy? Here are a few pointers.
Career services professionals should train law students to understand that their law school efforts translate directly into valuable skills and habits as new associates.
Here are five rules to stress to students as they prepare to mail out cover letters and resumes.
Here are just a few suggestions for ways to create or promote different types of in-person networking opportunities for students.
Here are some tips for helping students to foster an entrepreneurial approach that will yield more opportunities.
For students pursuing public interest internships, CSO professionals often need to be able to offer financial planning guidance.
What should a career counselor tell students to do and what pitfalls should they avoid to make their online networking easier and more effective?
Here are some tips for dispelling common myths 1Ls have about the search for a public service summer job.
The D.I.S.C. Personality Assessment is a helpful tool to help students learn how personality impacts specific career paths in the practice of law.
These tips can help new(er) career services professionals hit the ground running.
The simple question “Why do you want to make partner?” can leave even the most accomplished young attorney at a loss for words. Her inability to answer this straightforward question, only to ask “isn’t that just the next step? Isn’t that what I am supposed to want?” is a sign that the attorney is operating in what I call the Achievement Mindset—the mental framework that asks only whether the next career step leads to more money, prestige, and peer recognition. Success is viewed linearly and advancement happens by getting to the next rung on a pre-defined ladder of success.
Setting students up for success is an important part of what career development professionals and academic advisors do, through collaboration and strategic timing of advice and services throughout the year. This article will cover a number of these helpful efforts, including general collaboration strategies, collaboration on academic advising and bar tracks, and how career development professionals and academic advisors can collaborate to help students find mentors and get professional recommendations. For the purposes of this article, students will be defined as internationally-trained students enrolled in Master of Laws (LLM) programs.
Most law school career advisors agree that the legal profession is slow to change. The students entering our schools, though, are ever-changing. Therein lies one of the greatest challenges a JD career advisor faces — how to connect with modern students effectively and prepare them for the often traditional and conservative profession they are entering.
Arming career counselors with information to assist students in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
As counselors for international students, we must be aware of how our own culture may be both similar to and different from a student's culture.
For law students, the real value of a summer job is gaining relevant legal experience, skills, and knowledge. Having a self-directed learning plan in place at the outset of a summer job can help ensure that students accomplish the desired outcomes.
EsquireWell’s Kendra Brodin and DueCourse and Aspire’s Kelli Dunaway explain the importance of emotional intelligence when giving and receiving feedback.
What’s new in resume and cover letters? Reed Smith LLP’s Jennifer H. Fried and Drake University Law School’s Carole A. Tillotson offer tips for cultivating conversation with students.
Three C-Suite leaders share their insights and perspectives on the legal industry — what’s changing, what’s challenging, and where things are headed.
Here are some tips on how to counsel students who do not participate in fall OCI or who do not find a job through the OCI program.
The aim of this piece is to highlight an area that may not be on the active radar screen of a law career services office — professionalism with respect to handling finances and its ultimate impact on careers.
Some tips for helping students who didn't get an offer.
Among students who are still job seekers at graduation, there exist several distinct phases or the job search that will work to control their mindsets, the issues they face, and the advice you ultimately render.
Criminal law is a unique practice area with a distinctive interview process. A former Assistant District Attorney and a former Assistant Public Defender share inside tips, including examples of criminal hypotethicals.
Students who receive offers from small and mid-sized firms need to understand what's negotiable and what's not, and they need to learn to look at the total offer.
In this economic downturn, career service professionals find it increasingly important to focus a portion of their programming on preparing law students for the small firm employment segment
Tips for career office handouts
Tips for preparing for judicial clerkship application season.
Here are some suggestions for getting students in the lower half of their class engaged in enthusiastically looking for work and careers.
The seemingly insurmountable obstacles to landing that first job can be daunting and frustrating to law students. Career counselors can help students break the search down into bite-sized pieces.
Here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about how the New York pro bono requirement affects non-U.S. trained LL.M. students.
The role of career counselors in working with alumni who want to start a solo practice is both to encourage analysis of the decision and also to offer practical advice.
How can career counselors prepare students for behavioral interviews? Here are some suggestions.
These strategies can help even a CSO with limited staff deliver career services to part-time students more effectively.
There is rarely a more important moment in counseling public interest students than when a student is feeling burned out and considering whether to change career paths.
Here are six ways students can continue to advance their job searches alive during the summer months.
There are virtually endless facets to being effective career services professionals. Here are some quick tips that help in a few of these roles.
Legal careers relating to data collection and privacy are on the rise. For law students and lawyers, this increase provides an opportunity in terms of both traditional attorney and JD Advantage careers. Industry research shows that while data privacy is still a relatively new field, 35% of privacy officers who came to their work from another field came from a legal background. The same industry research shows that hiring and salaries are on the rise.
Weighing the pros and cons of incorporating an assessment tool into your career support options for law students.
Peer coaching programs can foster adaptability to change, support for professional goals, increased confidence and social competence, a sense of empowerment, and improved ability to give and receive honest feedback.
To truly understand how to gain more responsibility and reach the ultimate goal of career satisfaction, the first step is to understand where you are starting.
For us, August means the overlap between the end of the summer program and the beginning of “fall” recruiting, résumé review and call-back scheduling, anxious 2Ls and incoming 1Ls. Many NALPers are put to the test during this season. And even if August isn’t your “testing” season, you certainly have one at some point during the year. Here are some thoughts and tools that have always helped me get through the crunch time.
We all know the value of mentorship, and many law schools work to provide opportunities for students through established student/professional mentoring programs. For the small/solo career development office, offering a successful mentoring program can be a challenge due to the time and resources a program can require. There is no one perfect program for any school or city. What matters is that you find what works for you, your students, and your professional community. With that in mind, I offer these tips for evaluating or creating a mentorship program.
When we hear the term “bottom of the class” anyone in career services may perk their ears, tense their shoulders, and wonder “what can I possibly do for this student?” Bottom line: all is not lost – there is still plenty to do with this hopeful audience.
University of North Texas Dallas College of Law’s Katherine Mikkelson offers pointers for professionals new to the area of counseling law students about their legal careers.
Equinox Strategy Partners’ Lana J. Manganiello interviews professional development leaders at law firms to get their best practices for attorney development in hybrid work environments.
One of the favorite parts of my career advising work is conducting mock interviews and working one-on-one with students, helping them recognize their strengths and understand not only what they bring to the job but what they will gain as they grow into legal professionals. That is to say that I love the chance to pump them up before an interview.
This article provides tips and resources for those counseling students on state judicial clerkship opportunities.
With this knowledge, you can help students understand the security clearance process and encourage them not to let the process get in the way of pursuing government opportunities.
This coming fall, the first millennials will begin to interview for summer associate positions.
Counseling law school alumni is a deeply rewarding and exciting experience, but the complexity and breadth of issues presented can often make the prospect seem too difficult...
Career services professionals can assist students by educating them about effective ways to schedule and conduct informational interviews and by guiding students as to how to properly maintain these newfound networking contacts.
A former Assistant Dean of Career Services who now serves as an outsourced recruiting person for small and mid-sized firms shares what she has learned — and how she might advise students differently as a result.
On behalf of legal employers everywhere, I offer the proverbial "ten things" that will endear law students to us ... and leave us wanting to hire dozens more like them!
career services; career counseling; economy
Tips for 2Ls seeking public interest fellowships.
Book Review of The Creative Lawyer
preparing students for callbacks
Sharing these ten interview strategies will benefit almost every law student.
Here are a few suggestions to help students for whom networking is difficult.
As the school year kicks off, career services professionals are considering how best to support law students in the use of social media. Here are some suggestions guided by the NALP Principles and Standards.
Internships and externships provide not only needed experience but also valuable professional networking opportunities.
This article highlights the takeaways from two recent NALP education programs designed to offer simple, ready to use resources that career counselors can implement to operationalize self-assessment materials on their campuses.
Students who want to pursue positions in nonprofit organizations should research the organizations' missions.
The expectations and needs of alumni from waaay back are often different from those of more recent graduates. Here are some suggestions for effective career counseling of law graduates who may be of your parents' generation.
Exposing students to the opportunities for law practice outside of large urban areas can be beneficial both for students and for those in under-served areas.
As law student debt-loads continue to increase, some of the long-established federal loan repayment and forgiveness programs students may be counting on may soon be constricted.
Many career development professionals might be surprised to learn that the NALP Principles and Standards are not just timing guidelines but also address fairness in the hiring process more broadly, including setting as an ethical standard that preferential treatment should not be extended to any student or employer
By becoming involved in bar association activities, career services professionals can model what they preach while also cultivating relationships with employers.
Eight insights for how to improve your support and coaching of lawyers and law students.
Career counselors at law school CSOs offer important advice on professionalism, interviewing, when to speak up, general operating instructions and other broad workplace topics for law students.
This process of "writing a résumé backward" can be helpful to students who enter law school knowing exactly what they want to do after graduation.
In order to advise law students on compliance as an emerging job market, advisors themselves need to know more about this field and how students can best position themselves for success.
While there is no silver bullet for retaining diverse associates, the shared interests and outcomes from partnering beyond one organization benefit individuals, law firms, and the legal industry.
Career counselors can play an important role in helping students — and perhaps especially international students — anticipate challenging interview situations.
Business and lawyer coach Alay Yajnik on how law firms can use coaching to drive performance, increase retention, and attract top talent.
Columbia Law School’s Julie Anne Alvarez Rivera shares 10 tips for counseling law students virtually on videoconferencing platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
These three pieces of advice can help public-interest minded students who want to participate in OCI.
Graduates with joint degrees often bring stronger management training, as well as different perspectives, to their employers.
TLDR. For readers not current on their urban dictionary, TLDR stands for “too long; didn’t read.” Law students today are bombarded with words at all turns. In addition to spending most of their days reading lengthy legal casebooks, most also receive dozens of emails per day from their law schools in addition to countless other emails, texts, bulletin boards covered with posters for upcoming events, and social media feeds. It’s no surprise that if faced with a large block of text, most law students will choose to ignore it. So how can law firm recruitment professionals and law school career services offices break through the noise and reach st...
This article explores the unique psychological impact of job loss on lawyers, and offers firms trauma-informed strategies to mitigate the harmful effects of terminations and pave the way for productive transitions.
Drake University Law School’s Kathryn “Katie” Overberg offers tools and tips for how Small and Solo career development professionals can best support students interested in judicial clerkships.
Ready, Set, Launch’s Jason Levin explains how to help law students and lawyers sharpen their networking skills as in-person meetings pick up as the world re-emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic.
NALP Resources for Career Services
As the summer employment recruiting process (SERP) timeline evolves — with many law firms engaging with students earlier than ever before, the traditional milestones of law school have been reshuffled. While the timeline has shifted, our mission as members of NALP remains the same: working together to support students in making informed career choices through a fair and ethical hiring process while allowing employers to identify candidates with the skills, judgment, and potential to thrive in their organizations.
The Law School Alumni Advising Interest Group is open to members with an interest in or responsibility for advising law school graduates.
NALP Webinar: Minnesota Courts Law Clerk Information Session
The front wave of a new invasion hit law school campuses last fall. Generation X gave way to the Millennials, and soon they will be in the legal workplace.
The student should be ready to package the non-offer and present it to future employers in the best possible light, without misrepresenting the situation at all.
visas; international LLMs
Law students and graduates who apply the concept of saving for a rainy day to their careers -- in the form of investment networking -- will be better able to survive the next economic downturn.
A low-tech, low-cost career assessment tool.
When a career counselor thinks negative thoughts, students seem to know instantly that the counselor isn't completely on their side.
Fortunately some aspects of the elusive "sparkle" sought by employers can be defined and learned.
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and an investor in start-ups, and entrepreneur Ben Casnocha provide a unique perspective on career development and success in their book, The Start-Up of YOU .
In the future, career counselors should be on the lookout for any students who even casually express an interest in practicing in California and ensure that these students know about California's newly adopted rule requiring Bar applicants to have completed 15 units of pre-admission practice-based competency training.
Career coaches can help students and alumni build confidence by emphasizing these building blocks that create a strong foundation for job search success.
One of the most important jobs of a career office is managing student expectations about the office's role in their job search.
Just in time for the Equal Justice Works Career Fair, here are some suggestions for helping students get the most from public service career fairs.
With today's free social media tools, today's law students and job candidates can create their own personal brand and position themselves as experts-in-training looking for the right opportunity.
New to public interest career advising? These resources are helpful places to start.
With all the hype surrounding the worth of a law degree, how can your CSO best market your students and alumni and help them find jobs?
Here are some ideas for finding the time and resources to counsel alumni while also counseling current students about a tough market.
Here are some of the ways law students and lawyers can use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to build their brand during a job search.
Here are three things career advisors can do to help students better connect with local bar associations.
Small Firm Weeks have been a valuable program for this law school, but a few lessons have been learned along the way.
counseling the diligent yet unsuccessful student
USC Law’s Malissa Barnwell-Scott explains how law firms can support first-generation students and professionals during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
University of Akron’s Alecia Bencze explores best practices for career services offices seeking to expand their social media presence and connect with students on social media.
Brooklyn Law School’s Dina Adler shares tools for developing trust when counseling law students, and it starts with listening to what they are actually saying.
Making the transition from being a legal practitioner to being a career services professional can present a number of different challenges.
As more and more lawyers and law students flock to Twitter, there are more conversations among members of the legal industry taking place on Twitter. Law school career professionals can follow these conversations and advise law students on how to capitalize on these interactions. To help you get started in following or engaging in the conversations, here are 10 hashtags frequently used by the legal profession.
Tips for career services staff to help students lead a healthy life and promote well-being and self-advocacy.
Helping international LL.M. students manage the interviewing process, including setting up interviews, following up with thank-you emails, and other logistical details.
Preparing your candidates early, coordinating with your clerkship committee, maintaining communication and exploring mentorship programs are various methods to help applicants seeking judicial clerkship positions.
CPT Ying Wang recommends as you advise and guide your students and alumni through important transition moments, consider recommending the U.S. Army JAG Corps as a main dish option on the menu of public service opportunities available to them.
Penn State Dickinson Law's Tom Lee offers advice in the areas of sponsorship and mentorship.
This interest group is open to any NALP member who holds the top role of any sort, broadly defined, in a career office at a law school.
