law student professional development; Equal Justice Works; public service; professionalism
A review of Excellence in the Workplace: Legal and Life Skills by Kay Kavanagh and Paula Nailon.
A continuation of a dialogue on student professionalism that began at the Annual Education Conference.
Here are some things law students can do to continue their professional development during the summer.
These key points we often address with law students and associates are equally important for PD professionals.
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.
The opportunity to increase the impact of your career services office is everywhere if you work with those willing to help you.
When we present PD programming for law students, we often default to using examples that are most relevant to private practice. Here are some suggestions for including both private and public interest arenas in PD discussions.
A survey of law school and law firm members revealed important differences in expectations about law student and lawyer PD.
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.
The Equal Justice Works Career Fair & Conference (EJW) brings together over 180 public interest employers with law students and law school professionals committed to social justice. The event, to be held October 26-27, 2018 in Arlington, VA, is part career fair, part conference, featuring a plenary and breakout sessions. EJW offers 2Ls, 3Ls, and recent graduates a chance to apply and be selected for a scheduled interview. In addition to the scheduled interviews, EJW features a large Table Talk event where students have a chance to speak to attorneys from across the country. For social justice-minded students who often report feeling isolated ...
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.
How can PD leaders guide students in owning and amplifying their professional identities using online engagement? Here are some simple tips to get started.
Who is responsible for law student professional development training in law schools, and why is training being done? The Law Student Professional Development Section set out to find some answers.
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.
Pro bono allows 1Ls to engage in the material they are studying and develop critical lawyering skills as well as empathy, listening skills, and the ability to build relationships with clients.
Learning to mindfully focus attention on the task at hand boost success at every stage of the job search, from applications through interviews, while also helping to relieve stress.
Law students/associates with grit and a growth mindset have resiliency and the ability to recover from setbacks.
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.
Mark your calendars: We can't wait to see you in Washington, DC, on December 1-2 for an exciting Professional Development Institute.
This year's Professional Development Institute is bookended by two exciting plenaries focusing on innovation both within and outside of the legal industry.
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.
Authors Leanne Fuith and Laura Friedman explain how to take a whole-school approach to law student professional identity formation.
Newcomer's Corner column addressing social learning
A review of Maximize Your Lawyer Potential: Professionalism and Business Etiquette for Law Students and Lawyers by Amee McKim.
Some tips on interviewing from hiring partners and recruitment managers.
Career services offices would do well to encourage students to act professionally and to make timely and informed decisions about accepting interviews and hold offers well before the dates prescribed by NALP.
The Schola2Juris program at Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis reimagines the recruiting process and the transition from law school to law firm.
"Plugged in" Millennials need to be encouraged to take advantage of all networking opportunities, not merely those online.
Coverage of the third Roundtable on the Future of Lawyer Hiring, Development and Advancement examines whether legal education has gone the way of the auto industry.
What professional development skills do law firms expect law graduates to have at entry level?
It is time to descend on Washington, DC, to attend the 2017 Professional Development Institute (PDI), taking place November 30 and December 1 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. An exciting opportunity to learn about industry-wide hot topics and discussions that could help professional development (PD) professionals drive results, enable transformation, and increase engagement, you do not want to miss this conference. With presentations from some of our industry’s most respected PD leaders, the PDI Conference once again will provide a central stage to meet and network with peers, consultants, and vendors on a wide-range of PD topics and issues.
The August on-campus and callback interview season is just around the corner. A common refrain among law firm recruiting professionals before, during, and after the interview season is the lack of communication from some law students after the employers extend their offers. Too often, students who have been in regular contact with the law firm recruiter as they schedule their callback interviews and wait for offers suddenly go “radio silent” after they receive an offer. Despite the employer’s phone calls and emails to the student, the student simply doesn’t respond about their interest in the offer or the likely timing of their decision. NALP...
Students who pursue law as a second career offer unique strengths but also pose special challenges for career services offices. At Loyola, the majority of our second-career students are pursuing their degrees on a part-time basis and take classes mostly at night. We also have stu¬dents who leave a previous profession to devote themselves full-time to law school. Most of these students are juggling family and work obligations, along with school work. While these students can be highly motivated and focused, with excellent time-management skills, they also often have some misperceptions about the value of career services that prevent them from ...
Each year, professional development managers take the time to create or refine their respective summer associate training programs. These managers typically have one goal in mind: to provide content that develops the skills for summer associates to succeed at their firm. However, as managers put pen to paper to develop their training schedules, issues and constraints inevitably interfere. Too often, the result is an unfocused training schedule, or worse, a schedule that requires new associates to absorb a wealth of information over a short period. While managers may have to accept these results, they should not strive for them. As discussed b...
In 2014, Stetson Law originated a highly collaborative forum for student professional development nicknamed BLaST (Best Law Student Trajectory). BLaST is a grassroots initiative that emerged when the then-directors of Career Development (now Career and Professional Development), Bar Preparation and Academic Success, and International and Graduate Programs got together to find ways to market programs, products, and services to students collectively, rather than in competition with each other.
What better way to kick off each day of the Professional Development Institute (December 3-4) than with an exciting plenary featuring well-known national and international experts? Here is a sneak peek at two plenaries you won't want to miss.
Each generation will approach a mentoring relationship with different goals and measures of success; it is important to think about these differences when pairing or advising individuals in a mentoring program.
Alston & Bird LLP’s Erin Springer makes the case for internal strategic partnerships during the COVID-19 pandemic and in times of uncertainty.
Venable’s Andy Hales examines the history and evolution of professional development as part of NALP’s 50th Anniversary Commemorative edition of the Bulletin.
This article addresses those in professional development roles who bear the responsibility for creating the processes and projects that align with the strategic plans of their organizations. Because these professionals are creators, they can transform their organizations through creative problem-solving and organizational artistry.
Cybele Smith and Jim Tomaszewski explain the importance of listing your law school’s job openings on PSJD.org.
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton’s Laura Bicks and Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law’s Becky Fitzsimmons explain what the plenaries have in store at the April 2022 NALP Annual Education Conference in New Orleans.
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’?
The Curmudgeon's Guide to Practicing Law by Mark Herrmann
Review of From Law School to Law Practice
Recently NALP and the NALP Foundation worked with two NALP sections to create and implement the 2010 Survey of Law School Experiential Learning Opportunities and Benefits.
These key steps can help you handle the challenges of developing a professional development curriculum at your law school.
When law students request a split summer, this long-time recruitment professional follows this roadmap to explain why she thinks a split summer is often not in a student's best interests
With a limited pool of candidates, firms continue to explore ways to recruit diverse students and get on their radars earlier in the process — including through hosting diversity conferences, mock interview programs, and other events during the 1L year. Because firms often meet with diverse students through these avenues, it becomes easier to “justify” precruiting — why wait to interview at OCI when we have already established a relationship? While firms are attempting to meet intense client and market demands in this uncharted recruiting era, diverse and first generation students are grappling with their own competing interests — focusing on...
Clients come to lawyers with questions — and they’re looking for answers they can understand.This can be a hard concept for law students and young lawyers. In college and then in law school, they were often rewarded for writing complicated papers, packed full of legal jargon and case citations. Now you want them to streamline their writing and make it easy to understand. Here are a few ways you can help law students and young lawyers make the transition from academic to business writing.
One law school's experience with a poverty simulation experience demonstrated that compassion and empathy can be learned.
How practicing what you preach, being timely and courteous, and owning your mistakes can advance your legal career, and your reputation for professionalism.
Learn how one law school makes self-care an essential part of its law student PD program.
This year's PDI, on December 3-4 in Washington, DC, offers amazing programming for law schools as well as for law firms.
Kellye Testy talks about AALS' mission and goals. She says, "The development of a lawyer takes a lifetime, so the profession and the academy have to continue to collaborate to understand what set of skills students need when they graduate. We need to get deep into that conversation and bring the academy and the profession together to understand the journey from pre-law all the way through to practice."
Nikki Harris of the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada – Las Vegas explores best practices for advising law students about nontraditional appearance in a conservative legal field.
While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to building an orientation program, this article presents five best practices for designing an effective orientation.
When this author conducted a survey to discover how different student and employer perspectives of professionalism were, she was surprised by the results.
While we must focus the attention of students on deadlines, we also should emphasize students' development as responsible professionals separate from those dates.
Review of Making Work Work for You
Law school professional and career development departments are uniquely positioned to complement and support the mission of student bar associations.
Learn how one Canadian firm uses a simple, low-tech tool to help ensure summer students/associates get feedback throughout the summer.
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.
Attending the 2017 NALP Professional Development Institute (PDI) in Washington, DC, on November 30 and December 1 is a must! Programming at the PDI will feature many relevant educational sessions including two standout plenaries.
“Help! I have several public interest job offers and competing deadlines and I don’t know what to do!” We all have heard this frantic plea from a 1L or 2L who only weeks earlier was in despair they would not land a public interest job. What can we do as career professionals to assist with navigating these waters, but make sure they are the one steering the ship?
If you have been impressed with the actions of the students of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, over the last few months, you may be wondering if something is afoot with this new generation of young people — and there indeed is something unique about them. They are known as Generation Z or the iGeneration. They are “post-millennials” and, as defined by the US Department of Health and Human Services and Pew Research Services, are born (approximately) between the years 1997 through today. The first members of Gen Z will be hitting law schools this fall, so it is important to look at what we know (or think we know) about th...
What should law students do in response to the COVID-19 pandemic? Jecqueline Kepner and Jennifer Perrigo offer tips to stay calm and move forward.
NALP's Mary Beal reviews the impact of NALP events on the legal careers community over the years in celebration of NALP's 50th Anniversary in 2021.
UC Hastings Law’s Fairuz Abdullah and DueCourse founder Drew Amoroso explain why you may need to change how you view time in order to get the most out of online tools that help with scheduling and completing tasks.
There is incredible value in all of the concurrent educational sessions at PDI, but I want to highlight a few that are of particular interest to law school members.
school-side sessions at the Professional Development Institute (PDI)
What to expect from NALP’s 2020 Annual Education Conference, the largest yearly gathering of legal employment professionals.
Unlocking similarities and differences among various generations in the legal profession, including Baby Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial partners and associates.
Everyone agrees that mentoring programs can benefit law students and alumni, but how does a busy CSO tackle establishing or enhancing a mentoring program? This simple model can be a helpful guide.
Learn how one school is preparing students for success by including programming that cultivates self-awareness and teaches students how to manage stress.
By demystifying and encouraging networking and regularly checking in on a 1L's progress, a career counselor can help a 1L make meaningful professional connections.
These eight critical skills will mark the superior lawyer of the 21st century.
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.
Microaggressions, those subtle expressions of bias can be death by a thousand cuts. One option for responding to microaggressions that can be effective – particularly for those who do not enjoy confrontation – is to simply ask questions.
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.
Review of It's Who You Know: The Magic of Networking in Person or on the Internet
Tips for involving summer associates in a firm's professional development program.
A key take-away from one PDI plenary was that it's going to be more and more crucial for law firms to change their current recruiting models, and that firms need to collaborate on all aspects of legal education with the law schools from which they recruit.
In a more competitive legal market, law firm expectations of entry-level lawyers are changing.
While continuing to offer high-level professional development programming for legal employers, the 2013 Professional Development Institute will also offer sessions for law school members.
The new normal that panelists at the most recent Roundtable on the Future of Lawyer Hiring, Development, and Advancement see emerging involves more careful management, more purposeful action, more people in more dialogue about more decisions, more contingency planning, more thoughtful recruiting, and more work directly with law school CSO offices.
It’s a challenge we’ve all faced. We work to fill our career development office’s calendar with informative programming designed to help students learn more about practice areas, develop professional identities, and connect with practitioners and alumni. We advertise the programs and reach out to students, yet sometimes find ourselves struggling with lackluster attendance and wondering if there is another approach. I offer the following ideas for consideration if you too find yourself with a goal of increasing student engagement.
The 2017 Report from the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being as well as cultural shifts in the legal profession have prompted law firms and legal employers to commit to well-being initiatives. The issue is how to create an impactful and effective program. At the NALP/ALI CLE Professional Development Institute (PDI) in December, we heard confusion among participants about how to create buy-in, how to handle the realities of practice that are leading to increased stress and anxiety among associates, how to address mental health, how to handle alcohol at events, and much more. While this article can’t provide all of the answers, we hope to ...
Speakers at the 2019 Professional Development Institute (PDI) will focus on culture, diversity and inclusion.
PD professionals can play a key role in cultivating civility in the legal profession.
A one-day "Gathering" provided an opportunity for law schools to share lessons learned in running or teaching their professional development courses.
Here are some suggestions for guiding students on more professional and more effective use of email.
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.
Nutter Chief Talent and Equity Officer Kristin Leary shares three program highlights for PDI 2021, which takes place Dec. 2-3 in Washington, DC, returning to an in-person format after a virtual conference last year.
Through NALP's Public Service Section, a new reference is being developed outlining the provisions of each state's Student Practice Rule.
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.
Active participation in bar committees and community activities integrates law students into the legal community.
Step #1 is laying the foundations of professional development concepts for law students.
combining traditional and unconventional approaches to help students develop their professional identities
Developing leadership skills in law students and lawyers is critically important.
Externships allow students to engage in actual legal work, thus helping them become more practice ready.
Collaboration between CSOs and experiential learning programs can provide the practical learning opportunities that are especially important for students planning to pursue public service careers.
The most successful lawyers aren’t only “book smart,” but they also show high emotional intelligence. Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP’s Kendra Brodin explains why it matters.
Anne Sexton provides a brief overview of a new program at the University of Minnesota Law School and shares advice for others looking to implement similar programming.
University of Oregon School of Law’s Rebecca Ivanoff describes her perspective on NALP’s next 20 years as a relative newcomer to the legal profession, as part of NALP’s 50th Anniversary celebrations in 2021.
Analyzing decades of NALP Employment Report & Salary Survey data as part of NALP’s 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition Bulletin.
Georgetown University Law Center’s Sunita Iyer reflects on methods for helping law students prepare for on-campus interviews (OCI) held virtually.
Individual NALP members, and our institutions, grow, shape, mold, hire, and employ the people in this country charged with this duty. My friends, we staff the rule of law.
Here are some ways firms can develop a strategic brand-building plan that focuses on students at every stage of their law school career.
Students hear us say “network, network, network” so many times that the word may elicit an eye roll. Our challenge, then, is explaining why networking — or developing professional relationships — is so valuable and necessary to their legal careers.
Angela Sordi interviews Simon Margolis, a Disputes Associate at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Toronto, Canada, about the challenges that lawyers and law students with neurodiverse conditions face in the legal profession.
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.
Clara Solomon, currently serving on the NALP Board of Directors, and Lourdes Olvera-Marshall explain why international students belong in the DEI conversation that’s happening in the United States.
student professional development; professional development
The next five years will likely bring sweeping changes to the legal profession and to the ways law students and lawyers are prepared for that profession. What role will NALP members play in helping to shape that world?
The Etiquette Edge: The Unspoken Rules for Business Success by Beverly Langford and Building Career Connections: Networking Tools for Law Students and New Lawyers by Donna Gerson.
Law schools are beginning to explore new ways of better preparing students for the realities of practice.
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.
Here are a few of the ways law schools are modifying their curricula in response to feedback from employers.
The world of Hogwarts suggests that we may need to teach our summer associates and summer law students not only how to find mentors but also how to avoid "dementors."
Understanding these four different styles of adult learning can help you develop more effective presentations.
Discussion at the fifth Roundtable on the Future of Lawyer Hiring, Development, and Advancement made it clear that law schools, law firms, and other legal employers are changing in ways that are likely to be permanent.
Here's how one CSO launched a Non-Traditional Careers Track as part of its Professional Development Lecture Series class to provide business development programs for law students.
Networking is critical to getting a job in the tight-knit public interest community where most legal professionals know one another.
Law firms: What else should law schools be doing to prepare students for success?
Law student programs can provide safe and supportive environments for an authentic practice experience in how a legal professional works to get work.
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.
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...
What do new lawyers really need to know to be successful in practice? How can law schools create practice-ready graduates? How can law firm librarians help bridge any gaps during the onboarding process? What about new lawyers who land in small firms or other settings and don’t have the benefit of research assistance? Law librarians are the answer.
University of California Berkeley School of Law’s Terrence J. Galligan explores the history of NALP from the years 1990-2008 as part of the association’s 50th Anniversary celebration.
EsquireWell Founder and CEO Kendra Brodin defines compassion fatigue and gives legal professionals in law schools and firms strategies to improve their emotional, physical, and occupational well-being in their recruiting and professional development roles.
Law schools are increasingly offering students opportunities to earn both a JD and a second graduate degree, accelerating the time period that would be required to complete the two programs consecutively. At some schools, close to 15% of JD students pursue a dual or joint degree. The intended goals and potential benefits of dual degree programs are wide-ranging. Because of this, these programs create unique challenges for JD professional development professionals and joint degree students. However, if you advise joint degree students, you can use the following six essential building blocks to help your joint degree students assemble the targe...
When the Tri-State Minority Job Fair was eliminated in the Greater Cincinnati area, Keating Muething & Klekamp and the University of Cincinnati College of Law’s Center for Professional Development partnered to build the nation’s first and only law student diversity case competition.
School-side attendance of the Professional Development Institute has risen year after year. Here are some reasons for law school members to go to this year's PDI.
Husch Blackwell’s Carrie English shares tips for newcomers to the NALP Annual Education Conference in advance of the first in-person AEC in two years, set for April 2022 in New Orleans.
NALP's Professional Development Institute provides a golden opportunity to advance your career, make new connections, and improve your organization.
E-professionalism tips for students
The Carnegie Foundation's new report on educating lawyers suggests that law schools are effective in teaching students to think like lawyers but less successful in teaching expert practice and professionalism.
a new resource to help in teaching law student professional development
YLD involvement is mutually beneficial. When you invite YLD participation in career services programs, it helps to be able to market some of the many ways YLD can benefit.
From Finals to the Firm: The Top Ten Things New Law Firm Associates Should Know
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.
Two of the fundamental leadership development areas critical to public interest lawyers are communication skills and client/community outreach.
Three plenary sessions and six sets of concurrent sessions will be packed into the two-day 2010 Professional Development Institute (PDI) convening December 9-10 in Washington, DC. Offering high-level programming for experienced professional development administrators, the PDI is sponsored by NALP and ALI-ABA in collaboration with the Professional Development Consortium (PDC).
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.
We all know that feedback is useful, but Bill Henderson explains how he learned that well-structured feedback, if given to a highly motivated and receptive audience, can supercharge lawyer development.
These two questions can be important coaching tools to add to your toolkit.
One of the roadblocks frequently faced by law school pro bono coordinators is an abundance of students willing to participate but a shortage of attorneys willing to supervise. Faculty involvement can provide one of the answers.
Everyone benefits from "relay teams" formed by legal career professionals.
Here are some of the reasons law school professionals will find the programming at the 2011 Professional Development Institute valuable.
Most students in law school today know all about using the newest technology to reach their friends, but they don't always know how to use it appropriately to create a professional persona.
Listening for unspoken messages is an important skill for every young lawyer, but it can be an even bigger issue for diverse associates. PD professionals and career services advisors can help new lawyers learn to listen for the silent messages.
Check-ins, reflection exercises, mentorship, coaching, and assessments are among the tools available to help with professional identity formation.
For more than 50 years, NALP has supported an exceptional network of legal career professionals from law schools and law firms in a culture of unyielding congeniality.
How can law school career offices effectively measure the effectiveness of their programming? While offering robust and innovative programming sounds great, how do we measure its impact?
Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law’s Kiva Zytnick shares ideas about how to promote pro bono work in law schools.
Freda Coleman-Jackson describes how legal career advisors can use the IRAC method to help ease law students’ anxiety around the job search process.
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.
Training geared toward summer associates is unique in its capacity to indirectly achieve a number of ancillary but important goals.
William & Mary’s first, university-wide, professional development day included a session, about confidence and vulnerability that resonated with me. I now ask my students, what advice would they give to their younger selves?
William & Mary Law School’s Moriah Berger Allen reviews the book by 2021 NALP Annual Education Conference speaker Haben Girma, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law.
book review; law student professional development; lawyer professional development
DU's program offers one model for providing the basic skills to assist the new graduate in successfully transitioning from student to beginning a new law practice.
Career professionals who are feeling burned out after the fall season, might consider ideas on this "career cuisine nouvelle" menu.
The University of Toronto has responded to the new economic reality by adding networking components to most of their student programs.
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 just a few suggestions for ways to create or promote different types of in-person networking opportunities for students.
Technology, the economy, and additional factors are giving rise to new career models within law firms and other organizations. A new resource guide addresses the implications for NALP members and their constituencies.
Content for law school professional development professionals at the upcoming Professional Development Institute 2017.
Innovating is hard work, and it’s especially hard in a profession known more for adherin¬g to precedent than finding a new way forward. But we all know that ten years from now, the industry is likely to look very different than it does now. There’s no question that the delivery of legal services — delivered by some mix of humans and machines — will look different than it does now. And my best guess is that everything associated with the industry, including most of the roles that NALP members now fill, will also be different. How do we have an impact on what that future looks like? How do we help shape that future proactively rather than simpl...
One of the most important steps in building a legal career is passing the bar exam. Increased focus on outcomes, along with the ABA’s increased focus on calculating bar success among first time takers, comes at a time of decreasing bar passage rates. While more students today are looking at JD Advantage careers, bar passage still matters, given that a significant majority of all JD graduates land in positions that require bar passage. Law schools are increasingly taking an active role in bar preparation. Three types of programs are becoming common.
Programs we present annually can get stale or outdated, so we are always looking for ways to breathe life into old programs to increase attendance and participation. Here are some ways to do so by using different themes, reevaluating your content and format, and injecting technology into your 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.
From law students and summer associates exploring career paths, to firm lawyers who need training and access to future opportunities, to firm alumni who have left but want to enhance their professional network, integrating a firm’s law student and lawyer populations creates a community that benefits its members and the firm.
As a CSO advisor, I realized how advantageous it would be for both CSO professionals and law students to embrace legal podcasts as a versatile career development learning tool — especially since, as CSO professionals are all too aware, it is challenging to convince students to attend live professional development programs. We all hear the familiar excuses that students are too busy or overwhelmed to attend programs. Further, CSO advisors sometimes experience challenges in recruiting speakers for live events. For both of these reasons, legal podcasts can prove useful as a supplemental professional development resource for both law students and...
Tips for new attendees to NALP's largest conference of the year, the Annual Education Conference.
Whether you are new to the field or a seasoned professional, the Professional Development Institute occurring December 3-4 in Washington, DC, has something for you!
Three C-Suite leaders share their insights and perspectives on the legal industry — what’s changing, what’s challenging, and where things are headed.
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.
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
Review of The Lawyer's Guide to Mentoring, Being an Effective Mentor, Working with a Mentor, and Be Your Own Mentor: Strategies from Top Women on the Secrets of Success
Review of The First Five Minutes: How to Make a Great Impression in Any Business Situation
It turns out that building resilience is a process, and that resilience is a quality that can be developed.
How can you modernize your law school's mentoring program to meet the needs and interests to your students and mentors alike? Here are ten tips.
Second-language skills are becoming increasingly important in today's legal market, and some law schools are looking at ways to help their students acquire these skills.
Faculty "Practice Groups" are facilitating more frequent and substantive one-on-one interactions between faculty and students at American University Washington College of Law.
The NALP Law Student Professional Development Section presents an excerpt from a forthcoming E-Guide entitled "From Law Student to Lawyer: The E-Guide to E-Professionalism," to be available on NALP's website this fall.
At Wake Forest Law, we teach professional development as a one-credit, year-long class required for all 1Ls. This academic year marks the sixth year the course has been a component of the foundational 1L curriculum. As I reflect on the past five years of teaching, several crucial lessons come to mind. In particular, we have learned a lot about structure, expectations, and defining success. I hope that my sharing of these lessons will help us to continue to engage in the important discussion of the value of integrating professional development into the law school curriculum and of the need to view the work of career services as part of the edu...
On November 29, 2018, more than 400 professionals from across the country gathered for the 2018 Professional Development Institute (PDI) sponsored by NALP and ALI CLE in cooperation with the Professional Development Consortium. The two-day conference, held at the Mandarin Oriental in Washington, DC, featured seminars, panel discussions, and interactive dialog, including two plenary programs and an array of 33 concurrent sessions. Sessions addressed topics such as best practices in mid-level training, innovative approaches to associate feedback, law firm coaching, and diversity and leadership training.
If you are a recruiter, you are probably accustomed to seeing students who have already secured post-graduate clerkships interview at your firm during the recruiting season. Did you notice a drop in that trend last summer? The reason is the new federal law clerk hiring plan. This article outlines the plan, its potential impact on law firms, and suggestions for moving forward.
Taking a multi-pronged approach to training women legal associates can help encourage them to stay and give them the tools and resources to advance in their careers.
Tips for NALP’s 2020 Annual Education Conference (AEC) April 28-May 1 in Montreal, including conference hotels, plenary speakers, and can’t miss things to do, eat and see around the city.
McGuireWoods’ Stephanie Felder offers ideas on how to maximize training and professional development on a shoestring budget and during uncertain times.
How to Launch Your Career as a Law Student Support Professional
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.
Attending the 2018 NALP/ALI CLE Professional Development Institute (PDI) on Thursday, November 29 and Friday, November 30, 2018, in Washington, DC, is a perfect opportunity to expand your skill set, learn about new, innovative PD initiatives, and develop a strategic and holistic approach for implementing those new initiatives. Whether you are a law school or law firm PD professional, you don’t want to miss this conference.
Professor Hamilton outlines the stages through which law students begin to take charge of their own career development and calls for faculty and staff to work together as co-educators to create a curriculum that helps students grow toward internalized, proactive control over their own professional development.
What PD skills and training do employers most want to see in the associates they hire, and how can law schools best communicate the types of training they provide?
Paul Marchegiani writes, "Law students and clients find the Performance Ladder framework useful because it honors verbal precision, logical structure, and clarity, while putting these essential qualities in their broader context, all without sacrificing individual expression and client service."
Fordham Law School’s Linda Sugin explains the benefits of establishing and constantly improving peer mentorship programs to support law school students.
For professional development professionals, this isn’t a soft sentiment; it’s a strategic imperative. Creating a culture of mattering can transform a firm’s talent pipeline, improve retention, and unlock discretionary effort that money alone can’t buy.
Career offices can play an important role in providing leadership training to student groups -- to the benefit of both students and career offices.
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.
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!
Sharing these ten interview strategies will benefit almost every law student.
Here are a few suggestions to help students for whom networking is difficult.
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.
Use these tips this summer to help summer associates start the pro bono habit early.
As part of its new Inns of Court program, The George Washington University Law School is partnering in a novel and innovative way with legal employers.
There seems to be a clear trend toward requiring professional development programming in law schools, but the shape that programming takes varies from school to school, as these survey findings indicate.
These tips can help 1Ls avoid common pitfalls.
In creating the agenda for the 2018 Pro¬fessional Development Institute (PDI), the Planning Team’s mandate was to assemble a broad array of topics and speakers that address the most pressing issues facing those of us who specialize in legal pro-fessional development. Speaking as one member of the planning team, I believe that we have more than succeeded in doing so. For example, among the 30-plus concurrent sessions are the following topics: creating a culture of compassion to foster lawyer and law student well-being; sponsoring wom¬en and lawyers of color in the wake of the #MeToo movement; and utilizing coaching to help lawyers thrive in th...
As career counselors, we believe the most challenging group of students we work with are those still seeking post-JD job opportunities in their final year of law school. These students are often suffering from job search fatigue or burnout, which can manifest itself in various ways, including denial, anxiety, low self-esteem, and physical and emotional exhaustion. The steps outlined below can help motivate and reenergize these students by shifting their focus away from what they can’t control and toward what they can.
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.
NALP is kicking off the celebration of its 50th Anniversary in April 2020, leading to a year-long celebration culminating in the 2021 Annual Education Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz.
What types of professional development do employers most want to see take place in law school?
How can law firms best identify candidates with growth mindsets?
McDowell Hetherington’s Amy Hancock details a new series of student tips videos on www.nalp.org from the Developing the Professional Lawyer Work Group
Graduates with joint degrees often bring stronger management training, as well as different perspectives, to their employers.
Gracefully negotiating a room full of strangers can be daunting for a seasoned attorney, let alone a law student. If you can remove some of their fears with through preparation, you are more likely to have schmooze-ready students.
Each student comes to law school with a different life experience and perception of the legal profession and the professional world in general. With a growing number of first-generation law students, this is becoming increasingly true.
The Law Student Professional Development Section is for NALP members with an interest in or responsibility for educating law students about expectations of professionalism in the legal profession.
A series of "tips" videos for students as they start their job searches and prepare to enter the work force. These interactive e-learning modules are a simple, engaging way to help students focus on some of the core elements of professionalism.
This article begins a professional development dialogue between law schools and legal employers.
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.
Implementing an effective training program to ensure the 2Ls you employ meet certain core competencies by summer's end is one surefire way to add more substance to your summer program and build skills in future associates.
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.
Addressing professional development issues from law school through retirement. . . step 2: building momentum and sustaining success.
Here are some tips for conveying tips on professional attire to law students and recent hires.
Here are a few tips on how to help a practitioner develop and present a meaningful program to law students.
Learn how one school has added creative programming to develop leadership skills in its law students.
Developing a personal brand lets you manage the impact you have on people and improve your confidence.
Here are some actionable steps PD professionals can take to ignite the levels of motivation needed to get students and associates more deeply engaged in their own learning and development.
Preparation and follow-through are critical for law students getting ready for their experiential opportunities, whether externships, work placements, summer positions, or articling roles.
Innovation is happening in the legal profession, albeit slowly.
We all remember our failures more vividly than our successes, of course, but they are related. The common thread is whether we connected with the interviewer. The human element, the spark, provides the connection, which makes the interviewer want to give you the job. Making sure our students are able to create that spark is part of our job, and it can be tough. How can we teach them to have that connection with the interviewer?
To address these concerns and to build a more effective program, a CSO tasked with running the PD program should consider a holistic approach that involves the entire law school community (and beyond). Below, we discuss six constituencies whose cooperation and involvement can help your CSO-led PD program flourish.
Earlier this year, the NALP Board of Directors voted to make PD Quarterly a member benefit for all NALP members.
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.
Volunteer internships can be beneficial to employers and students — unless they’re illegal. Unfortunately, the dividing line between proper and improper volunteer internships has changed and is now somewhat fuzzy. How should we assist students and employers in navigating this issue?
Starting a new role in the professional development, recruitment and/or associate/student programs space at a law firm can be daunting, especially if you are transitioning from a legal position or entering from a different field. This article includes some helpful pointers as you step into your new role.
This article examines Stoicism as a way for lawyers to develop a virtuous character. It is meant to be practiced over time, with a virtuous character as the goal. Even if the ideal state is never achieved, Stoicism offers one path toward that goal.
Villanova Charles Widger School of Law’s Sharon Buckingham reflects on the importance of volunteering for professional development as part of a recap for the 2021 NALP PSJD Public Service Mini-Conference in December 2021.
What legal volunteers learn as they teach. As the legal profession continues to evolve, so too have professional development opportunities. Law firms and corporate legal departments are moving beyond traditional training models, embracing new approaches that align with the shifting needs of both the legal industry and its workforce. For legal professionals accustomed to precision and complexity, the structure of teaching—lesson planning, co-facilitation, real-time instruction, and classroom management—can be a surprising challenge. Yet, it is precisely this challenge that can drive professional growth.
