It’s All In the Follow Through (or, Up) – Follow Up Your Job Search Letters
In grade school we were all taught that following through is critical in most sports: basketball, volleyball, baseball, etc. I never seemed to learn that lesson, or at least I never put it into practice with sports. Consequently, to this day, I stink at anything that involves a ball.
Importantly, the follow through lesson applies to all areas of our lives. As Jim explains over at the Blueprint for Financial Prosperity, following up is important when dealing with companies as well.
This principle applies to law firms too, especially when conducting a job search. If you send a targeted mailing to firms and never follow up with a phone call, two things are likely to happen. First, your resume might get lost in the sea of resumes that sits in a corner of someone’s office. Second, the firm might decide that you were not that interested in them and simply disregard your resume completely.
If you follow up with a phone call, neither of these outcomes can happen. By calling the firms that you mail your resume to, you are showing that you are genuinely interested in working with them and you remind them to pull your resume out of the stack, if only for the minute that you are on the phone. Isn’t it worth your time to make this call and ensure that your resume is on their radar screen?
Do you have any experiences with following up your mailings to law firms? If so, please post a comment or drop me a line.
[tags]legal andrew, job search, law firm, resume, cover letter, follow up[/tags]
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Getting People to See Your Way – Follow-Up Thoughts
Hopefully you got the chance to read my recent post about getting your client or interviewer to see things your way, which was a continuation of Open Loops’ article on How to Deal With An Irate Person. If you missed these posts, please do yourself a favor and take time to read them (this post continues their theme).
I wanted to take a minute to share two different success stories with you, regarding the “synchronization” or “pace and lead” technique of conversation.
Reader Feedback!
First, a reader emailed this great story to me:
I found it easier to follow through if you manage to maintain eye-contact with the person whom you wish to imitate. I was testing it, I guess, on my tutor and then on some people I met fresh at a party. It’s a bit intense to keep eye-contact as consistently as that, but your article was quite accurate; they didn’t seem to notice, in fact they seemed to enjoy the attention. Then, since they’re relatively content in the conversation, you can start to take more of a dominant role. I have to thank you for the link, as it seemed to have worked and I am not usually the dominant persona in conversations.
As you can tell from his experience, merely keeping close eye contact improves your conversational ability dramatically. However, when you add to it the desire to synchronize with the person (friend at party, client, interviewer), you soon obtain the ability to lead the person where you want them to go. Maybe this is helping them to calm down or simply get to know you and become friends. Regardless, the awesome techniques in How to make people like you in 90 seconds or less will help you out.
Trying It Myself
Second, I had a good experience using the synchronization technique during some recent interviews. As the reader points out, above, it is intense at first to try to synchronize with someone. However, if you simply relax and try to be like the other person, you will fall into harmony with each other. I tried this in a couple interviews, and I was amazed at how relaxed I became and how quickly the interviews sped by. Before I knew it, we were discussing things from back home just like we were old friends. In a way, we were: we synchronized!
What About You?
If you don’t believe me about this, try it for yourself. Read the book and then put it into action. You will be amazed. I promise!
Have you had a synchronization experience? Whether it was good or maybe left something to be desired, we want to hear about it. Please post a comment or drop me a line.
[tags]legal andrew, how to make people like you in 90 seconds or less, nicholas boothman, pace and lead, synchronize[/tags]
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Ideas for a Lawyer Unconference
Grant Griffiths over at Home Office Lawyer is working on an awesome idea: an unconference for lawyers (definition of “unconference”). He is soliciting ideas to help get the ball rolling, especially regarding speakers to have, how much people would be willing to pay, and if people would come even if it does not count as CLE. So head on over to Grant’s blog and give him your feedback; the whole legal community will appreciate it.
Here’s my two cents on this idea: it sounds awesome. I’m still a lowly law student, but I am interested in the prospect of someday have a home-based practice. It would be incredible to allow people such as myself to attend the unconference to learn about this different method of practicing law. Perhaps the unevent could help to foster learning about the career-style and bring the idea of home-practice to more lawyers and law students.
The big problem I see with law students coming, though, is the cost of getting there and paying to help cover unconference costs. Perhaps students could have a slightly cut rate to help make it more possible to attend.
What do you think about the unconference for lawyers idea? Normally I solicit comments here, but I really want to help Grant out, so please head over to his post and provide your feedback. If you want to contact me directly, feel free to comment here or drop me a line.
[tags]legal andrew, unconference, conference, lawyer, law student[/tags]
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Make Money With These Small Law Firm Job Search Tips
Are you looking toward small firm life after law school? Does your career services office focus on large firms? Here are some tips to jump start your job search.
Know What You Want
The key to any successful job search is to know your target job. After all, how can you find something, if you don’t know what you are looking for? Thus, you should assess your life goals, your personality, and your interests, and decide whether small firm life is good for you. One great blog on this subject is Small Firm Life by Ray Dowd.
Grasp the Timeline
If you are a person who loves to have a well-defined timeline to work with, small firm hiring will be a thorn in your side. While large firms have a fairly set timeline, small firms cannot normally predict their needs very far in advance. Thus, the timeline is not as well-defined.
Generally, small firms being to know their needs in the spring (for people starting that fall). I have also learned that it is not uncommon for small firms to still be giving offers as late as May. The key: be patient.
Research Is Our Friend
Two great resources for learning about small firms are Martindale-Hubbell and the West Legal Directory (also accessible via Westlaw. These give you a broad overview of firms, but not much detail about their actual practices. Thus, you will need to do some actual research on the ground.
Networks Are Not Just For Computers
If you are like me, you are probably timid, especially when it comes to meeting new people. In this instance, you need to break out of your shell and network.
Many small firm jobs are unadvertised, and if you do not have connections to firms, you might be out of the running for the otherwise perfect job. Knowing the right person might not get you the job, but it can help you know about the job. The rest is up to you and your resume.
Contacts for Networking Abound
Yes, networking is difficult. But you can do it. A couple good places to start are alumni of your law school and undergraduate university. Also try professors, relatives, and family friends. At this point, the key is to make contacts, learn from people, understand the job market, and let people know about you. People like to help others, if you just give them the chance.
Never, Never, Never, Ever Give Up
There are tons of small law firms in this world. Even if a few are not hiring, many others will be. Even if a firm is not hiring in October, their needs might change by March. If you keep working (and networking), someone will hire you. After all, you’re going to a great lawyer, right?
Further Reading
Do you have any tips for the small law firm job search? Please share them; post a comment or drop me a line.
[tags]legal andrew, law firm, job search, jobs, career, networking[/tags]
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Improve Public Speaking By Warming Up Properly
There is a good post over at Blargy that provides some good tips on being a great public speaker. The author does a great job of explaining some of the fundamentals to public speaking. I thought a small addition to this list might be helpful: tips on warming up.
First, let me throw in the caveat that I am not an expert by any means. However, I have done a fair amount of reading on this subject, and I have done my share of speaking. That does not make me an expert, it just makes me less of a newbie.
Second, remember that public speaking skills are useful for everyone. Attorneys need them even if you never step foot in a courtroom. How many presentations might you do before clients, fellow attorneys, or just friends? Wouldn’t you like to do a better job in all of these instances?
Warm Up and Relax Your Body
One key to speaking is to remember that your body supports everything that you will be doing in front of your audience. Thus, you must remember to relax your body and be properly warmed up.
In my opinion, the easiest way to do this is just to do a few basic stretches. Then think about tension that you may have stored up, and relax all of your muscles.
One handy exercise is to do “the rag doll”. Simply stand up and then let your torso bend at the waist and let all of your muscles go, so you are literally hanging down to the ground (but your legs are still straight, but not tensed). Then slowly start standing up, one vertebrae at a time. Try to take as long as you can doing this, until you are finally working your way up your neck, making sure your head is hanging down until the very end. At this point, you should be standing straight up, but in a comfortable position. Try repeating this exercise and doing it even slower.
Breathe
The next step is to open your lungs up and breathe using your entire chest cavity. This is simply a deep breathing exercise.
Place your hand on your stomach, exhale, and then slowly fill your lungs with air. Make sure you feel your hand moving, or you are not breathing deeply enough. Then slowly exhale and repeat. Try this a few times, until you feel air filling your entire chest.
Vocal Exercises
Finally, warm up your voice. See, only part of the art of warming up even deals with your voice. If you aren’t relaxed and breathing properly, nothing you do for your voice will even matter.
You want to warm up your vocal chords, so you get a nice, rich sound when you speak. This can be done by simply making a variety of different sounds in your mouth. Basically, you will be humming different sounds: zzzzz, mmmmm, aaaaa, oooooo, uuuuu, tttttt, sssss, etc. Think of as many different types of sounds and pitches as you can, and hum each one for a few seconds. You should feel different parts of your mouth and face vibrate and quite literally become warm.
For the warm up finale, do some simple vocal exercises. When doing these, focus on annunciating properly and making sure each and every syllable can be heard and understood. This warms up your voice, but also helps you to focus on speaking clearly. There is a good list of exercises for this at GreatVoice.
Knock ‘Em Dead
You’re ready to go! You should feel relaxed, warmed up, and ready to speak with a rich, deep voice. The beauty of most of these exercises (except the rag doll) is that you can do them in the car on the way to your speaking engagement (or interview). See, there is no excuse for not warming up.
Do you have any speaking warm-up tips? If so, please post a comment or drop me a line to share them with us.
[tags]legal andrew, speaking, warm up, voice, vocal, breathe[/tags]
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Being Content, but Then Climbing Out
At times during everyone’s life (and especially our professional lives), things can look bleak. Perhaps your job prospects post-graduation from law school are uncertain. Maybe you are up for partner in a couple years, but you are nervous that you will not make. Just maybe your situation is far worse for some reason.
The good news it that Dawn at Frugal for Life has a great post on Contentment and Breaking Free. The key, she explains, is that when you hit a low-point, you have to accept where you are, but then start climbing up. In her own words:
Call it ‘hitting bottom’ or ‘survival mode’, but it is where people get to when a bad habit has taken them to destroying themselves. It is at that point they accept where they are and start the long, slow journey and getting themselves out of it, all the while, starting new habits. Nothing will change in a life of bad habits if we don’t use our emotions to kick start the change, find contentment or acceptance and then change our mindset to break loose and expand our horizons.
This applies to every area of life, be it your career, your personal life, debt, or anything else. Sometimes hitting the bottom can be the best thing that happens to you. It is then that you realize where you are, and once you understand your surroundings, you can begin the journey to where you want to be.
Do you have any experience with this kind-of situation that you would like to share? Please post a comment or drop me a line.
[tags]legal andrew, frugal for life, survival mode, hitting bottom[/tags]
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Get Your Client/Interviewer to See Things Your Way
I’m sure that everyone has come across times when had to deal with someone who was being irate. Or perhaps you have been in a meeting with a client who would not see things in the appropriate light. Or maybe you were in an interview and just could not click with the interviewer.
Open Loops has a great post that helps you understand how to deal with these situations (and so many more). From their article, How to Deal With An Irate Person:
A better approach is called “Pace and Lead”. The first step is to match the complainant’s emotional intensity. This is not agreeing with the person. This is simply responding with the same emotions that are being presented.
The article goes on to explain that you then “Lead” the person to a calm state (or to the point-of-view you want him to see). This allows you to get in tune with the other person and bring them around to your level (hopefully a calm one).
Interestingly, Nicholas Boothman, in How to make people like you in 90 seconds or less
I’m sure that once this is mastered, it can be applied in many situations. Has synchronizing or pace & lead helped you out of a pinch? Please post a comment or drop me a line to share with us.
[tags]legal andrew, how to make people like you in 90 seconds or less, nicholas boothman, pace and lead, synchronize[/tags]
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Everyone can be a Successful Networker in the Legal World
Why is it that something so important, like networking, is so intimidating? Perhaps it is our fear of failure. Most likely the fear of new territory figures in as well.
However, no matter how scary networking might be, it is essential to all careers, especially being a lawyer.
Over the past week, I have had two successful, but different, networking encounters. One entailed meeting an attorney in person and volunteering to help him with some pro bono work. The other involved “cold” contacting an attorney in another state via email and speaking with him over the phone.
I think the key to success in both instances was something that Chris Brogan wrote about over at Lifehack.org:
Keep things brief and uncomplicated
… give someone the easiest possible way to understand what it is you do, and what you’re looking for, and then let THEM decide if it’s worth talking with you further.
In both examples, I tried to put my best foot forward, explained who I was and where I was heading, and tried to learn more about the attorney with whom I was conversing. Thus, I was able to learn from each attorney and make two new contacts.
What now, you may ask? I will be sending a formal thank you note (in the mail) to the attorney that I spoke to over the phone. For the other attorney, I will begin working on his pro bono case in about a week (according to the time line he set).
Keep it simple; be yourself (professionally).
Please post a comment or drop me a line if you have any networking successes or tips to share with us.
[tags]legal andrew, networking, network[/tags]
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Digital File Management for Lawyers and Individuals
I have blogged many times about using technology to simplify your life. In fact, I have talked about using a digital file system instead of paper. This post at Rob Witham’s website really renewed my interest in the prospect of going all digital and not keeping papers hanging around. In Rob’s own words:
Convert your paper filing cabinet to a digital filing cabinet. Scanning and saving records digitally saves space and makes it easier to retrieve documents. I converted to a paperless, digital system two years ago and have never regretted it. I burn an archive disc periodically for backup storage and periodically delete archived files from my hard drive to minimize security risks. Modern desktop search utilities may be freely downloaded to speed searching for archived files as well.
Rob has some other good tips in this article, but I am particularly intrigued by this concept. It seems that other people are doing this digital scanning & storage as well.
The hard thing to accomplish with this system would be to actually get your files scanned in. This might be difficult if you have lots of incoming documents. For a law firm, I would think it would be especially time consuming.
More importantly, there might be reasons why lawyers need to keep the original papers. For example, you would not want to throw away the original signed papers for a contract or a client’s estate plans. Thus, the time spent in scanning documents would be added to the time already spent in filing them the traditional way.
With that said, there are presumably benefits to digital filing system. As Rob points out, it greatly simplifies the search and retrieval process. Copies of all documents would be available from your computer. If you have a secure method of access, you could even pull up documents away from the office – for example, at home, in your hotel room, or at a client’s office.
Another big benefit to a digital system is that everyone who needs a certain document can access a copy at any time. You don’t have to send a firm-wide email, hunting for the Smith file.
In the end, it seems like a digital filing system might be good for two different groups. Large firms, who have lots of lawyers and assistants, multiple offices, and extensive travel requirements would obviously benefit from flexible document retrieval. On the flip side, individuals, who most likely do not need the original paper version of last month’s cable bill, would benefit (if they can buy a quick-and-easy scanner).
It seems that small firms largely get left out of the digital filing game. They need to keep original paper documents on file, but they don’t need as flexible access to them. Thus, the benefits of scanning documents might not justify the cost for smaller firms.
Do you have experience with digital file management, either at home or work? Please post a comment or drop me a line to fill us in on your experience.
[tags]legal andrew, digital files, digital file management, file management[/tags]
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Top 11: Ways to Be Productive in Class During Your Third Year of Law School
This is the first in what I plan to be a series: Top 11 Lists. Why 11? Here’s a better question: why 10? No good reason, right? Well, 11’s a prime number, and they’re just cool. Plus, 11 allows me to one-up most other “top” lists.
11. Make travel arrangements for your clerkship interviews
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Everybody needs a way to travel cheaply for clerkship interviews, and Farecast provides it. Simply enter your departure and destination cities and dates, and Farecast will tell you whether you should purchase your plane ticket now or wait for a lower rate.
10. Monitor clerkship selections via the clerkship blog
While planning your interview trip, stay up-to-date on clerkship news with The Clerkship Notification Blog. The blog has a section for every federal circuit, as well as all fifty states. Post your thoughts, questions, and comments, while monitoring what other people have to say.
9. Register for the Multi-State Professional Responsibility Exam
If you’re planning to practice in a state that requires the MPRE, you can check out info at the MPRE’s Website. You can even register online.
8. Order books for bar exam review
It’s allegedly insane to not take a bar review course before the most important exam in your career. You can learn about most bar review programs online (like BAR/BRI). If you’re lucky, you might also be able to find used review books online. I know that in Texas, Half Price Books has a wide selection of used bar exam books.
7. Earn points for free stuff from Westlaw and LexisNexis
Everybody likes things for free! Why not log into your Westlaw or LexisNexis and earn some points? Points = money = free stuff. What gets better than that? Personally, I think Lexis’ catalog is much better than Westlaw’s, but I did get an iPod Nano from Westlaw. They also have a decent selection of DVDs.
6. Read legal publications, like Blawg Review
There are tons of great legal websites and blogs to peruse. One great example is the carnival of law bloggers: Blawg Review. It’s a weekly snapshot of what’s going on in the world of law bloggers (or, the blawgosphere).
5. Search for a house to move into post-graduation
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One thing you’ll need to think about after graduation is where you’re going to live. With that spiffy new salary you’ll start getting, why not buy a house? Of course, you can start searching on Realtor.com, but once you narrow down the choices, be sure to check out neighboring homes at Zillow. This site lets you see what neighbor’s homes (and the home you’re eying) have sold for.
4. Plan your investment strategy for your lawyer’s salary
Also with your newfound wealth, you will finally have money to invest. If you’re like me, you have no clue where to begin. Fortunately, Ramit at I will Teach You to be Rich has loads of advice for young, future-professionals like yourself. Be sure to start learning early, so when the paychecks start arriving you’ll be ready to put your plans in action. The earlier you start, the better compound interest will work in your favor.
3. Learn how to get things done with “getting things done”
Ok, I had to put something that is actually productive in here. If you don’t know about GTD, it’s time to learn. What better time than the Corporations class that you care nothing about during your third year? Here’s your starting page for this awesome productivity system: the GTD primer.
2. Increase your knowledge of current events with Digg Swarm
Everyone knows all about Digg. But have you checked out Digg’s feature called “Swarm“? It turns current events into a game. Articles that people are digging pop up on your scream and run around, linking to each other with categories. If you don’t like an article, you “kill” it. It’s pretty nifty, and a good way to kill a few minutes, while maybe learning something in the process.
1. Write a blog post
Enough said.
Do you have things that 3L’s can do to be productive in class? Post a comment or drop me a line to let us know!
[tags]legal andrew, zillow, digg swarm, swarm, gtd, 43folders, blawg-review, westlaw, lexisnexis, lexis, bar-bri, mpre, farecast[/tags]
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About Andrew Flusche
Lawyer, bicyclist, husband.
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