Breaking the Chain to Build New Links: Informational Interviews

Note: If you are anything like me, you have never approached networking or self promotion in a systematic way.  In fact, you may be terrified of it.  Yet, our ability to network and self promote is essential for building a client base, building our own name, and building our careers.  Each month I’m going to tackle one strategy for networking or self promotion in an effort to help all of us break the chains we’ve put around ourselves and begin building new links.  If you have a topic you’d like covered, e-mail me at chainstolinks@gmail.com.

We’re now in the throes of 1L recruiting season and with the economy still recovering, many lawyers and upper class law students are still hunting for jobs as well.  Since utilizing and building your network is one of the best ways to get a leg up in the job hunt, I thought I would use this month to cover a networking tool that I have failed to use myself: The Informational Interview.  I want to thank Irene Reed, Senior Associate Director at the Center for Career Strategy and Advancement at Northwestern Law, and Jane Pigott, Managing Director of R3 Group LLC for their willingness to offer their expertise.  

What is an Informational Interview?

An informational interview is a tool that allows you to learn more about an industry, a practice area (e.g. litigation, corporate, employment, etc.), or a type of practice (e.g. small firm, large firm, public interest, government).  The goal in an informational interview is (shockingly!) to get information and to learn something new.  In contrast to a job interview, you should be asking most of the questions and the person you are speaking to should be giving most of the answers.  Informational interviews are often shorter than a typical job interview.  Twenty minutes is the amount of time most professionals will tell you to expect to spend with your contact.    

What purposes do Informational Interviews Serve?

Informational interviews are first and foremost a tool to learn but they can also be great networking tools.  Ask your contact if they know other people you should talk to.  If you’ve spoken to an attorney at a firm but you are also interested in what similar work might be like if you worked for the government or in house or a public interest organization, ask your contact if they know people who might be willing to talk to you.  They almost certainly will! 

Informational interviews are good job-hunting tools as well.  Jane suggested that, “Especially in this market, networking is a very critical part of finding a job.  You are more likely to find something through talking to people (and expanding your network) than you are from applying online to 200 places.” Using informational interviews as a job hunting tool is an accepted practice but does take some finesse.  (See below re: big mistakes!)

The Cravath Model Is Failing - Nothing New to the Bottom 80.

According to Professor William Henderson, Indiana University School of Law, and a study from Bell Laboratories, top performing associate attorneys can "evaluate problems from the viewpoint of customers and manager," take initiative, rely on more experienced coworkers, and build consensus.  The study then goes on to further that these skills do not necessarily correspond to law school class rank.  In fact, "researchers found no relationship between [attorney] performance and various social, psychological, and cognitive abilities.  http://www.abajournal.com/weekly/cravath_model_that_created_have_and_have_not_law_grads_could_implode

The ability for lower-ranking law students to become high-performing attorneys may be news to big law firms, but for those of us in the lower eighty percent, it's what we rely on every time we check our grades.  This is also what clients unwilling or unable to pay the six-figure salaries awarded to associates at big firms rely upon in all of their legal endeavors.    I have spent this summer clerking in a seven-attorney law firm in a county which bridges the gap between rural and suburban, hardly a Sidley or a Shook, Hardy, and Bacon (neither of which would have granted a student like myself - somwhere around the top third mark - an interview).  In this firm and in similar firms in the area I have observed some of the most talented attorneys practice their craft.  I have seen them succeed in cases against those big firms that may have passed on these small-town attorneys' resumes years ago and that passed on mine last fall.  Class rank is not the only marker of a lawyer's ability.  It is about time firms realized it.

Interviews with Fatima Goss Graves and Jill Morrison, Senior Counsel at the National Women's Law Center

The National Women's Law Center has started a weekly series interviewing bloggers at Womenstake, their blog. Most recently they interviewed Fatima Goss Graves, Senior Counsel with NWLC. She works for greater gender equality in education, through litigation, drafting legislative policy, and public education. Highlights...

I come from a long legacy of civil rights activists. My father and aunt were the named plaintiffs in a significant post-Brown Supreme Court ruling that desegregated schools in Knoxville, Tennessee, during the height of the civil rights movement.

...

Q: Over the years, the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement have coincided and sometimes clashed. As a woman of color, do you ever feel torn between your loyalties as an African-American and as a feminist?

[T]hese are movements that have benefited from and fostered each other. And these movements continue to work in strong coalitions together; I work with many civil rights organizations on a regular basis and our work often overlaps.

That said ... feminists have to ensure that their advocacy takes the needs of all women into account, not just white women.

Previously Womenstake interviewed Jill Morrison, another Senior Counsel at NWLC. She litigates and drafts policy to ensure access to health care. If you are interested in nonprofit, public interest legal careers or looking for a dose of inspiration, the series looks like something to check on Fridays!

Interview Advice: What not to talk about

There are plenty of things that you should talk about on a job interview: your qualifications, your experience, your good grades if you have them, law review, etc.

How about the things you shouldn't talk about? There are a lot of things that will highlight your inexperience or put up a wall between you and the interviewer. The bad news: you might not even be aware of them. Without encouraging that you try to hide who you really are or try to be somebody that you aren't, here is a start to a list of things you should leave out of your interview conversations in order to avoid leaving a bad impression or alienating your interviewer...