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!)

Running from the Law

If you have any desire to run a marathon, complete a triathlon, take sword-swallowing or firewalking lessons, or participate in any other activity you find challenging or completely terrifying but think would be kind of cool, the best time to do it is when you are in your first year of law school. This is because, during your first year, there is no activity that is worse than law school.

My first year of law school, running was usually the best part of my day.  It was my only chance for fresh air, personal space, and time to think about something, anything, that wasn’t the law.  It was an opportunity to feel alive. A chance to feel something other than frustrated or confused. 

A lot of people will argue that during your first year, your priority should be your grades and your academics, and what little time you have left over should go into sleeping or focusing on your family. They will say that first year is not the time to start an exercise habit, and that if you let your exercise habit slip, that's okay, because you're a 1L and things will get better. 1Ls tell each other this as well.  They say that next year, they will be healthy again. The problem with this mentality is that it assumes that second year, or third year, will be easier. And this is the hard truth about law school that 1Ls hate to hear:

It doesn't get better. You just get used to the pain. Once you're used to the pain, you pile on more.

Extending Legal Education through Skills Training

“Law school teaches you the law, but it doesn’t teach you how to be an attorney.” I can’t tell you how many times I heard this sentiment as a law student interviewing with attorneys. It didn’t exactly inspire confidence in my law school studies, and inevitably leads to the question—if that’s the case, where do law students learn how to be successful attorneys?

Will BigLaw Embrace Grade-Less, High-Pedigree JDs?

Ed. note: The following article comes to Ms. JD courtesy of author Michael Estrin and bitterlawyer.com.  They interviewed a number of hiring partners at major U.S. law firms, who expressed concern about decisions by Harvard and Stanford law schools to switch to a pass/fail system.  This article might be of interest to many Ms. JD readers, especially given past issues and discussions concerning the compatibility between current law school learning frameworks and female law students.

Class rank is everything. It separates the future scholars from the posers; the potential Big Firm Partners from the 9-to-5 government slackers. If there were no grades, there’d be no way to differentiate among prospects and the entire legal hiring system would implode. Or maybe not.

In the past year, Stanford and Harvard have adopted a pass/fail grading system similar to Yale’s. This means no more grades at three of the top five U.S. law schools. Does this make sense? Are the schools doing the “real world” a favor or a disfavor? Does the elimination of competition from a highly-competitive profession make any sense whatsoever?

My Mommy Still Wants to Be a Lawyer

A little more than a year has passed since I posted my first story with Ms. JD. (see post here: http://ms-jd.org/my-mommy-wants-be-lawyer ) Despite the time lapse, I did not forget about Ms. JD and she was never very far from my thoughts.

But I felt that I had contributed all that was worthy at that time and I needed to wait to accomplish something more profound or at least survive my first year of law school before I decided to wax more poetic about law school.

So what happened? Well, a lot. Some things changed, but many things stayed the same. Everyone still thinks I'm nuts. I may even be starting to agree with them. People still ask me what my poor children and neglected husband are doing to occupy the time that I spend at school and work. I still think law school is tough and I think my job at Legal Aid is even tougher. But I love (almost) every minute of it, and above all, I still want to be a lawyer.

The most amazing changes I've seen this year have nothing to do with law school and everything to do with the amazing little creatures I call my children. They are not 3 and 1.5 anymore. They are 4 and almost 3, both going on sixteen. They speak in full sentences and pour their own milk. They sing their ABCs and love Scooby Doo. They negotiate everything from later bedtimes to extra snacks. And they ask me so. many. questions. (Mom, why do we have bones? Are there bones in my head? Can I see my brain? Why can't I see in my belly? How did I get into your belly when I was a baby? How did I get out? Is there a baby in your belly now? My belly's full. Can I have more yogurt?) I continue to be fascinated by their perspective on life and their literal take on everything. But I stand by my claim that they keep me sane, especially in the context of law school. I just don't see how anyone can tell me that passing the Bar is going to be anywhere as difficult as teaching a human child how to use the potty.

But I think the changes that Ms. JD readers would find most interesting are those that impacted my experience as a student. I found that members of the faculty and administration at my school were very supportive of my post. They complimented and commended me, and for better or worse, I became one of the poster children for moms in law school. I was not sure what to do with that, until another student walked in to our SBA meeting named Shantae.

Shantae was a part-time evening student working full-time, but she would shortly be quitting her job to start our full-time day program. But she was not entirely happy with what the school had to offer. She was the mother of two and she thought that student organizations were not providing programming to a large section of the student body: those that were parents. I was thrilled to see that I was not alone. Shantae seemed to want many of the things I wanted: family-friendly programs, an opportunity to bring children to the law school, and above all else, some kind of validation. We wanted to know that our fellow students recognized and appreciated our situation, and were open to catering to it.

Eventually, Shantae helped me give birth to what our fellow student (and single dad) Doug called our "Chocolate Bar Review". Our younger, hipper fellow students had their bar reviews at local hot spots, and we decided to have our Chocolate Bar Review on a Sunday afternoon in our student commons. I had very low expectations and envisioned five or six parents sitting around a table commiserating with each other while our children ran circles around the commons with juice boxes. In the end, we had all of those things, but on a much larger scale. There was pizza, cupcakes, kids crafts, my mother singing with her guitar, and the tables in the commons had to hold about 75 people. We were overwhelmed by the turnout and all of the sincere appreciation we received from the student parents. They were relieved to meet other parents at the school, they were excited to show their kids where they go to school, and they were happy to get that validation. They felt renewed that the school was acknowledging them.

Shantae and I did not stop there. She took the lead on organizing an Easter Egg hunt at the school. Once again, I would have been fine with some fruit punch and six dozen plastic eggs filled with candy. But Shantae had the kids playing "Pin the Tail on the Bunny" and making bunny crafts out of cotton balls. And I can only imagine what she had to do to convince her husband, Todd, to climb into a bunny suit to surprise the kids after their egg hunt. We had a great turnout which included new people who had heard about the success of the Chocolate Bar Review.

Shantae and I are excited about the next year for parents at our law school. There will be more family-friendly events, and we will continue to build our network of parents. And we hope to share those plans with other schools. I can only imagine how excited we would be if we found out that another school had adopted our "Chocolate Bar Review" idea. It's not trademarked—use it all you want!

I think that less people ask me "How do you do it?" these days. I hope that it is because I am showing them, with every chance I get, that I am doing it because I am a mom, not in spite of it. The kids continue to inspire and motivate me, and that has not changed, even though I am finishing my second year of law school. Granted, it has not gotten easier. I still try to study while Hot Wheels whiz past my head, and my husband communicates with me mainly through e-mail and text messaging since face-to-face contact is either non-existent, brief, or conducted in a semi-conscious state. (It's 2am—stop studying!) But I still think we're doing just fine.

Ms. JD provided the platform for me to bring my ideas about parent-students to my administration and I will forever be in the debt of those who created this website for me, and obviously, for all of us. And now, I am so excited to be a part of the new part of Ms. JD: the National Women's Law Student Organization. Granted, my daughter claims that she wants to be a doctor like her daddy, but just in case she changes her mind, I feel like I'll be a really cool mom some day if Maggie goes to law school and I can tell her that I helped blaze the path for NWLSO.

I hope that every law student will take a minute to think about what she is passionate about, what is important to her as a student, and how her school's administration or student organizations could help to make sure that those ideas are being properly implemented in their law school. Never in a million years did I think that there was a single other person in my law school that would want to hang out with me and my kids on a Sunday afternoon. Now I know that there are about 73. You never know what you will get if you just ask. So what do you need? What is important? What are your student organizations missing out on? How could your administration serve you better? It's up to you to get that ball rolling. Good luck!

Mary Nienaber-Foster

2L, Capital University Law School

Columbus, Ohio

mnienaber-foster@law.capital.edu

Choosing a Law School

Law school is as much about receiving an education as it is about networking and making connections, both in the intellectual and in the career-building sense. Going to a brand-named law school will open doors by name alone. However, are these doors, traditionally ones that open and close for men on men’s terms (see any number of writings about the glass ceiling or pink ghetto), the doors that women want to travel through?

In my own law school application process, I visited about ten schools prior to applying (ranging from top tier to bottom tier). Those visits inspired me to drop schools off my application list or place others at the top. Traditional rankings were not that important to me. Rather, I was most concerned with the percentage of female professors and female students. This worked for me; reflecting in my third year of law school, I got everything out of law school that I was looking for.

My advice to women applying to law school? Determine what is important to you. Do you want professors to be accessible? Do you want to participate in class on par with your male counterparts? Do you want to find a mentor at law school? When you visit law schools on your application list, ask other students what their experiences have been like. Ask women, ask men. Knowing this information might be more useful than standard rankings.

Law School Learning Leaves Solos in Cold

Connecticut Law Tribune/Law.com - June, 2005

Recently, I met a young female lawyer at an awards dinner. She had been working for a large firm for the past seven years as a litigator. She was ready to start a family, but her employer was not amenable to her cutting back her hours. When I asked what she would do, her response amazed me. "I guess I will have to leave the profession," she said.

My jaw dropped. Here was an intelligent, sophisticated, experienced litigator who had graduated at the top of her class from a reputed school and she assumed if she couldn’t work for someone she would have to sacrifice her $90,000-plus educational investment in herself; lose her seven years of litigation experience, not to mention her self-esteem.