October, 2010

#LawJobChat / Performance — No Comments
25
Oct 10

Intersection of Business Development + Interviews (#LawJobChat No. 5)

When do you need a business plan for job interviews?  How do you answer interview questions about business development/client service/marketing?  How do you document potential business when applying for a job?

Join #LawJobChat this Thursday, October 28 at 9pm EDT for answers to these questions.  Our guest co-host is Lance Godard (@lancegodard) an international legal business development and marketing consultant.  Lance is also the founder of @22twts, real-time Twitter interviews with practicing lawyers.

Join #LawJobChat on Thursday to tweet your business development questions to Lance.  Or, email your questions to me in advance (amanda@aellislegal.com), and I’ll tweet them to Lance.

Click here for details about how to participate in a Twitter Chat.  As always, I’ll post the #LawJobChat transcript following the live chat.

Performance — No Comments
15
Oct 10

Best Time to Update LinkedIn Status? Friday Morning!

I recommend in my book that job-seeking lawyers and law students update their LinkedIn status update at least once a week.  If you update too often on LinkedIn, your network may miss the update since most LinkedIn users don’t view their updates daily.  If you let your update sit for longer than a week, it becomes stale.  For example, if you add a new contact and your LinkedIn status is 46 days old, that new contact may wonder how much you actually use the site.

In the past month, I’ve talked to at least a dozen practicing lawyers who aren’t seeking new jobs but are using LinkedIn for professional networking.  The majority of those lawyers told me they log on and read LinkedIn updates on Friday afternoon.

So, make it a habit to update your LinkedIn status every Friday morning since many lawyers (i.e., potential employers) tend to read updates on Friday afternoon.  Try it for at least six weeks and see if anyone in your LinkedIn network notices.

#LawJobChat / Performance — No Comments
1
Oct 10

Summary of #LawJobChat No. 4 (Legal Resumes)

The fourth #LawJobChat featured Jessica Silverstein (@AttysCounsel), President of Attorney’s Counsel, answering questions about legal resumes.  I’ve noted some highlights of the discussion below, and you can view the chat transcript here.  Note that several features on a resume are subjective — or, as Jessica tweeted, “resumes are so personal, I’m not surprised everyone has an opinion.”  As you’ll see in the transcript, different participants (we had 35 contributors during this chat!) had different thoughts about certain resume features.  I hope the discussion provides you with a variety of ideas from which to choose when drafting or polishing your resume.

Non-Legal Experience

  • Include non-legal jobs (even part time positions) if the skills are marketable and space permits on the resume.
  • Definitely include non-legal professional experience if relevant to desired job (i.e., worked five years as accountant and interested in tax law positions).
  • Clinic experience goes under “Legal Experience.”

Non-Essential Sections

  • Adding an “Interests” section is debatable – don’t waste space by adding it if you have more relevant information to share.  If you include “interests,” make sure they are unique and differentiate you (i.e., ranked tennis player, jazz vocalist).
  • No Objective section … ever.
  • A Summary section can be helpful for someone switching practice areas.

Buzz Words to Describe Student Research Assistant Position

  • Think about the subject you researched and use words that describe what you did.
  • Specify which resources you used to perform the research.
  • Good Example (DO):  Researched class action certification and collective actions in California using Lexis, BNA, & decisions reported on PACER (thanks, @yalechk).
  • Bad Example (DON’T):  Research assistant to Professor X–research into civil procedure issues (thanks, @yalechk)
  • More buzz words for research:  analyzed, compiled, condensed, digested, synthesized (thanks, @j_lavalley).  But, use cautiously–don’t want resume to be a thesaurus!

When to Remove Summer Clerkship/Summer Associate Positions

  • Consider removing summer positions after you have 5-7 years of experience practicing as an attorney.
  • If you still need good firm names on your resume, consider keeping the names of those firms and dates and titles.

Verb Tense

  • If you are PRESENTLY working, verb tense should be PRESENT tense.
  • Descriptions for OLD jobs (i.e., jobs with an end date) should be PAST tense.

URLs on Resume

  • NEVER include your Facebook URL or website link.
  • @AttysCounsel:  General rule, no to LinkedIn and Twitter links as well because employers will find those anyway but this is one of those areas where “it depends.”  For example, I recommend lawyers/law students include LinkedIn links on their resumes, if their LinkedIn profiles are robust and contain helpful information not on their resume (i.e., writing samples or explanations about a particular position).
  • @mjsq shared a good tip:  if you email your resume to an employer and your email signature contains the URLs, no need to include them on resume, too.
  • Include links to blogs if subject matter is appropriate to share to potential employers.  As @j_lavalley noted, blogs are “publications” and have their own Bluebook cite format.
  • During this part of the chat, @AttysCounsel referenced the recent (9/10/10) opinion by the New York State Bar Association regarding using social networking sites to gather information for clients in pending litigation.  Thanks to @yalechk for finding and sharing this opinion during the chat.  Click here to view the opinion.
  • And, @j_lavalley shared a link about vendor-neutral citation rules.  Click here to view the rules.

Three Common Characteristics of “Best” Resumes

  • No formatting errors.
  • Clear statement of accomplishment–not just a description.
  • Focus on target position.

If you have additional questions for Jessica, you may contact her at: Info@AttorneysCounselNY.com.

Save the date for the next #LawJobChat – October 28 at 9pm Eastern!