Posted on

5 Tips for Finding a Job (Part 1)

My favorite law student – my son Mitch – just completed his first year of law school at George Mason University. He and his classmates soon will be starting the ego-bruising experience of interviewing to find their first legal jobs.

I remember those days well.

My first semester of law school was, by far, the most challenging one. I knew I wasn’t the smartest person in my class (that much was obvious) and hoped that I would not be the dead weight at the bottom. My grades after that first semester weren’t bad, but I was, nonetheless, terribly disappointed in the results.

I concluded that I would redouble my efforts during my second semester. If my grades didn’t improve, I would resign myself to the fact that I was a slightly above average law student.

With the renewed effort to my studies, something clicked in my head during that second semester. My grades improved significantly and continued to rise each semester.

But prospective employers were not impressed. While many of my classmates entertained job offers from multiple prestigious law firms, I received dozens of rejection letters.

My confidence waned. I questioned why anyone would even want to hire me and worried that I never would find a job. I envisioned myself unemployed, destitute, and ostracized.

Fortunately, I worried for nothing.

I landed a summer clerkship with a great small firm near the end of my second year. That summer, I received offers for judicial clerkships from two of the state’s most respected judges on the court of appeals. It has not always been easy, but over the next 30 plus years, I have made a career for myself.

In the course of doing so, I have learned a few truths about finding a job and building a career. Though my experience is in the practice of law, these principles apply to any career.

This post is longer than most of my offerings, so I have broken it into a number of pieces that will be posted over the next few weeks.

No. 1: You will find a place where you can succeed.

This first point does not directly discuss how to find a job but instead addresses that nagging voice in the back of your head questioning whether you should have gone down this professional pathway.

If you have done the work required to qualify yourself for entry to the profession (and you have), you have the tools to succeed. Your path ultimately may differ from what you initially thought it would be, but if you are focused and persistent, you will succeed.

Be confident. You alone are responsible for your own career path and professional success. The sooner you accept responsibility for your career, the sooner you will begin to succeed.

Focus on your strengths. Learn everything you can about a narrow area of the profession and become an expert in that area. Make the area of expertise narrow. Being a family law attorney is better than being an “experienced, aggressive lawyer” who, among other things, handles family law cases. It’s even better to be a family law attorney who represents doctors in divorce and custody matter.

Being an expert does not mean that you know more about the area than everyone else. It means that you know more about the area than most.

If you continue to hone your craft throughout your professional life, you just might come to know more than anyone else about your narrow area of expertise. The sooner you start down the pathway to expertise, the further down the pathway you will go during your professional life.

Move forward with courage. You have the ability to succeed.

(To be continued)

Posted on

What vs. Why

Everyone wants to tell you what to do.

Vote for my candidate. Buy my product. Subscribe to my blog. There’s no shortage of advice on what you should do.

But knowing what to do is only part of the equation. Understanding why you should do it is the real question.

Agency — the ability to make choices — is life’s greatest freedom. But though we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions. Choose well and you reap happy consequences. Choose unwisely and your decision will haunt you, perhaps forever.

If you want to influence other people, do not tell them what to do. Rather, help them understand why they should follow your advice.

In my role as a lawyer, my job is not limited to advising my clients about their legal options but also includes helping them recognize the long-term consequences of those options. They need to appreciate how the law interacts with their business so that they can make sound decisions going forward. And they are more likely to “buy in” to my trial strategy when they understand how that strategy will play out.

As a teacher, my job is to help students make sense of the law so that they can give sound legal advice to their future clients. Making sense of the law involves more than discussing the topic of the day. It includes explaining the rules of court, providing insight into how judges think, and applying ethical principles to real-life situations. Students who understand the law in its proper context become lawyers who confidently help clients navigate through turbulent legal waters.

And in my most important area of influence, my critical (and never-ending) job is to teach my children how to have happy and successful lives. I must not only teach them what they must do while they are living in my home, but also help them understand why they should choose to follow those principles when I no longer oversee their lives. My job is to teach them the “why” of life so they will want to make good choices for themselves.

You may be able to use your position of authority to compel someone to do what you want them to do, but compulsion is short-lived. If you want to truly influence another person, teach them why they should do what you want them to do. And then let them choose.

When they understand the why behind a decision, knowing what to do becomes a much easier choice.