Your Words are Your Craft and Your Reputation: Don’t Let Up on Proofreading—In Your Job Search or Your Career

By Frank Zeccola 
LCD Graduate Fellow

Every new lawyer knows the feeling: You just passed the Bar and got sworn in. Now you are applying for a job at a firm that sounds like an amazing opportunity. This will be your first real job as a lawyer. You type up an engaging cover letter outlining exactly why you are a great fit for the firm. You sell yourself like an ad man from the 60s writing about the new Rolls Royce for a billboard in Times Square. There’s no way they won’t hire you after reading this.

Then you read over your cover letter again. And spot a typo. And another typo. Frantically, you scrutinize your letter again and again searching for any little mistake you may have made. After all, one misplaced comma or misspelled word could kill your chances for scoring the job. Before long, your brain starts hurting. And your anxiety skyrockets.

If you fret about making typos in emails to hiring partners and other colleagues, there is good news. A line of research going back several decades shows that, as you advance in your career and earn a reputation in your profession, you can get away with being less formal in email contact with colleagues. Further, typos and proofreading mistakes matter less than when you are an entry-level job seeker.

Stop ‘Wasting Everyone’s Time’: Five Tips to Help Employers Help You Find a Job

By Frank Zeccola 
LCD Graduate Fellow 

An email by a partner at a large national law firm has gone viral across the Internet in the last month. In the message, the partner complained that sending thank you notes after your interviews with BigLaw firms is “Just a complete waste of everyone’s time.” The subtext is that thank you notes add very little value to your prospects of landing the job but cost large firms money by clogging employees’ inboxes with unwanted emails. Whether this advice translates to small, midsized, or public interest law firms remains to be seen, but a general guidepost is probably: “when in doubt, leave it out.”

The bigger picture issue is that hiring and training new employees costs money—some estimates range as high as $300,000 per new lawyer.

 As a new lawyer entering the marketplace to find your first job, the last thing you want to do is waste employers’ time at any point in the hiring process. If you can show that you can seamlessly transition from job applicant to employee without any wasted time and effort on the part of the employer, you stand significantly improved chances of landing the job.

To do that, here are five tips for helping employers help you in the job hunting process. Further, these tips will help get your resume to the top of the pile and increase your chances for scoring the job:

Tips for Tailoring Your Application Materials When Applying to Pro Bono and Public Interest Employment Opportunities

By Corey Farris 
Law Career Development Counselor 

Counselors in law career development often hear this question: “Can I just use the same cover letter and resume for multiple applications?” Unfortunately, it is not that simple. To stand out from among the pile of resumes and cover letters, you absolutely need to specifically tailor your materials to each employer. That is especially true when applying to public interest and pro bono positions where your materials needs to show not only an aptitude for the work, but a passion for it as well. 

Public Interest and Pro Bono Cover Letters 

When drafting your cover letter, focus on the mission of the organization or the community that it
serves. Do not just “cut and paste” the mission statement from a website to show that you read through it. Instead, delve into your personal experiences and background to illustrate that you have a long-running commitment to a specific cause or group of clients. This does not have to be in the form of actual work or volunteer experience. Sometimes a personal story can be just as effective. Do you come from a family of immigrants and your family’s experience has motivated you to do immigration work? Are you a first-generation college student interested in improving access to education for others? These are the types of personal connections that show your commitment to specific types of public interest work.

Battling Your Brain And Finding Those Lurking Typos

by Jared Solovay
Director of Private Sector Programs
& Administrative Director of Honors Lawyering Program

A few years back, the following paragraph made its way around the Internet:

“Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”

It turns out that there was no such study at Cambridge University, but that’s really beside the point. What’s remarkable about this paragraph is that, despite the fact that nearly every word is misspelled, most readers can still process the content at normal speed. Thanks to a phenomenon known as pareidolia, the brain turns out to be quite adept at spotting overarching patterns and filling in the missing pieces.

The problem is that as helpful as these mental shortcuts can be, when it comes to proofreading your own work, your brain can do you a disservice. Time and time again, when reviewing students’ resumes and cover letters, I find misspelled words arising from missing letters.

Searching for Work in the Digital Age

By Alex Hoyt-Heydon
Graduate Fellow, Law Career Development

With the July Bar results being posted and holidays right around the corner, many recent law school graduates are feeling pressure to find a job and fast. Between rent, student loans, basic necessities, and yes, holiday shopping, the need to find a stable source of income, as well as move forward in your legal career, is a strong motivation to keep looking for work. However, you are not the only one looking for work. And trying to hone in on any one specific field can become a daunting task in a sea of legal specialties, firms, and potential employment opportunities.

Oddly enough, it seems that in this age of quickly advancing technology and internet dependence, most articles on looking for work still hold many in-person tactics for obtaining work. Things like leveraging networks, reaching out to personal contacts, and looking into opportunities where you have worked in the past are all great, tried and true methods for obtaining work, but may not necessarily help find the exact opening you are looking for. And for those law students who were not able to form a strong network during law school, finding that first legal job after graduation can be even more difficult. Enter the online search engine to help bridge the gap.

Biggest Mistakes People Make On Their Cover Letters

By Erica L. Morris
Law Career Development Graduate Fellow

It is difficult to sit down and write a thorough, individualized cover letter every time one applies for a new job. This is true for everyone. It is especially true when one is pressed with too little time to focus perfectly on the task. The same is true of resumes.

While no one has unlimited time to be perfect, cover letters must be crafted with care, and they must quickly and concisely make your application stand out. A recent study given by the New College of Humanities shows that recruiters, on average, take less than 60 seconds to decide on a resume and over 20 percent never finish reading a single cover letter. "On the whole, employers revealed they spend an average of just three minutes and 14 seconds looking over an application."

Employers spend extremely little time reviewing your application materials relative to the amount of time it takes to put the materials together, because they are strapped for time, too.

So how can work most efficiently to get the job you want by quickly impressing employers?  

One easy way to improve cover letters quickly is to avoid a handful of employer pet peeves. These mistakes are extremely common. Avoiding these big mistakes will readily help ensure your applications are considered on the merits, and not quickly thrown away.

COVER LETTER DON'Ts

The following list is a compilation of complaints employers frequently cite as reasons for tossing an application into the reject pile without even considering an applicant's resume. These reasons are derived from numerous studies taken from sources such as Business Insider, ESQ Resume LLC, Monster, UC Berkeley School of Law, and Independent.

• Not Including A Cover Letter. Read the application instructions! If it is required, then be sure to submit one, and it is a good idea to include one regardless. This is "your first introduction to a potential employer." Do not let the opportunity to make a good impression pass you by.

• Including a Generic Cover Letter. Employers know when a cover letter is generic. If you are going to apply, be sure to read the job posting carefully and draft your cover letter to match the employers needs. While it is smart to have a basic template to start with, "always remember to tailor it."

Rethinking Resumes vs. Cover Letters

By Corey Farris 
Law Career Counselor

A Litigator’s View of Career Counseling

It's time to rethink how we look at cover letters vs. resumes. Cover letters can be difficult to write and when asking for assistance on creating a stellar cover letter, students often say, "I feel like I'm just repeating all of the information on my resume." To keep this from happening, I like to think of a resume as a "statement of facts" and a cover letter as the "argument" for why you should get the job. The two documents are connected and there will be overlap, but neither should too closely resemble the other.

When it comes to a resume, you want to be straightforward about your skills and accomplishments. But, just as with writing a statement of facts for a motion, you also want to be persuasive in the way that you present those skills and accomplishments, tailoring the contents to your audience. Did you "make appearances in court" at your last internship? Or, instead, did you "advocate for a client at a contested court hearing?" These are two ways of conveying the same information, but the mental image that is conjured when reading these two sentences is vastly different. Also, use a thesaurus to create varied language to keep your resume from sounding robotic while maintaining a formal tone. In short, give the reader - your prospective future employer - something interesting to read.

A FONT OF WISDOM: The Experts Weigh in on the Right and Wrong Fonts for Your Resume

by Jared Solovay 
Director of Employer Relations
Administrative Director of the Honors Lawyering Program 
Law Career Services

Students occasionally ask me which fonts make a positive impression in a resume, and which do not.

My standard response is to invoke Justice Potter Stewart (“I know it when I see it”); when you have looked at enough resumes, you know what feels polished and professional, and what feels sloppy and informal.

I suspect that answer is too coy to be satisfying, so I was intrigued when I came across this analysis of the question.

The results from these “typography wonks” may surprise you.

Microsoft Office Tutorials – for FREE!

By Henghameh Poya, LCS Intern

Ever wonder, "How do I alter the margins in my document?" "How do I add those equations in Excel?" You're not alone. Legal employers expect their interns and attorneys to be self-sufficient when it comes to computer skills; check out these resources that offer videos and step-by-step instructions.

1. Straight from the source

This website offers video tutorials for all of Microsoft's available programs. You can also choose which version you have and whether you're using a PC or Mac. Try using the search bar at the top of the page to navigate you to what you're looking for.

2. If videos aren’t your thing

This website offers step-by-step instructions (with pictures) on how to do a variety of tasks. It also offers some helpful explanations on what the tools do and what they would be useful for. The directions may differ slightly depending on the version of Office you’re using, but you'll get a nice overview from this website.

3. Just another option

This website is another text-based instruction site, but it's not quite as comprehensive as the previous one. It offers some simple instructions and gives you the option of choosing which version you're using.

Tip: If there isn't a tutorial for what you're looking for, try running a Google search with a brief description of your question. Example: "how to add column Microsoft Word."

Happy New Year!

by Elisa Laird-Metke

Law Career Services welcomes everyone back from the winter break! LCS counselors are available to meet with you to help with applications for spring and summer jobs. Make an appointment by calling (415) 442-6625

If you need just a quick resume/cover letter review, drop-in hours are also available. Stop by Monday, January 6 through Friday, January 10 between 11:30 and 1:00 pm daily at 40 Jessie, 5th floor.

Don't forget that PI/PS Day applications are due January 16!

We look forward to working with you in 2014!

Don't be scared, LCS has you covered!

by Andrew Artelt
LCS Intern

With Halloween quickly approaching, tricks and treats abound, especially when it comes to your job search. As a future law school graduate, the job market may even be downright frightening. To add to it, your resume or cover letter may even have some unwanted cobwebs that need to be cleaned up.

Here at Law Career Services, we want to remind you of all the treats that we give out not only during the Halloween season, but on a daily basis:

• Job Postings – While working at LCS, I have been able to see the many potential job experiences located throughout the Bay Area, nation, and even internationally! It is so easy to forget to log into your LCSonline account and sift through the many job postings that are added on a daily basis. You can easily set up a Job Agent defined by geographic preference areas so that you automatically receive emails whenever a job posting in your preferred area is created. To set this up, log onto LCSonline, click “My Profile,” then click “Academic,” and finally, click “Automatic Email Notifications – Geographic Preference Areas.” Now you are set up with three geographic preference areas from anywhere in the world!
• Twitter and the LCS blog – If you’re reading this, you have found our blog. On the LCS blog, we not only post great articles written by the LCS staff, but also share networking opportunities and information regarding upcoming job fairs. Also, to make job searches even more convenient for students, LCS has created a Twitter account which has tweets about every new job that we post on LCSonline. Follow us and receive our tweets at @GGULCS.
• Handouts – Many times, we need a quick and efficient fix in our job search. For some, the issue may be a cover letter, others a resume. Either way, LCS has you covered with handouts that show many helpful tips! Come to the LCS office to see our display stand full of helpful information or access them via our electronic Resource Library in LCSonline.
• On-campus Information Sessions – LCS plans countless information sessions throughout the semester that focus on how to find jobs and different career paths. Many of these sessions are conveniently held during the lunch hour and are often recorded for those who cannot attend. These videos can be found on our YouTube page here.
• Career Counseling Sessions – The foundation of LCS is our career counseling. Our counselors were all once practicing attorneys. They have a wide variety of backgrounds that can help students find their perfect fit and assist with any job search matters that may surprise you along the way. We recommend that all students meet with an LCS counselor at least once a semester to make sure your career development plans stay on track.

Regardless of whether you say “Trick” or “Treat,” LCS has plenty to offer.

Before You Send, Convert Docs to PDF!

An employer called this morning to let me know that more than half of the resumes he received for an opportunity he was promoting contained formatting errors that were attributable to software conversion problems. Before you email your job applications to employers, please remember to convert your documents to PDFs; this is the best way to ensure that the document you want them to see will be what they get. - Susanne Aronowitz

TIP: The ability to print to PDF comes standard in Macs and many PCs. There are many good options for those without built-in PDF capabilities.

Think About You; Talk About Them

by Susanne Aronowitz
Associate Dean for Law Career Services

Most of the cover letters I’ve reviewed in preparation for summer recruitment positions share one thing in common: they focus on what the applicant hopes to gain from the position. Since every applicant stands to receive the same benefit from the position this is not usually a very effective way to stand out from the pack. While you should try to focus on jobs that will help you build your skills and expertise, I encourage you to keep this information to yourself (and perhaps your LCS advisor).

Instead, consider the employer’s perspective. You will attract an employer’s attention if you can find a way to articulate the unique way you can assist them. Do you have particular skills that will enable you to produce work efficiently? Will your familiarity with their subject matter enable you to produce sophisticated work product?

Bill from the Figuring Out Fulfillment blog offers great insight into this simple, yet often-missed strategy here.

Lawyers Really ARE Different ...

... At least when it comes to resumes.
If you are using your pre-law school resume to find legal positions, you may be missing an opportunity to connect effectively with employers. This helpful article explains the differences between legal and business resumes.

Remember, when it comes to communicating with prospective employers, you want to focus on how your information will be received.

- Susanne Aronowitz

Crunching the Numbers: Class Rank

by Susanne Aronowitz
Associate Dean for Law Career Services

Now that Fall grades have been finalized and class ranks have been calculated, students are often confused as to how to present this information to prospective employers. (If you are wondering whether you ranking warrants mention on your applications, consult with a career advisor at LCS.)

Regardless of whether you consider yourself to be a “numbers person,” you must get it right when it comes to presenting your class rank. Misrepresenting your academic credentials comes with harsh consequences: in addition to losing out on the job you were seeking, you may be subject to disciplinary action at GGU, which could ultimately jeopardize your ability to get licensed by a state bar.

Here are a few pointers to get it right:

Reporting Your GPA. Present your cumulative GPA exactly the same way as it is reported on your transcript; do not round the numbers to the nearest whole number. For example, if your GPA is 2.999, you should list it on your resume as 2.999. (When reporting your undergraduate GPA, use the cumulative - as opposed to major - GPA awarded by each institution attended.)

Reporting Your Class Rank. Divide your place in the class by the total number of students in the class as reported to you by the Registrar’s Office. Class rank percentages are typically reported with whole numbers; to get to a whole number, round up to the next highest number as your class rank. In other words, if your class rank calculation places you in the top 9.99% of the class you will need to list it as Top 10%, not Top 9%.

Here are a few illustrations:

Raw Ranking: 23 out of 219
Calculation: 23 ÷ 219 = .1050 or 10.50%
Class Rank: Top 11%

Raw Ranking: 54 out of 274
Calculation: 54 ÷ 274 = .1970 or 19.70%
Class Rank: Top 20%

Remember, grades and class ranking are only some of the credentials that employers consider in a hiring process. Let the diligence and detail-orientation you use with your academic credentials set a tone for the way you construct your entire application!

Quick Tips: Application Materials

Three Common Mistakes in Application Materials - just in time for Summer Recruitment (deadline: August 1 at noon)!

Incorrect Salutation line. Begin with "Dear Mr. Lastname:" or "Dear Ms. Lastname:" when writing your cover letters. Using the contact's full name in the salutation is too awkward, while using only the first name is too informal. "To whom it may concern" is not acceptable 99.9% of the time. If a contact isn't listed in the job notice, try researching the employer online or calling the employer to find out more information about who does the hiring. If you're really stuck, contact LCS for advice. We're happy to help.

LCSonline conversion problems. What looked good on your computer yesterday might look entirely different on an employer's display tomorrow. Since you spent so much time fine-tuning your documents to be the best they can be (right?), this is problematic. The first step in combatting this problem is to preserve the layout of your documents by converting to PDF before uploading to LCSonline. The second step is to preview your uploaded application materials by clicking the document icons next to your uploaded file in LCSonline. What you see in this preview is what employers will see. Make sure you're happy with that.

Inconsistency. Are you applying to a district attorney's office? You shouldn't be writing about your love of defense work and long-held public defender aspirations in your cover letter. Each cover letter should be tailored to each employer, so you must do your research! Also, get the name right. Are the partner names separated by commas, dashes or a space? Is the name followed by LLP, PC or something else? A quick trip to the employer's website will often give you the answer.

[ Bonus tip: Proofread! ]

Steering Your Career Course

by LCS Counselors

Last month, LCS Career Counselors held over 150 Resume/Cover Letter drop-in review sessions to help students prepare for job searches and for Public Interest/Public Service (PI/PS) Day. To meet the demand, we even added more review hours to our schedule.

LCS noticed that those of you who came to the earlier sessions had the benefit of getting advice in time to rework your resume and cover letter first drafts and come back for more guidance. In contrast, the students who came on the last two days did not get to enjoy second or third level reviews of their materials. By starting the process earlier, some students had the added advantage of time to perfect their job search materials.

We are very aware that as law students, you are incredibly busy and that is why we strive to accommodate your scheduling needs. LCS posts events and deadlines on LCSonline, in Law School News and in our weekly e-newsletter. We strongly recommend that you set aside some career planning time weekly to check your email for updates on career panels, job and externship application deadlines, and any other time-sensitive information that may interest you. Notate these events and deadlines immediately into your calendar, and try to get started with anything that has a deadline as soon as you can.

Being on top of what’s going on and availing yourself of guidance and relevant resources early on allows you to take a more active role in your career planning and opens up more options to you. The more effort you exert at the front end, the better you can utilize available resources and the less overall stress you will experience. Taking hold of the steering wheel as a law student will prepare you to be a much more successful attorney in the future!

Fall Recruitment Application Quick Tips

In reviewing the applications students submitted for our first Fall Recruitment deadline, we noticed a few common blunders. To help you avoid committing these same errors in the materials you submit for the September 4 deadline, we've put together a quick list of application tips:

• Review LCS's resume handout (link) to ensure that your resume conforms to the legal resume format.
  


• When referring to the employer in the body of the cover letter, be sure that you are addressing the correct office/organization (i.e. do not write about wanting to work for the San Francisco Office of the Public Defender in a letter intended for the Contra Costa Office of the Public Defender).
  


• Check to see if your resume spills over onto two pages. A number of resumes were uploaded with only one line on the second page.
  


• When creating an unofficial transcript, include your GPA summaries for every semester and cumulatively.
  


• Double and triple check your use of punctuation and verb conjugations.
  


• When writing about your current position on your resume, use the present tense.
  


• Do not include more materials than requested by the employer (i.e. if the employer only requests a resume and a cover letter, do not also upload an unofficial transcript).
  


• In the salutation, use "Dear Mr./Ms." and then a colon (:), not a comma.
  


• Be consistent with the way you write the name of your former employers, both on the resume and in your cover letter.
  


• Proofread, proofread, proofread. And then have someone else proofread your materials for you.
  

HOW TO: Transcripts

Several students have contacted LCS to find out the best way to submit a transcript to an employer.

Most employers will accept an unofficial transcript with your application, and we recommend that you create one using the Grade Sheet Template designed by LCS (rather than photocopying or scanning your official transcript). This will enable you to have a clean copy of your transcript that you can submit to employers electronically or on paper.

When preparing your grade sheet, please take extra care to avoid any transcription errors. Any misrepresentation of your academic credentials, even if by honest mistake, may have severe consequences.

To review our detailed instructions and to download our Grade Sheet Template, please visit the Resource Library section of LCSonline.