Creating Legal Experiences

Working full time at a stressful job, attending law school in the evening, and having a personal life can leave you with virtually no time to gain legal experience. So what can you do to make contacts in the legal world, gain legal experience, and explore areas of practice that are of interest to you? The following list is by no means comprehensive but is designed to give you a starting point. The Career Services team is available for an appointment to help you with more directed information tailored to your personal situation and additional resources.

Find Out About Law Firms
Most evening students at the Law School intend to stay in Oregon, or the Portland metropolitan area, after graduation. There are some excellent resources for researching law firms and obtaining basic information on firm size, areas of practice, and points of contact. These, and many other legal, corporate and government directories, are available on the Job Search section our website.

Identify and Enhance Transferable Skills
Virtually all evening students have some type of work experience, ranging from odd jobs during undergraduate school to long-term high level professional careers. In either case, it will be important to identify the skills you have that are transferable to the legal field. Some examples of transferable skills could include the following: writing, publishing, contract review, customer service, policy analysis, marketing, advertising, negotiating, interviewing, mediating, organizing, training, etc. Legal employers value these transferable skills - your task is to make the connection for the employer between your past work experience and how those skills translate to the legal field. The two most important things you can do are to:
(1) Draft your resume and have it reviewed by Career Services.
(2) Prepare a “skills database” that contains a detailed list of the skills you use, or duties you have, for each of the jobs on your resume. This can serve as valuable tool for identifying the skills you can re-configure into a legal resume, with the help of Career Services. If you use LinkedIn, utilizing the “Skills” feature in the Experience section of your profile can be a perfect way to do this - or you can create a separate document that you use to help you draft resume. Our career counselors can also review and suggest changes to your LinkedIn profile to use as another tool in developing your legal career. 

Identify and Use Your “Network”
Often, evening students do not have time to participate in student activities, especially those that are offered on campus during the day. Therefore, it is very important that you identify, then develop, a group of people with whom you can network. The vast majority of students and alumni obtain their jobs through people they know. The first step is to identify those people you already know who may have legal experience or contacts within the legal community, and can include people from the following sources:
*Undergraduate school alumni office
*Undergraduate professors, colleagues
*Family, friends, church/sports associates
*Trade/professional associations
*Business & former business associates
*Customers, vendors, suppliers, clients
*Social acquaintances, neighbors

The next step is to begin expanding and building that network of connections, particularly those in the legal community. Career Services can help you by providing you with contacts and ideas.

Networking Ideas for Busy People. Networking does not just involve formal interviewing or sending cold emails or phone calls to attorneys you’d like to connect with. It also includes a host of other activities and social events where you have a chance to interact with members of the legal community. There are many bar specialty and affinity groups that law students can join for free - for some ideas, check out the Networking section of our website. Career Services can help you identify professional organizations in your areas of interest and can assist by providing specific names and contacts. The good news? Attorneys are busy people too, so many of these activities are held in the evenings or on weekends. 

Some other ideas for networking:

*Volunteer to help plan a CLE, help at a CLE, edit CLE materials
*Talk with your company’s lawyers (either in-house or law firm)
*Get an attorney mentor through the Career Services Mentor Program
*Attend a variety of bar and attorney group events. 
*Conduct informational interviews. Set up a before-work breakfast meeting, coffee break, lunch or after-dinner drink with your contact. 

Gain Legal Experience
Gaining practical legal experience may be the most difficult aspect of the job search for an evening student. The good news is, there are several ways to do it and still work full time - the downside is that it will place additional demands on your time. One of the best approaches is to implement some of these strategies, especially any legal volunteer work, only in summer, so as not to overload your already busy schedule. Be sure to contact us for assistance in setting up the following:

*Contact your company’s in-house counsel or law firm about projects you can work on. Sometimes you can arrange with a professor to get credit - e.g., independent study, for work on special legal projects with in-house or outside counsel.
*Work as a research assistant for a Lewis & Clark professor. Often this is part-time work and can be done remotely.

*Participate in the pro bono honors program by performing some pro bono legal work for any agency you are interested in. There are legal organizations that cover just about every area of interest, and many times you can perform legal research remotely. 
*Sign up for as many practical skills courses in law school as you possibly can: Legal Clinic, clinical internship seminars, moot court mock trial, etc.
*Sign up with a legal temp agency in the summer to take on short-term law-related assignments.

Highlight Legal Experience on Your Resume
As you gain this legal experience, add it to the “Experience” section of your resume along with your your most recent relevant non-legal experience. Do not put it under the “Volunteer Activities” section, or “Education” section of your resume, even if the work is unpaid or comes from a law school clinic. Career Services can review your resume to make sure you are using this information to your best advantage.

Making the Transition to Legal Practice - Finding the Jobs
Although nearly all the statistics will tell you that most people get jobs through personal contacts, there are still many good resources for posted jobs. You should use postings to supplement your other career development strategies. Check out the Job Search section of our website for resources and suggestions.