What are "they" looking for? Tell your story.

Yes, some employers make a first cut for grades.   But beyond that, recruiters and hiring partners are looking for candidates who can express themselves well -- both in their writing and in their speech.

COVER LETTERS

1.    The first paragraph should tell who you are and what you want.  "I am a second year law student at the Excellent Law School and I am interested in a summer associate position with your firm."  If you have good grades and you want to mention your journal or moot court, add that.  But remember that the topic sentence of this paragraph -- indeed the entire focus of the paragraph -- is "Who are you and what do you want?"  Recruiters will not take time to wade through six paragraphs of "creative writing" to get to the point that you should have made in the first sentence.

2.  The second paragraph relates your experience to the work that you will do as a law clerk or summer associate.  "But I've never worked in a law firm! How could I possibly know what I will do?"  While you might not be able to chart the anthropological lifecycle of a law clerk's day, not only do you know what law clerks do, but you have done it well or you wouldn't be in law school.

Law clerks research and write.  When you were an undergraduate or in graduate school, you researched and wrote papers for a variety of courses.  Let your employer know that you enjoyed the work and, that you especially enjoyed doing research in original (not electronic) sources.  Why is this important?  While much of your time in law school is spent embracing the law, a large amount of practicing lawyers' time is spent searching out and parsing facts -- facts that can't be found on the internet, but might be located in a client's paper records or in a dusty courthouse basement or by talking to potential witnesses.   

3.  The third paragraph should address something about you that might be valuable to a potential employer.  Again, you ask "How can I possibly know this?"   Think about what lawyers actually do: they read, write, talk on the phone and go to meetings.  But why?  They are acting as advocates for their clients, their business, their policies, their problems and their personal lives.  Anything that you have ever done that demonstrates your advocacy skills can fit neatly into this paragraph.  For example:

• Teaching: You have explained things to people who were unfamiliar (and possibly resistant) to your information.
• Coaching: You have identified problems, including three dimensional problems such as how to hold a baseball bat or how to swim the Butterfly, and then explained and demonstrated the solutions.
• Other work:  One Peace Corps returnee had to climb a jungle-covered mountain to persuade people in his district who had never EVER left their villages, to accompany him to the largest and most dangerous city in the country to help make the case for water control projects that he was developing.  This is advocacy.

4.  The fourth paragraph will usually take one of two forms:

• Thank you for taking the time to review my credentials.  You may reach me at [phone] and [email], and I look forward to hearing from you.
• Thank you for taking the time to review my credentials.  I will be in [your city] during the week of [x date] and I will call you next week to set up a meeting.  In the meantime, you may reach me at [phone] or [email], and I look forward to meeting with you.

INTERVIEWS

Tell your story. Know three things about yourself that an employer ought to know before you leave the interview room, and be prepared with three examples of each which you can use to answer just about any question that's thrown at you. 

This is the ONLY way that you can begin to be prepared for behavioral interviews.  Behavioral questions usually begin with "tell me about a time when..."  If you have thought about your leadership, scholarship and other skills and you have prepared by telling your stories OUT LOUD, you will appear comfortable and sharp in your interviews.

Susan Gainen, University of Minnesota Law School