Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve. I'm Karen Sloan, legal education editor at Law.com, and I'll be your host for this weekly look at innovation and notable developments in legal education.

This week, I'm chatting with former Jones Day attorney and Southwestern Law grad Rachel Gezerseh about her new book, which gives law students a roadmap to finding their dream law job. Next up is a look at Georgetown University Law Center's new Early Outreach Program, which seeks to get minority and low-income high school seniors thinking about law school. 

Please share your thoughts and feedback with me at [email protected] or on Twitter:@KarenSloanNLJ

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The Law Job Hustle

Rachel Gezerseh has a pretty interesting resume. She graduated from Southwestern Law School in 2007 and landed an associate job at  Jones Day. She didn't secure the gig though on-campus interviewing—Southwestern isn't a traditional Big Law feeder school. Just 10 of the 285 students who graduated from there in 2017 landed at firms of 100 or more lawyers.

So how did she end up in a highly sought after, well-paying Big Law job without a J.D. from a prestige school? In a nutshell, she hustled. She researched law firms systematically and networked like crazy. Not just causal cocktail hours, mind you. She sought out substantive, one-on-one meetings with attorneys to get a sense of not only what they do, but also the atmosphere of their individual firms.

She started blogging about her approach to employment seven years after graduating, initially with the goal of helping more Southwestern grads find jobs at Jones Day. But her message hit a chord and soon she was speaking on law campuses. Today, she teaches courses on finding the right legal career and getting that job at law schools across Southern California. (She left Jones Day about two years ago and is now a partner at boutique litigation Liang Ly.)

Her latest effort is a new book titled The Law Career Playbook, which she calls a roadmap for law students who want to figure out not only what career path is right for them, but how to go about positioning themselves for those jobs. I caught up with Gezerseh last week to discuss the book, how students should approach their job search, and what they get wrong about finding a job.

Here's the good news for students: It's possible to find a law job that doesn't make you miserable. 

Now the bad news: Finding that right fits takes a ton of legwork. Here's Gezerseh:

“The path to getting that [Jones Day] job involved a lot of introspection. I had to figure out, 'OK, what is it I want? Who can I reach out to get that information? How can I build out this network of people and advocates to get me this job?' I built this network outside of the regular law school parameters of OCI.”

Here are a few of Gezerseh's recommendations:

➤➤Devote 30 minutes to an hour of each day of law school to the job search. Be systematic about how analyzing law firms and making connections with people.

➤➤Leverage LinkedIn not only to present a public profile but to research attorneys who may be helpful in the job search and stay in touch with those attorneys.

➤➤Don't rely solely on events and interview schedules organized through schools. Establish individual networks as soon as law school begin, or even before that.

I was curious what the most common mistake Gezerseh sees law students make on the job hunt, and her answer surprised me. She said that all too often law students fail to follow up with the people they have sought out and met with—a development she calls “letting the relationship die on the vine.”

“It's a mental game,” she said. “Students, in their minds, think, 'Why would this person ever want to hear from me again?' It's that imposter syndrome thing.”

Gezerseh recommends that students set up Google alerts on their connections and their clients, which can give them an opportunity to send an email referencing new developments as a way to stay in touch. She also suggests setting up Google calendar alerts reminding students to periodically check in with their connections so their network stays fresh.

I wanted to know how universal these lessons are. As in, does someone from a Big Law feeder school, a la Columbia, need to follow this play book just as much as a student from Southwestern? Gezerseh told me yes. That Columbia student no doubt has more Big Law career opportunities through OCI, but the OCI process doesn't necessarily help them end up at the right firm, she told me.

“You really have to get out and talk to as many people as you can from these firms,” she said. “Law firm websites all look alike. They all say the same wonderful things. They aren't necessarily an accurate representation of what it's like to work in that office. The only way you'll learn that is through the people. You're not going to get that from a cocktail reception or a networking event here and there—that's not the depth of the relationship you're going to need to get the frank information you need, nor is OCI or callback interviews.”

The takeaway: I think the biggest lesson Gezerseh has to offer is that the law school career services office is just a starting point for students, and that they need to take ownership over the job search and make it a priority. But I think the challenge here is balancing the job search with the demands of being a law student. I think it's great if a student has 30 minutes to an hour each day to devote to the search. But the reality is that Big Law is looking for students with top grades, law reviews, etc. on their resumes. There is only so much time in the day to not only develop the credentials large firms want to see, but also to really dig deep into the world of these legal employers to gain a foothold there. Hence, I'm a bit skeptical that the same rules apply to all law students. Still, the overall message is a sound one: Do your homework and get out there and network.

From High School to Law School?

In case you missed it, I wrote a story last week about Georgetown University Law Center's new Early Outreach Initiative in which admissions dean Andy Cornblatt and a law student will visit as many as 30 underserved high schools around the country next year. The Georgetown ambassadors will meet with seniors and discuss the path to law school, what law school is like and legal careers. If you want to know more about the nuts and bolts, read my story here.

The idea behind the program came from the Association of American Law School's Before the J.D. study, which looked at the motivations of law students and prospective students and how they view legal education. One key finding was that 55 percent of law students said they began thinking about a law degree in high school or earlier. That, in turn, means that students with professional parents, who come from middle and upper-class households are far more likely to have law school on their radars than say, economically disadvantaged students, immigrants, first-generation college students etc.

So Georgetown's new program is an attempt to reach the low-income and largely minority high school students who lack any exposure to legal careers, and plant that seed early on. The hope is that down the road the law school applicant pool will be more racially and socioeconomically diverse. I'll be curious to see whether the program yields the intended results. Cornblatt told me he'd love to see those underrepresented students apply to Georgetown, but ultimately he'd be happy if at least some of them went to law school at all.

Understandably, most law school pipeline programs focus on the undergraduate population. That makes sense given those students have already crossed the initial hurdle of going to college. I can see how administrators would see that population as offering the most bang for the outreach buck, as they say.

But if the Before the J.D. study is right and that the groundwork for law school is being laid well before college for many interested students, then I don't see how legal education can continue to ignore high schoolers. I'm not entirely sold that Georgetown's new program will be enough to move the needle, though I agree with Cornblatt that schools need to try new things because existing efforts haven't yielded the diverse law student population the legal profession wants.

If top law schools continue to emphasize LSAT scores in admissions, then minority students will continue to be at a disadvantage. (Cornblatt stressed to me that Georgetown lets in plenty of applicants with lower LSAT scores who have demonstrated grit in other ways.) So perhaps the answer here is to not only inspire underprivileged high school students to think about law school as Georgetown is doing, but later connect them to existing programs at the undergraduate level that help prep them for the LSAT and navigate admissions. I think there are enough pipeline programs out there to work in concert with each other. In fact, I think we can take a page from Rachel Gezenseh's legal career playbook, in terms of creating that network of minority and low income prospective students, then continually following up with them during their undergraduate years.

Extra Credit Reading

InfiLaw Corp. is looking to get out of the law school business. Its remaining law school, Florida Coastal School of Law, has applied to become a nonprofit and hopes to merge with an established university with InfiLaw out of the picture.

The Cornell Law Review has elected an all-female executive board, which is believed to be a first for a top law journal. Those law review positions are stepping stones to prestigious law jobs.

The next dean of Stanford Law School will be longtime faculty member Jenny Martinez. She joins a wave of minority women moving into law school dean suites.

The University of Florida Levin College of Law nabbed a $20 million donation from alumnus and Cole, Scott & Kissane managing partner Richard Cole. It's the largest single gift in the school's history.

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I'll be back next week with more news and updates on the future of legal education. Until then, keep in touch at [email protected]