Can an online presence enhance your chances in the 
search for a legal job? Blogger Ashley Connick describes his own experiences

If you asked for a show of hands in your average law school class as to what type of online activity people took part in, you would get a near 100% affirmative answer for Facebook. For Twitter, the number would be far smaller, and the number of students with a blog might be negligible or even non-existent.

These activities might be useful when it comes to making plans with friends – many peoples' social lives are helped by the ease of communication that social networking enables – but in the search for a job, are we all doing everything we can to secure 
that elusive training contract 
or pupillage?

My own social networking activities, for instance, have led me on a journey which has ended with me writing this very article. That journey began when, having already registered and closed an account, I re-registered for Twitter in November 2009, still with no real idea of the benefits it could bring in the world of work.

Initially, I just did the things that people expect of Twitter accounts – random pronouncements of opinions or actions I was performing, as well as finding new people to chat with. Its primary use for me, though, was as a news feed, with the latest stories from the BBC and other news outlets all handily sent to my homepage. Already, and without really knowing it, Twitter was providing me with a competitive edge through making current political and commercial affairs more accessible.

There's been a great deal of talk recently about social media strategies and how law firms can best harness social networks. I never had a social media strategy – I just did what I enjoyed. I think this is the key to being successful at social media, if there is such a thing.

My online habits shifted in ways I never expected, and I began finding people to converse with on Twitter who I would have never have met in other spheres. By way of example, I 'met' the head of the College of Law's multimedia unit before I even began my Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL). I've since had a number of interesting meetings with him, and have been asked to help develop some of his plans for the College's future.

The biggest jump for me has come since I launched my blog. I did this because I felt as though I might have some interesting things to say, and because I've always enjoyed writing.

Some people blog about the finer points of law – I chose to stick to things I was experiencing, so long as they had a legal theme (although I do deviate from the legal sphere occasionally). I've written posts on the legal application process, the GDL and even the way the International Cricket Council upheld the rule of law.

Career opportunities

Has all of this helped my career? Well, it's given me the opportunity to discuss law with many people who are vastly more qualified than I am. These are people who work in varying sectors, with some at law firms in the City and some in-house at companies or universities.

Being online has brought me work experience and meetings with groups of individuals it would have been unlikely for me to come into contact with. I've had my articles complimented by people who really know what they are talking about and that's been good for my confidence, because in order to be taken seriously by the general counsel of a large company you have to be doing something right. One of my earlier posts was even picked up by Legal Week and republished on its website.

I was able to recall some of these events in a recent job interview I had, and it's possible that my success helped to persuade the firm in question that I was worth offering a training contract to. But I think it lies deeper than that. There is nothing wrong with blogging about the state of the compost heap in your garden or about the latest release at the cinema. But if that is what you are writing about, could you really rely on it in an interview?

The value of having an online presence is not so much in just being there, but actually doing something useful with it. Which leads me onto my final point – why bother? Blogging is something that is particularly time-consuming, even if you only spout prose in the manner I do. When you analyse the black letter law and its application to current cases in the way that, for instance, Adam Wagner of One Crown Office Row (@adamwagner1) and the UK Human Rights Blog does, it takes even longer.

At a recent seminar on legal blogging which I was fortunate enough to be invited to, there was a consensus that you only blog if it is something that you really enjoy doing, if it is a passion that keeps you writing for hours on a regular basis. I didn't begin blogging in order to simply gain a training contract or raise my profile. It hasn't hindered either of those two things, certainly, but they weren't considerations when I wrote my first post back in November of 2010, and I hadn't even applied to law school when I wrote my first tweet in November 2009.

If you're looking for a quick-fix solution to take you to the holy grail of a training contract, I'm afraid I can't help you. If, however, you think you might enjoy writing a blog or even simply connecting with lawyers and fellow students in a new way, perhaps there are new worlds of social networking that you can harness.

To coin a well-known phrase, it's not what you do but the way that you do it – that's what gets results.

Ashley Connick is a GDL student at the College of Law. He will commence a training contract with an international law firm in August 2012. Click here to read Ashley's blog, and click here to follow Ashley on Twitter.