Volunteering at Expensive Legal Conferences to Make Contacts

Dear Lawcrossing,

My boyfriend wants to go into Securities Law. We found out about a seminar being given next month in New York City on securities law, and obviously there will be many securities practitioners there. We think it would be a great opportunity but it costs over a thousand dollars! He is a recent law school grad, awaiting bar results ... in other words, he's broke! What do you think about calling people associated with the event and asking if he coidd do some volunteer work in exchange for the cost of the program? I thought this would be a great excuse to speak with some of these potential employers and show some enthusiasm. Please help. He really needs the motivation!


CE, Michigan

DEAR CE,

Why, CE, your boyfriend should kiss the ground you walk on, if he doesn't do so already. You have unwittingly stumbled upon one of LawCrossing's most beloved means of getting a great job.

Why is that? Because volunteering at the kind of event you describe accomplishes several very important goals. One is that it attacks the problem that 90% of legal jobs are never advertised. The practitioners you describe are the gatekeepers for these kinds of jobs; they will know about them even though you currently don't. Furthermore, volunteering overcomes the greatest obstacle facing most job seekers. Everybody wants a job search to be a paper chase (or, more modernly,
LawCrossing supposes, a cyber chase). But the fact is that people hire people. When you make yourself into a flesh-and-blood human being as opposed to a bunch o' credentials on a page, you increase one hundredfold your chances of nailing down a great job, because people hire people, not credentials. LawCrossing has seen over and over again that if an employer likes you as a person, that employer will come up with excuses to hire you over those who look far better on paper. Furthermore, by volunteering, you are correct in surmising that your boyfriend will exhibit his enthusiasm-the single most desirable character trait in the minds of employers. If the people your boyfriend meets at this seminar view him as a go-getter-and LawCrossing is certain they will- then he will be the one they naturally think of when they come across job opportunities in that giant, hidden job market.

Volunteering also overcomes a serious obstacle facing most law students, and that is the dislike of talking to strangers. Studies show that 85% of people dislike talking to strangers, and in the case of law students facing lawyers, that dislike is understandable. LawCrossing remembers contemplating professional meetings when she was a law student, and dismissing them with the thought that, as a law student, she would have nothing to say to practitioners. By volunteering, you have a role to play, whether it's making out nametags, pouring the punch, answering the phone, whatever. And when you have a role to play, the ice is broken, and conversation flows naturally.

In fact, in her fairly constant wanderings to law schools around the country, LawCrossing has met many, many students who have turned simple volunteering opportunities to gold. One standout is a student who wanted to get into aviation law. He got onto mailing lists for aviation law practitioners, and discovered a weekend conference that he wanted to attend. His problem was the same as your boyfriend's, CE-the conference cost a thousand dollars. So he called the conference organizer, described his predicament, and offered to help out in return for free admission. His specific offering was a stroke of genius; he volunteered to drive to the conference, some three hundred miles away, and ferry conference attendees from the airport to the conference site. Well, CE, you can imagine what those conversations in his car were like! "As a matter of fact, I'm still in law school. I'm here to learn more about aviation law, because it's what I really want to do." When he excitedly told LawCrossing about this, he said that, "I was the only law student there, with hundreds of aviation lawyers from all over the country. I don't know where exactly I want to settle down, but no matter where it is, I already know somebody there!"

Another student, this one a young woman who wanted to get into international law, had similarly spectacular results. By reading the local papers she found that the Summit of American States was going to take place in the city where she attended law school. She called and volunteered to help out, and wound up acting as an assis-tant to the executive director of the conference. At the conference, she met a couple of U.S. Senators. One of them offered her an internship in his office. At his office, she met someone who offered her a vacation job at the White House. And at the White House, she met someone who offered her a summer clerkship at a U.S. Embassy in the Caribbean. Great grades? No. Built-in contacts? No. Great initiative? Absolutely.

Clearly, CE, your boyfriend has already cottoned onto this idea. If LawCrossing's hunch is correct-and it usually is-he has already made the important first step of getting onto mailing lists for newsletters involving his chosen specialty, and reads trade publications to see what's going on. This is the very best, and easiest, way to find out about professional meetings like seminars and conferences. While law school encourages a kind of tunnel vision, obtaining a great job requires looking outside and finding meetings and conferences that are not only professionally useful, but interesting and fun to attend. From there, as you have already figured out, CE, it's a simple matter of contacting the organizer of the meeting or conference, and offering one's services in return for free attendance. This frequently hits pay dirt because virtually every meeting or conference needs volunteers, and having one extra body-that of your enthusiastic boyfriend-doesn't contribute one additional cent to overhead costs.

Oh, CE, LawCrossing could clearly wax on and on about what a good idea you've stumbled upon. Yes, yes, yes, encourage your boyfriend to volunteer his services at the securities seminar. And have him treat you to a lavish vacation when he nails down his dream job as a result-you deserve it!