Jobs

BY DONNA GERSON

Computer technology clicks with today’s legal job seekers

LONG AGO - ACTUALLY, NOT that long ago - job seekers brought scruffy copies of their résumés to commercial printers, who would painstakingly typeset a first draft, incorporate changes, produce a second draft, and so forth. Today, techno-savvy pavement pounders have a much wider range of options to print résumés and conduct global job searches via personal computer, surrounded by all the comforts of home or a school’s career services office.

Indeed, the Internet has evolved into a rich information source for law students to learn about potential employers. According to a recent survey by the American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center, 58 percent of large firms reported having web sites, and an additional 18 percent had sites already in development. Law firms view the Internet as both a recruiting and a marketing tool; the trend is toward an increasingly sophisticated web presence for lawyers, going beyond the firm name or law specialty keyword searches already available.

A burgeoning number of Internet-based businesses offer law students employer information at the click of a mouse. Sheila Walsh, president of Infirmation Link Corp., says online availability has fundamentally changed how students learn about legal employers. “Law students can now more easily compare what employers offer in terms of training, lifestyle, and salary,” Walsh notes, “and they can make more sophisticated and knowledgeable career decisions.” Infirmation’s site (www.infirmation.com) includes the entire text of The Insider’s Guide to Law Firms and a directory of more than 600 legal employers.

Emplawyernet (www.emplawyernet. com), another Internet-based legal recruiting business, has about 18,000 subscribers and more than 6,000 job listings, and it continues to expand. By entering various sites and chat rooms, law students can roam through a virtual community where practicing lawyers and law students can discuss career options in a real-time, question-and-answer format.

Other web sites for job seekers include www.lawinfo.com, which provides job listings and a résumé creator and bank, and www.attorneyjobs.com, which contains thousands of listings for legal and law-related fields, plus information about judicial clerkships, fellowships, and government contract work. If you’re interested in public service opportunities, try www.pslawnet.org.

As job seeking increasingly moves into cyberspace, some of the old rules for contacting employers are changing as well. For years, applicants have sent employers a printed cover letter and accompanying résumé via U.S. (“snail”) mail. While hard-copy correspondence remains the mainstream way to go, e-correspondence is becoming more acceptable, particularly with firms that handle high-tech matters.

One employer that offers students the opportunity to apply for positions electronically through its web site is Fenwick & West LLP, a large firm headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. “E-mail applications are convenient and allow for easy follow-up,” says Karen Amatangelo Block, the firm’s recruiting coordinator. She notes that e-mail thank-you letters are becoming more common as well: “We simply print them out and add them to the candidate’s file.”

If you feel e-mailing a cover letter and résumé is right for you, remember to adhere to the traditional rules of grammar and punctuation. Lapsing into cyberslang or abbreviations is still inappropriate. Keep your correspondence, whether electronic or print, professional and polished. E-mail is quick and convenient, but there are some drawbacks. Résumés sent as attachments are sometimes incompatible with a firm’s computer system. Also, keep in mind that formatting changes sometimes occur between your computer program and the recipient’s, scrambling clever graphic effects to gibberish. If you want to maintain complete control of the appearance and content of your message, stick with the snails.

In some circumstances, however, you may not be able to use that perfect, most aesthetically pleasing résumé you finally hit upon. That’s because an increasing number of employers use computers to scan résumés for various keywords and develop databases for convenient storage and retrieval of information on job applicants. For those employers, you’ll need to change your résumé approach.

Although hardly any law firms currently rely on scanning software, many headhunters and nontraditional employers (like banks and management consulting firms) use the technology. Marc Zamsky, managing director of Update Legal Staffing in New York, for example, uses scanning software to perform full-text searches of candidates’ résumés for specific skills of interest to legal employers.

If you’re applying to nontraditional employers or are considering using a headhunter at some point after graduation, inquire about their use of scanning and reformat your résumé if necessary. To ensure that your résumé gets the attention it deserves, Zamsky recommends listing as many specific skills as possible. For example, rather than indicate experience in commercial litigation, enumerate all aspects of commercial litigation you handled, such as pleadings, discovery, document review, and trial preparation. Also, list specific skills and knowledge areas you have acquired, such as privilege review, privilege logs, witness preparation, deposition digesting, and exhibit preparation.

If you apply to employers and headhunters who use résumé scanners, be sure to optimize your résumé’s ability to be “read” optically. Use white or light-colored paper, provide a crisp laser-printed original instead of a blurry photocopy, and don’t fold or staple the résumé. Use simple typefaces and avoid italics, underlining, rules, graphics, and boxes. Don’t use two-column formats that resemble newspapers or newsletters, and be sure to list phone, mobile, and fax numbers so that each is on a separate line.

Come on-campus interview time, your career services office may provide additional technological support. According to Judith Collins, director of research for the National Association for Law Placement, 40 percent of all law schools responding to a recent survey indicated that they use a computer program to handle the interview process. With such programs, students can schedule their own interviews, post their résumés, and learn about employers.

As the job search process is tied increasingly to technology, law students and their schools should explore all options in order to reach employers effectively. Just remember that despite all the bells and whistles of the Information Age, the fundamentals of successful job searching remain the same: Do your homework, develop a substantive set of skills, interview effectively, and seek out work opportunities that genuinely interest you.

Donna Gerson is director of career planning and public interest opportunities at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.