The Job Search

For those of you who, like your favorite bloggers, are entering their final year of law school, the prospects of finding a job after school can seem particularly...nauseating.

For those of you who, like some of your favorite bloggers, attend schools with less-than-stellar career services centers, the prospects can deteriorate to downright frightening.

Fear not fellow law students, your fate and future is in your hands.

Here are some steps you can take to get your own job search rolling:

You need a "packet" - think of it like promoting a movie...you've got to have "a preview" with the right balance of materials that will cause a law firm recruiter to say "I'd like to see more of this."

You have to figure out for yourself what to include, but my packet includes: a resume, unofficial transcript, cover letter, list of professional references (and in my cover letter I tell them that "a writing sample is available upon request" because I don't send them too much material at once).

Make a list of all the cities in which you are interested in practicing law.

Decide what "types" of firms you want to target.

Google or Martindale-Hubble your way to a list of firms in your cities that meet your criteria.

Most firms will have a "career" section on their website, they will provide you with most of the information you need through this frame.

Start contacting the "recruiter" at these firms, and prepare your "packet" to be sent. Personalize each cover letter and for god's sake make sure you send the right cover letter to the right firm!

Send your packets early in your third year, the earlier the better. Pre-Thanksgiving is a must.

Set up meetings for lunch, or drinks, with any attorney that you've had a chance to work with during law school. Keep in mind that there are two ways to approach this meeting:

(1) The Right Way - You are not coming to this attorney expecting that they will give you a job, rather you are coming to this attorney because you have such respect for their career and practice, that you think they might be able to help you compile a list of people to contact around the area. You want to have their expertise in telling you which firms are worth contacting, and which firms are an embarrassment to the practice of law. You want their guidance, and maybe if you're lucky they will be willing to write you a letter. Don't ask them for a job, but rather show them how desirable you are as a candidate by talking to them about your hire-ability with other firms. If you're such a good candidate that they are willing to write a letter to another firm in support of, they will surly stop and ask themselves if it would be a mistake to send you off into the world when they could bring you in to their offices instead. Is it deceitful? Absolutely not, you are genuine in what you are asking them for, but there is nothing wrong with hoping they won't turn around and make you an offer themselves.

(2) The Wrong Way - Setting up the lunch to ask them for a job. You will only hurt your rapport with the attorney if they get the feeling that you're objective is to take advantage of your relationship with them by pressuring them into getting you work at their firm. Don't do it. If they think you'd be a good candidate, then they will make you an offer or suggest that you speak to a particular person in their firm. Stick to "The Right Way", supra.

Now you wait. All you need is an interview. You have to have the belief that if you can get yourself into an interview room, you can convince anyone that you're the right man/woman for the job.

Good Luck.

Stay Tuned...

Automobile X Prize

Finally someone has put up the money to get developers working on a new engine.

The only problem is that their goal is 100 miles/gallon.

Thats a remarkable achievment, don't get me wrong, but its still fossil fuel based energy, and still leaves us dependent on the stability (or instability) of foreign providers.

The target date for a completed automobile is 2009, with peer reviews starting in 2008.

Its a step in the right directon, but not the "leap" I was hoping for.

Here's more information: Click Here

Stay Tuned...

Love Sports? Feel like Law School gets in the way of being a Fan?

Thanks to your friends at the National Basketball Association ("NBA"), the National Football League ("NFL"), and Major League Baseball ("MLB") you can study for law school and keep up with the latest news on ESPN.com all at the same time!!!

Need to work on Criminal Law? Why don't you try to think of a defense for Michael Vick! If that's too easy, and you want to move onto something more complex, "Sports Defense" (a new field, not to be confused with actually playing defense, and a term coined and owned by yours truly) has a more challenging case study for you: Pac-man Jones! Don't know how to handle multiple charges all over the country at the same time? Watch ESPN's SPORTSCENTER to find out how you can shuffle court dates in Nashville, Las Vegas, and North Georgia so that you're client can be where he needs to be, when he needs to be there [note, this is not true if "where he needs to be" is suiting up for his team's game and "when he needs to be there" is every Sunday].

Those of you fortunate enough to attend one of the higher-class State Schools may have a chance to get in on the ground floor with an up-and-coming deviant. Just look at U.T., a football roster just over flowing with potential clients. Successfully defend one of these rising-stars and you're sure to get an A+ in Criminal Law. Its like they say about the weather: "Run out of people to defend? Wait a few minutes, football practice is about to get out."

Find even that to be too boring? Test your hand with R.I.C.O. law. That's right, the NBA has offered you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a crash course in Racketeering. Want to know how people fix sporting events? Curious how an NBA Referee could become the squeeze point of a New England Mob Family? Want to know how to protect your client from the shame and humiliation that will accompany being outed as the "devastator of our most trusted profession." Wait . . . Don't we usually yell at the Ref for getting it wrong? Hey, NBA Officials have always made Lawyers look trustworthy!

Want to get some real "pre-trial litigation" experience? Follow the ever-present B.A.L.C.O Grand-Jury testimony, and accompanying Congressional Hearings. Its a unique look at the interplay between our Federal Government and Professional Sports. We are lucky that the good people on Capital Hill could make time for our lesson all while cleaning up the nation's past-time.

Yes, you may think that being a Law Student means that you won't have time for sports anymore. You may think that you'll just have to catch a box-score or two when you can. Maybe you'll get to watch the playoffs (Tough chance, it's ALWAYS exam time when Football and Basketball count). Well think again, thanks to today's modern role-models and the 24-hour news cycle, you can keep up with Sports and study for those midterms all at once.

Remember, SPORTSCENTER is conveniently aired for 8 straight hours overnight, just to accommodate your study schedule.


Stay Tuned...

Roger Clemens, 2057

Roger Clemens shows up at Brian Cashman, Jr.'s office demanding to pitch this year. 2057.

It's a funny video.

If you have a sense of humor.

And like baseball.

And hate the Yankees.

And are in the mood to laugh at silly things.

And such.

Stay Tuned...

LOST:

(**no spoilers here**)

You did it again.

Just when I thought I might be done with you, you did it again.

Last nights season finale might have been the best two-hours of television this season.

What a welcome return to what the show used to (and is supposed to) be about.

If you're not a LOST watcher, you've got about 8 months to rent/watch Season 1 and Season 2.

I'm sure season 3 will be out just in time for christmas.

But be ready in January.

LOST is (and will be) back.

Stay Tuned...

Being a Grizzlies Fan...

It hurts.

I know, Boston Celtics, they've sure had it rough, blah blah blah.

I'm sorry, they won like 16 titles in 30 years at one point.

So its been a rough decade or two.

I feel ya, really.

But we've got it worse.

And on top of that the top 2 picks are going to the Western Conference.

This might have been it. This draft lottery, the bounce of these balls, the 25%. The 46.5%. The 35.7%.

It hurts.

What's the future of the team in Memphis now? Who's gonna coach us? Who's gonna be the GM?

Yi? Al? Corey? Mike?

They could be good basketball players. They could be great basketball players. You never know. But they won't fix things tomorrow. Or June 28. Or November 1. Or next April.

Greg, Kevin, totally could have gotten that done.

Its a tough time for Grizzles Fans. Its a tough time for the Grizzlies Organization. Now the Grizzlies, and the Fans have to ask for patience from the city. See, its one thing to get upset with the team when they make a mistake. Its easy to quit on a team when the coach is slowing things down and making the games boring. Its easy to quit on a team when they trade the wrong parts of their team for something they didn't really need.

This is not the teams fault. This one just went the other way. Karma. Fortune. Fate. Luck. Chance. It is what it is, but its not the teams fault.

We've still got a lot of good things going on here. Gasol has started to get the respect he deserves around the league, and from the press. Now he just needs to get it from the people of Memphis.

Rudy Gay showed great promise throughout the season. He started to put it together down the stretch, and he has every ounce of the potential he had a year ago.

Mike Miller has just started to come into his own the last two seasons, and he's ready to go places.

We've got the most cap room of any team in the NBA this summer (or close to it) and can go out and pick up the free agent point guard or center we need.

Did you forget how exciting it was to watch Kyle Lowry play the first 10 games?

And we still have a number 4 pick.

Yi is a seven-footer who has drawn comparisons to Dirk Nowitzki. He already speaks english, and he's got a huge following in China. You want to turn the City of Memphis around? Add 1.5 billion grizzlies fans to the tourism bottom line. That'd be nice.

Al Horford, not as exciting, but he is NBA ready. He's a good defensive player, but raw offensively. And he's a six-foot-nine power forward/center. We've got about 4 of those on our team don't we? (see also, Lawrence Roberts, Hakim Warrick, Alexander Johnson, Stromile Swift).

Mike Conley, Jr. could be a star, but 4 seems a bit high to take him.

There are other options. You think that Pau Gasol couldn't bring a talented PG and a first round pick or two? If you're going to draft a Yi, he easily replaces Pau Gasol at the power forward position.

If you do draft Yi, the question is do you play Pau at the 5 where he seems uninterested in rebounding, shot blocking, or defending the post. You'd like to think that a starting five of Free Agent PG (Billups?), Mike Miller, Rudy Gay, Yi Jianlain, and Pau Gasol could be productive.

I don't know.

I don't know what will happen to this team. Its a mess. We're going to need some luck, and we're going to need some faith from the locals, and we're going to need some more time.

But there are still a lot of good things going on here, and we'll get it together.

But its still the 4th pick.

Not the 1st.

Not the 2nd.

Not even the 3rd.

Also not the 9th.

Here are some links for your reading pleasure:
The Current Memphis Grizzlies Roster
NBADraft.net Mock Draft
NBA Draft Machine - Do It Yourself Draft
HoopsHype.com Mock Draft
Coverage by The Commercial Appeal

Stay Tuned...

The Onion

The Onion's Aaron Kaplan produces a monologue of how not to pick up women at the bar. A pretty impressive butchering of all things pick-up-line.

Full credit to our beautiful Russian "angel" for the find.

Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel Or Something To That Effect

May 2, 2007 | Issue 43•18

Excuse me, beautiful, mind if I stand next to you and do some talking? I don't mean to intrude, but I couldn't help but notice that you were sitting all alone and enjoying yourself. There's just one problem: If you're here right now, then that means heaven must be missing an angel or something to that effect. Though I doubt anyone's noticed since there are so many angels up there anyway.

I'm trying to say that you're hot.

You look pretty tired, though. Maybe it's because you've been running through my mind for a while. I think about hot women a lot, so for the purposes of this argument let's just say you were one of the ones that I'd previously been thinking about, even though we just met. Are you considering having sex with me yet? Because if not, I could ask you if it hurt when you hit the ground after falling from heaven. I know I already said the thing about you being an angel, but maybe you didn't catch it the first time. Or if you did, maybe it will seem like I'm building off that. I'm trying to tell you that you're pretty like an angel I want to sleep with, is the point.

What else is there? Oh, are you from Tennessee? Because I think you're a seven. I might have gotten that wrong, but you get the jist of it. I'm using the name of a state to express how much I'd like to see you naked, but I don't really care where you're from.

Can we just go now? All right, well then why don't you tell me your sign. I don't really believe in astrology, but maybe you do and will go home with me because I come across as open-minded for mentioning it. I think I'm a Virgo. Pisces? One of those. I'm sure we'd be good together, because you're very attractive, as I've said before, which I think is really the most important thing anyway. Speaking of which, do you have a license? Because you're driving me somewhere that's complimentary to you.

Your eyes are blue like the sky or water, whichever you prefer. And your lips are really red like—I don't know—that girl's lips over there. Also, I'd look great cumming on your shirt. Or your shirt's becoming, I mean. I want to be cumming on your shirt or in your general vicinity is what I'm getting at. I didn't quite say it right, but the sentiment is there.

So do you have a boyfriend or what? Because I don't have all night to waste on talking to you if you're dating someone.

Do you have a mirror in your pocket so I can see myself in your pants? How about a quarter, so I can call my mother and tell her I found the girl of my dreams? I'm not actually going to call her, because she's been dead for two years and it's actually up to 35 cents now anyway and I'd probably just use my cell phone, but I'll take the quarter from you if it will get you in the sack.

We should go back to my place and do some math. We'll add a bed, subtract our clothes, and do other math stuff related to fucking.

Look, it's obvious where this is leading. I'm saying all the right things and you haven't walked away yet, so let's just cut to the chase: Do you come here often? If so, would you like to go back with me to my apartment and have sex with me? What if I told you I would rearrange the alphabet for some reason? I'm thinking of asking you what you'd like for breakfast tomorrow, in the hopes that you might sleep with me because I implied that it's inevitable.

Can you see where I'm going here?

I guess I should say I think I've seen you someplace before. And I don't mean earlier, when I was staring at you. I'm pretty sure we've met in a past life or in my dreams or something, so you should feel comfortable lowering your standards around me. Also, your shoes are nice, so I'm sensitive and observant. If you really need me to, I could buy you a drink to show you I have some money and then we could do it in the bathroom.

Wait, don't go. Just one more thing. I lost my phone number. Can I have yours so I can call you later about having sex?

That guy is going home alone.

But god bless his effort huh?

SHAD-ED!!!

Stay Tuned...