Eileen Doyle Crane, J.D.
Utah Valley University
It’s not the grade, it’s what you know
 Faculty Mentors can help you
 Research and writing skills make all the difference
 Oral advocacy—if you can’t explain it, it doesn’t
matter how smart the idea is
 Publishing as an undergrad—put it in print
 Build a network of professionals who do what you
want to do
 Read the literature in your field at the professional
level
 Research graduate programs in your area of
interest—all programs are not created equally
 Find your heroes who do what you want to do
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 Within
3-5 years of graduation, no one will
know or care when you graduated or what
your grades were
 They will care about what you KNOW
 And how the knowledge you have can help
them
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Solve problems
Create solutions
Address issues
Give value-added to their organization, company,
product, goods, or services
Faculty members have studied in their field of
expertise for at least 8 years before you see
them in the classroom
 Faculty members have a firehose of information
to give you
 A 3-credit semester class equals 48 hours of face
time in the classroom
 Faculty members know MORE than what they can
teach in one semester
 Curriculum design requires faculty to teach a
broad sector of their topic
 But the depth of their knowledge is MUCH
deeper
 Act interested and they have MORE to give you!
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 Law
is very interesting; you could spend
hours researching something that you can not
bill the time for to clients
 Managing/supervising partner will not be
interested in ALL that you can learn about a
topic, at least initially
 Since the creation of the Internet, an
information explosion has occurred
 The ability to find what you need exactly and
quickly will save you in billable hours
 Knowledge
of strict grammar rules is a MUST
 Seek critical feedback of writing from
professors
 Buy this book and read it, use it
 Mark it up and put tabs in it for rules on
commas, semi-colons, etc.
 There are special punctuation rules in legal
writing
 Bluebook Citation Manual
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Many graduate programs are writing based, oral
secondarily
Broaden your vocabulary: www.merriam.com
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Read broadly to expand your command of ideas and
timeless philosophies
Practice oral presentations in front of friends and
family
Law, for example, is an oral occupation ONLY
secondarily
No oral presentations until AFTER the writings
Even in negotiations, writings such as demand letters
come first
Court visits take up very little of most attorneys’
time, unless one is in the litigation section of a large
law firm
Contact each of the two other attorneys
 Invite each to lunch, breakfast, as above
 Ask specific questions about the profession
 Ask for names of two other attorneys to meet
 Write/email/call the 1st attorney and thank
him/her for the referral and share what was
learned in subsequent interviews
 Continue till student knows 100 attorneys
 Collect and file business cards as well as create
and share one’s own card; write notes on the
back of details that will help you remember
something about this particular person
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 Start
with a macro search on your field
 Discover what the specialties are that exist
within it
 Do some self-discovery to identify your
particular interests
 Discover who the experts in those areas are
 Read their work and learn what the issues
are in those areas
 Arrive at graduate school with some idea of
the past, present, and future concerns of the
field are
 Identify
where graduate programs are in your
field of interest
 Discover a way to systematically compare
and contrast programs
 Create a spreadsheet of the variables
involved
 Research the various programs, filling in the
spreadsheet with information
 Compare within schools for breadth and
depth of offerings
 Compare across variables for breadth and
depth of offerings
 Most
graduate programs lead to a variety of
employment options
 Explore the options currently most
subscribed to by graduates
 Discover necessary data about those
positions, e.g. pay, hours, travel, benefits,
work settings and situations, professional
development, advancement opportunities,
leadership training
 Post-graduate training/degrees: are they
necessary, negligible, optional
 Identify
those who laid the foundation for
the field you are interested in
 Find out who the current leading actors are
in your field
 Contact them, if they are still alive
 Assume that they will be interested in
hearing from you
 Ask those who respond intelligent questions
which show that you have done your
homework
 Thank them for their time and attention