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

 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  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!

 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

 Many graduate programs are writing based, oral secondarily  Broaden your vocabulary: Subscribe to an Word-A-Daywww.merriam.com  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/ /call the 1 st 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

 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