Onward and upward; before you develop a bankruptcy practice, you've gotta get a job. Landing a job in bankruptcy law is no different than getting any legal job. The routes to getting the "right" bankruptcy law position are the same as those for any other legal position, give or take a few bankruptcy-specific tricks.
First, one quick proviso. Many practitioners land in bankruptcy after a few years of practice in other areas. If you are a law student not ready to commit to bankruptcy law, don't feel pressured to do so. Go work at a law firm with a general practice and rotate through a few departments, including bankruptcy. You'll be able to move into bankruptcy when you're good and ready; in the meantime, take advantage of opportunities to explore the full spectrum of legal practice, so you can make an informed decision when you hit the fork in the road. You have decades of work ahead of you; there's no reason to rush things along.
This article is geared towards preparing you for a bankruptcy career; but most of the tips are applicable to any job hunt.
Maximizing Your Law School Experience
Aspiring bankruptcy practitioners should have two goals in law school. First, educate yourself. Learn the law and foster
basic skills that will lay the foundation for a solid bankruptcy practice. Second, market yourself. Make choices that will make you as attractive as possible to potential employers, showing that you are serious about being a good lawyer and interested in bankruptcy law. By and large, these two goals are compatible and you can pursue them simultaneously with a single course of action. The right law school experience can make you an A+ candidate to law firms; it can also provide you with the foundation to be an A+ attorney if you take advantage of what your school has to offer.
Grades, grades, grades
And let's say it again - grades, grades, grades. Grades are the most important factor in most firms' hiring decisions; at some firms, they are practically the only factor. This is as true for lateral hires of veteran associates as it is for new attorneys; your transcript will haunt you for years after graduation.
Plenty of other articles tell you how to do well academically. This article doesn't, other than offering these few tips:
- Be disciplined in your study habits.
- Everyone learns differently, so sample various studying methods, such as study groups, outlines and flash cards, then stick with what works for you - and don't waste your time with what doesn't.
- Stay calm despite the "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" mentality of the last few weeks of the semester.
- Each semester is a marathon, so don't burn out early on. You'll need your energy those last two weeks.
And don't get discouraged if you have a rough first semester, or first year. You've got three years in law school. A first-year rife with Bs and Cs does not preclude a second and third year of straight As. So if you have a rough time, look forward, and only forward. Try to get your grades up: rethink your first-year strategy, talk to professors, figure out a new study plan. Make the most of your summer experiences, even if they don't include a summer stint with the most prestigious firm in town. Once you've made your resume and transcript shine, or at least improve, go out and interview again. The good news is that most law firms value the ability to bounce back; law firms are sometimes as impressed with a slow starter who turned her game around as they are with the classmate first out of the gate.
Law review and journals
In addition to grades, most law firms value experience on law review or other law school journals, which is perceived as both an honor and valuable preparation for a legal practice. So important is law review that for students with mediocre (although not miserable) grades, law review experience can be a "safe harbor" of sorts, compensating for an underwhelming transcript.
Law reviews are the academic journals of each law school, published and edited by students. Each issue contains several articles written by professors, attorneys and other legal scholars, as well as student-written "comments" and "notes."
These articles and notes are lengthy discourses on a specific legal topic, usually (and notoriously) filled with scores of footnotes containing the articles' sources and extraneous information.
Students solicit articles, write comments and notes, painstakingly edit each piece and coordinate the publication of each issue. Each law school has its own procedure for "making" law review, ranging from selection among the top of the academic class to competitions focusing on students' editing and writing skills. In addition, most law schools have several other journals which zoom in on particular areas of the law: entertainment and sports law, international economic law, and so on. While usually not as prestigious as law review, selection for a journal is still competitive and considered an honor.
Law review or journal membership can often make up for middling grades and makes a candidate with high grades even stronger. Membership on the board of editors as a 3L, or publication of your own note or comment, will further bolster your resume. Membership on these journals will also teach you valuable skills - rigorous and detailed editing, communication with practitioners writing articles, and teamwork among the staff of your publication. This mix of professional training ground and honor roll makes journal membership doubly valuable, enhancing your practical skills while boosting your resume.
Choosing the right courses
Given the generalist character of the bankruptcy field, the best preparation is a varied curriculum with both litigation- and transactional-oriented classes. Classes that provide particularly good foundation for bankruptcy law, and which will look good to bankruptcy-focused employers, include:
- Bankruptcy, of course, including both basic and more advanced classes.
- Commercial credit and secured financing, focusing on the means through which lenders grant credit to debtors, often a critical issue in bankruptcy cases.
- Litigation training, such as brief writing, legal argument, moot court, and similar "practical" and clinical courses, as well as classes and workshops in negotiation skills.
- Civil procedure, evidence and other substantive litigation-oriented classes.
- Corporations and corporate finance, focusing on basic corporate structure and other fundamentals.
- Accounting, as understanding debtors' balance sheets and other accounting issues are vital in bankruptcy.
- Real estate, especially knowledge of leases.
- Federal taxation, suggested by numerous practitioners who note that many corporate bankruptcy cases involve sophisticated tax issues.
Professors are among the most respected members of the legal community. They know a lot of people. A solid relationship with your professor can lead to valuable references, precious support, and introductions to a variety of practitioners. (Your professor's law school roommate might now be a federal judge or law firm partner!)
So don't be shy. Make the effort to build relationships with your professors.
Legal clinics
Legal clinics provide perhaps the most "real" hands-on experience for legal practice. In a litigation-oriented legal clinic, law students get unique opportunity to develop client relationships, represent clients at administrative hearings and assist professors in brief-writing and case management. In other words, you get to be a real lawyer.
Few law school experiences impart a better understanding of the importance of the "client" part of the client-attorney relationship. A major criticism of law school is its lack of emphasis on practical and "useful" skills; legal clinics are law schools' chief instrument for correcting this deficiency.
Law schools also have more corporate-oriented clinics, such as those that help residents of low-income neighborhoods to create businesses. Litigation-focused clinics usually provide the most practical training for future bankruptcy practitioners, few of whom will need to know how to form a corporation or get a small business started. All clinical experiences, however, are remarkably useful in teaching a student how to become a lawyer, and are valued by law firms (unfortunately, usually not as much as high grades and law review/journal membership).
Making The Most Of Your Summer
Interesting or prestigious summer positions also boost your resume, and provide you with excellent legal experience. Students interested in bankruptcy law can use their summers as a chance to get a feel for the bankruptcy practice and develop their knowledge of bankruptcy law. It hardly needs repeating that theory and practice can be two very separate things, so a student could find his bankruptcy class and professor fascinating and the actual practice dull and tedious, or vice versa. Better to figure that out early on.
Conversely, you should not feel pressured to choose a bankruptcy-related position for the summer. The summer is a great opportunity to better understand other areas of the law integral to the bankruptcy practice, such as non-bankruptcy litigation and mergers and acquisition work. Many bankruptcy departments prefer a well-rounded candidate with experience in a variety of areas over a too-focused candidate.
A wide variety of opportunities
The most prestigious summer positions are summer clerkships at large firms, discussed in greater detail below. There are also a wide variety of alternatives, however, including working for judges (both federal and state), legal clinics, solo practitioners and small firms. First-year law students usually opt for one of these alternatives, given the scarcity of positions at large firms for first-years. All of these options provide hands-on experience and allow you to learn about the actual life of an attorney. If you are interested in bankruptcy law, summer can give you an opportunity to get to know the practice area via working for a bankruptcy practitioner or a bankruptcy judge.
Many of these positions arc unpaid (or offer minimal pay at best), but the experience they offer make them far more valuable than better paying non-hands-on summer jobs. For example, an unpaid internship at a small bankruptcy boutique, where you get real experience and a chance to make contacts within the bankruptcy community, might prove more valuable than a paid position doing research in American legal history for a professor. Select the summer position that offers the best experience over the highest pay whenever financially feasible; a good summer job will arm you with practical knowledge and make you a more attractive candidate to future employers. View this as an opportunity to invest in your future and take advantage accordingly.
Being wined and dined
You've all heard about summer associate programs - where law firms pay law students full associate salaries and treat them to formal dinners, Broadway shows and, dare it be said, way too much partying. Most important, summer associates do real work, conducting research, drafting memoranda, and witnessing everything from contract negotiations to depositions to trials firsthand. No experience boosts your resume more than a summer at a prestigious law firm, which typically culminates with an offer for permanent employment. It's all part of a mutual seduction: the law firm sells itself to the best summer associates, hoping they'll want to return to the firm after graduation, while the summer associate tries to sell herself to the firm, hoping she'll get asked back.
You could use the summer as an opportunity to dine at every five-star restaurant in town. Smart summer associates, however, use the program to hone their legal skills and get to know the folks who may be their post-graduation bosses. If you are fortunate enough to work as a summer associate, don't squander the opportunity. The right summer experience can give you hands-on training, an understanding of the politics of a law firm, a group of mentors invested in your future and an offer for full-time work after law school graduation. The wrong experience can give you a series of hangovers and a request not to return to the firm after graduation, a scarlet letter on one's resume which can seriously impede your job hunt.
Obviously, you should perform your assignments well, on time and according to the partners' instructions. This is not the time to show how independent and free-thinking you are; prove that you are a conscientious team player who knows how to follow direction. In addition, do not get overwhelmed by the wining and dining. Some summer associates make the mistake of getting drunk and rowdy at firm events, arriving at work with too many hangovers (morning sunglasses are a dead giveaway), taking advantage of expense accounts (one notorious urban legend involves a summer associate on a business trip charging the law firm for a $500 hotel laundry fee) and developing arrogant attitudes.
Don't be foolish. Firms look as much at whether you fit into their culture on a personal level as at the quality of your work when considering you for permanent employment. Most firms would prefer a competent summer associate with a friendly attitude than a brilliant summer with the personality of Napoleon and the drinking habits of Hemingway. Have fun and enjoy the glamour of the summer program, but don't enjoy it so much that you sabotage your future.
Clerkships
Finally, one of the most valuable credentials is the post-graduations judicial clerkship. Law firms are traditionally impressed with a clerkship on a candidate's resume. Clerkships offer a valuable education and insight into the judicial process, and typically foster one's research and writing skills. Many clerkships, particularly for federal judges, are difficult to secure and are seen as a prestigious feather in one's cap, much like law review membership.
Clerkships for bankruptcy judges can prove particularly valuable for future bankruptcy practitioners. Many bankruptcy firms and departments seek out clerks for their substantive knowledge of bankruptcy law, mastery of procedure in a particular courthouse and the rapport established with a particular judge. Several attorneys interviewed for this guide felt their clerkship experiences helped outweigh less-prestigious legal degrees and other "negative" factors in the eyes of firm hiring committees, attributing their first jobs to the experience and connections acquired as clerks.
Bankruptcy clerkships can also lead to more direct job opportunities. Not only do clerks get to know many attorneys and law firms, but bankruptcy judges themselves are prominent members of the legal community who have relationships with many bankruptcy attorneys. Judges fond of their clerks are often more than happy to help them secure firm positions, and are often not adverse to picking up the phone and calling the head of a prominent bankruptcy department to recommend a favored clerk. In short, few credentials are valued more in the bankruptcy job hunt than a clerkship for a bankruptcy judge.
