1. Business manners aren’t social manners, and excessive modesty can hurt you badly in business. You don’t start a conversation in a social context by saying that you were #1 in your law school class, but if true, you often should say this in a cover letter.

2. At the same time, the rule in cover letters isn’t “anything goes”; some self-promotion will indeed be seen as excessive.

3. My tentative sense is that the main peril with self-promotion in cover letters isn’t the reaction “the applicant it too self-promoting” but rather “I’m skeptical of the applicant’s self-promoting claims.” So objectively verifiable credentials are good, but unverifiable claims are often bad: “I got an A+ in my Legal Writing class” works, but “I’m an excellent writer” — without any accompanying evidence — doesn’t. Readers are on guard for what they see as overstatement of one’s abilities, and any unsupported self-promotion will reinforce their initial assumption that the applicant isn’t to be trusted.

4. The same applies, though to a lesser degree, to unadorned claims of enthusiasm. “I’m really excited about the possibility of working at your firm, because I’m very interested in ERISA law” won’t be that effective. “I’m really excited about the possibility of working at your firm, because the Employee Benefits class that I took made me very interested in ERISA law” will be considerably more effective, because it gives concrete evidence of interest that overcomes the reader’s skepticism.

5. Relatedly, framing your concrete accomplishments in the language of enthusiasm is a nice way of promoting yourself while minimizing any visceral disapproval of perceived immodesty that some readers might have (notwithstanding item 1). “I published three articles in law school” is OK in a cover letter seeking an appellate clerkship, but “I’ve long loved legal writing; my experience publishing three articles reaffirmed this for me, and made me realize how much I would enjoy clerking” is better.

6. If you have several excellent relevant credentials, focus on them, and don’t dilute them by discussing your more mediocre ones or your much less relevant ones. If you have a degree in German literature from Ohio Wesleyan, you should mention it on your resume, which is supposed to provide a relatively complete summary of your educational career; but you shouldn’t mention it in your cover letter unless you think the reader will for personal reasons find the matter particularly interesting (e.g., because he went to Ohio Wesleyan). Everyone has some undergraduate degree. The point in your cover letter is to show how you’re better than the great majority of applicants, not how similar you are to them.

7. Finally, proofread your cover letter, and your resume, especially carefully. Many readers will assume that if you erred in documents that are so important to your own success, you’ll also be sloppy on other matters.

Even though you have a load and a half of work to get done over break, you’ll still have Turkey Day itself. Take some time to OD on tryptophan and yams with marshmallows and those little creamed onions and pie and stuffing and that green bean casserole with the crunchy fried onions on top and cranberry sauce…well, we can’t forget that. Where was I? Oh yeah, how to spend the day itself. Chances are you will be around people who are Not In Law School. This is a chance for you to practice.

Practice what, you say? Practice telling people in very concise (i.e. don’t drone) terms what you want to do when you graduate. It’s bound to come up and it will continue to come up in lots of interactions you will have throughout your law school career. So start thinking about it.

What you do not want to do is be totally flippant. Getting in the habit of saying “Something that pays” when asked what you want to do with your degree is a bad idea. It may be good for a laugh over turkey and stuffing but getting in this habit may well hurt you down the road. Giving a concise, well-thought out answer may actually help you down the road and may allow you to develop a useful contact or three.

Here it is: take care of yourself. Sounds so simple and trite. But it’s true. You have to take care of yourself. You can only study so many hours a day before the law of diminishing returns sets in. So what should you do with the rest of your time? Take care of yourself, body and soul.

Eat. Not the preformed stuff that comes in vending machines. Take the time to make real food once a week and eat off the leftovers as you hit the round of class, work and clubs. Exercise. I’m not saying that you have to hit the gym every day for two hours. But walk, stretch, run. Do yoga. Hit the treadmill. Lift some weights. The mindfulness that comes from exercise, along with the simple exhaustion that comes from a workout well run, will help keep your skittery brain on track. It’ll help you sleep better, too, and may burn out some of your anxiety.

Take the time to do small things for yourself that make you feel good. I don’t mean that you should finish each night with a bottle of wine, but maybe a massage is in order in the middle of the semester. Check out the many services at our law school neighbor the St. Joseph Family Center at http://www.sjfconline.org/. They offer counseling, mediation and yoga classes along with therapeutic massage on a sliding-scale basis. And don’t forget about Gonzaga’s chapel on the 3^rd floor of the law school. It provides a quiet place to clear your head and calm your spirit. Don’t save all of your treats for after finals.

As for your soul. Well, law school is a competitive place. So, practice being one of the “good guys” in your class. Study hard and be a supportive member of your class. It isn’t a sign of weakness to be open to new people. Volunteer your time to help someone out. Whether it’s writing wills for vets or petting cats at Spokanimal, a little time away from worrying about just where you fit into thenew scheme of things can give you a much needed break that will help you keep your head. If you’re really having a hard time, go to the Counseling Center on campus. They can be reached at ccac@gonzaga.edu or at 313-5054. Don’t put it off saying that you don’t have time. Lawyers have some of the highest rates of depression and substance abuse of any profession. Don’t let this start in law school. Keep your head—along with your body and soul.

Solid proofreading is the best gift you can give yourself. How many students have shot themselves in the foot by talking about their “volunterr experience”, their interest in “trail work” and all of the wonderful skills they “posses”. Too many. Employers view resumes and cover letters, all your application materials really, as the best effort you can put forth. If your best effort, on your own behalf, is sloppy and misspelled…well…what can they expect from your work-a-day efforts? In addition to typos, I’ve found sentences that lovingly describe your attributes without the benefit of a verb. Run-on sentences. Comma splices. Bad diction and tortured syntax. Grammatical and style errors undercut any assertion you make about your valuable writing skills.

This is a literate and detail-oriented business. We can argue the aesthetic merits of legal writing ‘til the cows come home, but at heart, every prospective employer will want employees to write clearly and without errors. So, find someone who is careful themselves and who has never read your application materials. Have them read your materials. You can also do some of the proofreading yourself. Read your letters out loud to check for flow, instances of awkwardness and sentence fragments. It’s also a good way to test out your transitions from paragraph to paragraph in your cover letters. Read your documents word-by-word backwards to help you find the typographical errors missed by Spell-Check. Also, it doesn’t fix everything by any means, but do run Spell-Check. A lot of errors I see in application materials would be caught by this very handy tool.

So, you give the person a call and ask for an appointment where you can spend 20 minutes of his or her time. Or offer to take him/her out for coffee. Whatever works for you. Then plan out your questions. What will you talk about? The person you’ve invited to coffee. People are usually pretty happy to talk about themselves and it seems that lawyers are especially pleased to do so. So take advantage of it. Ask the person about his career and how he made it to partner at a boutique employment practice. Or whatever it is that he’s doing. Ask the person what advice she has for a law student looking to enter the field. Do not ask for a job. That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to begin a relationship that, down the road, might lead to a referral or a job lead. But right now, it’s all about what you can learn.

One of the most important questions comes at the end of your meeting. This is when you ask the person who else you should talk to. This is how your network expands. Now, the informational interview may be the only contact you have with this person or it may be the beginning of a relationship that develops over months or years. You don’t know until you follow up—which you should do promptly after the meeting in the form of a thank you note.

Getting involved has a two-fold purpose. First, you never know when or where a connection with someone will pay off. That’s the mercenary standpoint. Second, you need to keep part of your life for doing what makes you happy while you’re in law school and as a lawyer. Your work as a student or as an attorney may make you happy but it’s not, or shouldn’t be, the sum total of your life. It’s all part of the work/life balance thing. So if you’re really into cycling, join a local bike group. Pet cats at the animal shelter. Volunteer at Second Harvest. If you’re into running, join an ultramarathon group.

I’m not telling you to wholly ignore your studies. Law school is competitive, grades do count (but they don’t count for everything) and you need to do everything you can to be successful at learning. But spending 24 hours a day either studying or worrying about studying isn’t healthy. Some 2Ls find that their grades go up when they have a job on top of being a student. Structure forces them to organize and prioritize. So do something for your personal well-being and the health of your career. Get involved in your community.

For ideas on how to get involved, contact your Student Public Service liaison 3L Sarah Karp or get in touch with Catherine Brown at the Center for Law in Public Service.

First off, come to Professional Development. We can set you up with names of local (or not so local) attorneys who are alumni and who are willing to field calls from students. This is a great way to meet with someone who will 1) be receptive to your call and 2) who already has something in common with you—go Zags! Here’s a tip: Gonzaga alumni are great to Gonzaga students and to each other. Take advantage of being a member of this club. We can also get you names of attorneys who, while they may not be alumni, may be in a field that interests you. What to do once you’ve gotten a name will be the subject of another post.

Other places to meet attorneys. Become a member of the local bar association. Most organizations have student memberships for a few bucks. This allows you to go to CLEs and other bar functions. CLEs are great places to strike up a conversation with your soon-to-be peers. It’s easy to ask the person next to you what s/he thought of the speaker. If you wind up going to the bar Christmas party, ease up on the alcohol and mingle with purpose. You won’t develop a relationship with everyone you talked to but good things come to those who get involved. Join other organizations such as Washington Women Lawyers or the Spokane Young/New Lawyers division of the local bar.

Interested in Animal Law? Health Law? Litigation? The Washington State Bar Association has sections for these practice areas—and there are many more to choose from. And most have a student rate to join. Trot on over towsba.org for more information.

Talk to your current bosses and get some names from them. Whether you’re in a paid position or are working as an extern, it’s a good idea to get to know your supervisors. You shouldn’t be weaselly or obsequious, but develop a relationship so that you can ask them who else you should talk to in the field. Take advantage of firm events—and don’t just hang in the corner with the other interns.

Take advantage of events here at the law school. Sure you might not care about the swearing in of a new federal judge (I mean, after all, he has a job). But lots of local lawyers do care and converge on the law school for this type of celebration. Go to the school-sponsored networking events. Sure they can be a little structured but the attorneys who come to these events are genuinely interested in fostering the next generation of lawyers.