The commencement speaker when you graduated from law school inevitably highlighted members of the audience who supported the graduates during school, and would provide continued support while the graduates studied for the bar exam and began their careers. Your career can be enhanced through relationships with others in your network of fellow attorneys, along with support from friends and family. These relationships can provide you with new opportunities and challenge you to go outside of your comfort zone. Each person has specific strengths. Therefore, it may be helpful to seek out connections with different skills to help you work toward your career goals. With that in mind, you may want to develop connections in the following categories:

The Scholar

The best source of referrals, future job prospects, and long-term success in the legal field is substantive knowledge of the law. As a young lawyer, one of the highest compliments you can be paid is if another attorney refers a case to you. The best way to build these referrals is to become the “go-to” attorney in your area of the law, so that you are the first person who comes to mind when an attorney has a case to refer. The scholar is a well-respected and well-versed practitioner or in-house counsel in your chosen field of law. Ask the scholar to coffee or a meeting in his office to express an interest in his or her career. The scholar may be able to provide insight on resources and organizations you should consider joining to deepen your understanding of the law. For example, if you practice labor and employment law, a Human Resources organization may provide insight on issues employers are facing. Become curious about available resources as well. The U.S. District Court ECF (electronic case files) systems allow you to receive notifications of filings related to attorney, party or type of case directly to your email. Consider registering to receive notifications of filings of a practitioner whose work you respect or by type of matter, such as injunctions to deepen your substantive knowledge of the law.

The Influencer