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Why Law Students Should Be Cold Emailing (Wisely)

Lindsey Vickers

Summary

  • Some lawyers have landed their first job thanks to a cold email.
  • To maximize your chance of success with cold emailing, consider three things: personalization, research, and making a request.
  • Make sure the questions you’re asking aren’t easily answered by the person’s biography or the organization’s website.
Why Law Students Should Be Cold Emailing (Wisely)
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Sending a quick “cold” email might fill your stomach with dread. After all, you’re contacting someone you’ve probably never met. You might be tempted to write off the practice entirely if you don’t know what to say.

But cold emailing, when done right, can be a useful tool when you’re in law school or early in your career. Some lawyers have landed their first job thanks to a cold email. However, you must be thoughtful to make this tactic work for you. Here’s what experts suggest you should say in a cold email and why you shouldn’t write it off as a networking tool.

A Cold Emailing Success Story

Cold emails are basically what they sound like. Like a cold call in class, a cold email is an unexpected and unsolicited contact. Typically, the person reaching out is trying to garner advice, learn about career opportunities, or create a networking connection. However, cold emails often work best when they’re leveraged as a tool for building relationships.

Can cold emails really help your career? Success with cold emails can take many forms, from creating a great, long-lasting mentorship relationship to landing your first job. While you should never think of a single email as creating or tanking your career, it’s not unheard of for a cold contact to open the door to a job.

“Cold emailing is a very powerful tool when you’re trying to get in the door,” says Avi Kelin, a partner at PEM Law in West Orange, New Jersey, specializing in political work and corporate transactional law. Kelin would know—a cold email is how he got his start.

Kelin, who went to The George Washington University School of Law in Washington, DC, knew he didn’t want to stay there. Instead, he wanted to start his practice in his home state of New Jersey. Kelin realized he couldn’t rely purely on his law school or its career services department to land an out-of-state job. “I took it upon myself,” he says.

Kelin perused a New Jersey legal publication that listed the names of every law firm that hired summer associates. He built a spreadsheet to meticulously track the firms and lawyers at those firms he thought he could reach out to, and he emailed each one.

“I didn’t just email their HR person,” he says. “I tried to find someone at each firm I had some connection with, whether it was a similar undergrad experience, a similar law school, or some other point of contact.”

Kelin estimates that he emailed between 50 and 75 law firms. While many of his emails went unanswered, others led to coffee or a phone call. But, in the end, it only takes one.

“The theory about needing only one success proved true for me because I hit it off with someone who was a partner at a law firm,” says Kelin. The partner hadn’t gone to George Washington—and instead went to Georgetown—but the two drew a connection discussing the transition from attending school in DC to working in New Jersey.

He later learned the partner worked for the firm’s hiring committee when she asked Kelin if he’d like to set up an interview. The rest is history.

A Cold Call Led to Coffee, Then a Shared Resume

Other lawyers have used a similar approach to Kelin and found success, including Dusty Gross, a recent law school graduate and lawyer working at the Milwaukee branch of MacGillis Wiemer. Gross also took a structured and rigorous approach to cold emailing for jobs, a tool she felt was particularly important as a first-generation college student and lawyer.

Gross eventually landed her first legal job through a chain of events stemming from one cold email. She emailed people practicing in areas she was generally interested in who were alumni of her law program or undergraduate institution.

At one point, she emailed another woman in civil litigation to get coffee and learn more about practicing civil litigation as a woman. After coffee, her contact connected her to a partner on the firm’s labor and employment team and separately shared her resume with that team. Eventually, Gross landed a job at the firm in the labor employment division.

What Should You Say in a Cold Email?

While the basics of a cold email are, well, basic, there’s some intricacy to crafting the ideal message—and sending it to the right person. Mastering the right formula and not being afraid to send out plenty of emails can help you find an outstanding mentor or your future job.

Subpar cold emails sent directly to staff attorneys often find their way onto the desk of Hiroko Peraza, Portland-based senior manager of lawyer talent acquisition and outreach at Davis Wright Tremaine. Instead of replying directly, attorneys may ask Peraza to respond on their behalf.

To maximize your chance of success with cold emailing an attorney or hiring manager, Peraza suggests bearing three things in mind: personalization, research, and making a request. In writing a cold email, she suggests asking yourself, “Does this email serve as the starting point for a long-term relationship?”

What It Means to Personalize Your Email

According to Peraza, personalization is always essential, including getting the person’s name and pronouns or gender correct. This is often as simple as reading someone’s online biography, which typically uses their pronouns. Peraza’s first name is Japanese, and people sometimes incorrectly address her as “Mr.” when they reach out.

Peraza says personalizing an email is about tailoring your message to the person and the firm. You want to customize your email to the intended recipient because an email that’s too bland will not capture anyone’s attention.

Tailoring your email to the recipient can take multiple forms. Personalization isn’t limited to the person you’re writing to. Instead, it can be based on speaking to someone else who interned at the firm or organization and describing what parts of their experience piqued your interest, Peraza says. Personalizing your message will help you build a relationship with the person you’re writing to.

Gross also emphasizes the importance of personalizing cold emails. “It’s not great to use just one template for 15 different attorneys because all of those attorneys are different, and you might learn something different from each of them.”

How Research Warms Up Cold Emails

Peraza suggests thoroughly researching the firm and person you’re contacting. Make sure the questions you’re asking are properly directed. For example, an attorney might not be able to answer questions about hiring timelines. Additionally, do your due diligence to make sure that the questions you’re asking aren’t easily answered by the person’s biography or the organization’s website.

“Cold emailing isn’t so cold,” says Peraza. “It might be your first email to the recipient, but you’ve done a lot of smart research.”

Be Sure to Ask the Recipient to Act

Finally, Peraza suggests making sure your email contains an actionable request. Peraza says that unanswered emails might be read, but the person might not know how to respond or not realize you’re requesting a response.

Asking for something as simple as meeting for coffee or a direct question about someone’s career is enough to create something that indicates you’re hoping for a response. And, as Gross notes, make sure you always offer to pay for the person’s coffee or lunch—though, in her experience, most of the time, they won’t take you up on it.

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