Your Educational Investment

By: Kandice Thorn

Your education is an investment.  It's a big one.  We recognize that and we truly appreciate that you have decided to invest your time, energy, and money with Fordham Law School.  But how do you get the biggest return on the investment you're making?  Attending class and reading the course materials are your educational requirements, but are they sufficient for a complete educational experience?  In my opinion, the students who get the most "bang for their buck" are the ones who also maximize their opportunities outside the classroom.

Ease of Conversation: The Cornerstone of Networking

By: Olga Statz

Refinement of conversation is an essential element of networking. The good news is that conversation is an art, and like all arts, it can be learned. First, let’s determine what networking is not. It is not descending on your cocktail party convives, lips ablaze with boastings and blusterings about yourself followed by insincere and patently manipulative emails the next day. No one likes to be “talked at” or used, therefore such behavior will get you nowhere. So how then, should you do it? How do you lay the groundwork for the friendships and professional associations that will help you progress in your life and your career? How do you network? The initial ingredient to successful networking is congenial, intelligent, and respectful conversation. Notice that I did not say “dazzling, scintillating, and brilliant” conversation. I said instead “congenial, intelligent, and respectful conversation,” which is fully within the power of the average person to achieve.  

The Importance of Following Recent Developments in Your Field

By: Kandice Thorn

Most LL.M. students join the program in order to gain expertise in something, to make strides forward career-wise.  The LL.M. allows you to delve academically into your field of interest and to analyze many of the complexities and nuances involved in an area of study. 

But in order to truly become an expert, you must go beyond what you learn in the classroom to keep up with the most exciting new developments in your field.  In any field of study, there will be countless blogs, news feeds, twitter feeds, and more devoted to tracking new developments.  Ask your professors or networking contacts which are the most important ones to follow and start following them daily. 

At interviews or networking events, you'll have interesting topics to discuss, and you'll come across as someone who is engaged, proactive, and enthusiastic.  Remember that experts are not born that way - expertise comes from immersing oneself in a field of study, and going beyond just classroom learning.  The LL.M. provides an excellent platform for you to make strides, but you must take the initiative to move beyond classroom learning to become an expert.

Externship/Internship Performance: Be Curious and "Loud"

By: Sindy Ding-Voorhees

This week we are pleased to present the second of three posts by guest blogger, Sindy Ding-Voorhees.  Sindy graduated from Fordham's LL.M. program in Intellectual Property and Information Technology in 2013 and has since been working as an Intellectual Property attorney in New York and Washington D.C.  She wrote this series of three articles to share her experiences and advice with our incoming LL.M. students.  This week, she addresses how to succeed in an internship/externship.  We are grateful for her contribution!

A primary goal in any internship is to complete your part of the job, diligently and actively. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you do it all by yourself, sit quietly in front of your computer throughout all your hours. You can be a hard worker as well as a great team player who is able to optimize workload, think outside the box and ASK QUESTIONS (don’t be afraid!). A smart intern will not only complete what s/he is supposed to do, but will also be CURIOUS about the other parts of the work.

                                                                                                                                          

Here is my real experience when I worked at Coach, Inc. during the first semester of my LL.M. year. Each intern was assigned a certain amount of work doing online intellectual property monitoring and enforcement. It was actually a pretty sweet position because we worked closely with the senior counsels and the General Counsel. 

Speak Up During the Year of Your LL.M.

By: Sindy Ding-Voorhees

This week we have a guest blogger, Sindy Ding-Voorhees.  Sindy graduated from Fordham's LL.M. program in Intellectual Property and Information Technology in 2013 and has since been working as an Intellectual Property attorney in New York and Washington D.C.  She wrote this blog post to share her experiences and advice with our incoming LL.M. students.  We are grateful for her contribution!

An LL.M. program for most non-U.S. candidates is something with multiple purposes. First and foremost, it is an intensive one-year long program of study covering various American substantive legal subjects. It also provides an almost exclusively English-speaking environment, which is a first for many people. Most importantly, an open, mingle-cultured (both legally and socially) society is right there, waiting to embrace you, whether or not you are prepared for it. 

I am a foreign-trained lawyer who recently graduated from the LL.M. program at Fordham Law, which is located in midtown Manhattan near Columbus Circle—not a very quiet place! In this article, I will share my experience and give you some tips on what you, as an international student, need to do to make your year the most rewarding.

How Formal Should My Email Correspondence Be?

By: Kandice Thorn

Not so long ago, in my first office job working at a travel agency in Tigard, Oregon, I sat at a large desk with a very clunky computer.  I used the computer primarily for searching for and booking flights and hotel reservations (Expedia did not yet exist).  We also had a large printer that was only used for printing airline tickets, which we would deliver to our clients all over Portland (paperless tickets also did not yet exist).  And before delivering those tickets, I would frequently turn to another machine on my desk to produce a cover letter: a typewriter. 

The Importance of Building a Strong Reputation

By: Kandice Thorn

In the job search, we focus a great deal of attention on networking and making connections.  In this context, we often mention the importance of making a good impression.  But rarely do we take that a step further to talk about the importance of building your reputation.

Preparing for an Interview? Practice Your Elevator Pitch!

By: Kandice Thorn

At the end of this month, dozens of Fordham LL.M. students will participate in the International Student Interview Program (ISIP), an annual job fair that brings together LL.M. students and employers from around the world.  For students who will be participating in interviews, a little bit of advance preparation will be crucial.  In this article, I will focus on what I consider to be the hardest interview question: "Tell me about yourself."

This question is the cue to launch into your "elevator pitch."

Making a Positive First Impression

By: Kandice Thorn

A few weeks ago, I wrote that your resume must make a positive impression on a viewer in about six seconds.  Similarly, when you meet someone in person you have a very short time in which to make a positive first impression.

A first impression is developed very quickly and takes an excruciatingly long time to change once it is formed.  Unfortunately, when you are networking or looking for a job, you don't have the luxury of taking the time to correct a negative impression - your first impression has to count.  The good news is that a positive first impression can stick just as well as a negative one.

Here are a few tips for making a positive first impression:

Engage Your Senses for Powerful Proofreading

By: Kandice Thorn

I am constantly emphasizing the importance of a *PERFECT* resume and cover letter, and today I'm going to give you a powerful tool to help you get there: using your senses.

Obviously, I am not suggesting that tasting or smelling your resume will bring it to the next level - that would be gross and creepy and ultimately useless.  But here is how engaging your senses of touch, sight, and hearing can help you make your document perfect.

Your First Networking Event

By: Kandice Thorn

I have been approached by several students recently who were preparing to attend their first networking events. I'm using the term "networking events" to broadly refer to conferences, panel discussions, "meet and greet" events, or anything else that will attract professionals with whom you may want to build a professional relationship.

¿Como se dice? Language and the Job Search

By: Kandice Thorn

Doctors have instruments; engineers have numbers and stuff (or so I'm told); lawyers have language.  For a practicing lawyer, facility with language is not just a plus, it is a requirement.  For non-native-English-speaking LL.M. students who will be searching for jobs in the U.S., this means that getting up to speed on the language is of the utmost importance.

Fortunately, the LL.M. program provides tremendous opportunities for you to improve both your oral and written communication skills in English.  Here are five things you can do to improve your English quickly:

Preparation is Key for Interviewing (So Start Now!)

By: Kandice Thorn

Imagine the following scenario: You are sitting at home one day studying, when your phone rings. You don't recognize the number, but you pick it up and on the other end is a recruiter from a law firm to whom you had sent your resume. "We liked your resume and we would like to bring you in for an interview. How about Thursday?" the voice on the other end asks. "Of course, Thursday is great!" you reply enthusiastically. You work out the details and you hang up. At first you are elated, but after a moment the panic sets in. You realize you only have two days to prepare for the interview and you have no clue what you're doing.

Over the next two days, you scramble to pull together the right outfit, figure out how to respond to common interview questions, research the firm, etc. You go into the interview a bit frazzled, and the interview goes okay, but you know you could have done much better if you had more time to prepare. Still, they only gave you two days notice for the interview - there's nothing you could have done, right? Wrong! Below are a few concrete steps you can take now so you will be prepared when you get that call.

Practical Tips for a Successful Skype Interview

By: Kandice Thorn

"Can you hear me now?"

When I was a kid, my dad had a car phone. Not a cell phone, a car phone with the handset attached to the fixed base with a long spiral cord. To eight-year-old me, it was incredible. This was before even cordless phones had become commonplace, and now I could call my best friend from my dad's truck. The only catch was that it frequently took 3-4 tries for the call to be connected, and once connected, I couldn't actually hear the person on the other end (or they could not hear me). Never mind that - to me it was the coolest thing ever.

Fast forward a few decades. The iPhone is a vast improvement over my dad's old car phone, and the latest technology today is video calling with programs like Facetime and Skype. Yet frequently when I use these programs I feel like I am back in my dad's truck in 1987. The call quality can be atrocious, calls are often dropped, and I sometimes find myself shouting "Can you hear me?" at my computer monitor.

Nevertheless, employers have embraced this new technology as a way of screening potential candidates without paying for costly plane tickets. This means that job seekers, particularly those who are looking for jobs remotely, must embrace this technology in the job-search realm too. The following tips will help make your Skype interviews as successful and glitch-free as possible and will make your interview feel less like 1987 and more like 2025.

One Question You Should Always Ask in a Job Interview

By: Kandice Thorn

Students frequently ask me when is the appropriate time to follow up after a job interview.  This is a very good question - follow up is important.  It is always good to put yourself back in their minds and reiterate your interest in the position.  But you need not wonder when to do this - you just need to ask the right question in the interview!

Wanna, Gonna

By: Kandice Thorn

Over the years that I have worked with international students and non-native English speakers, I have noticed over and over again people using the words like "wanna" and "gonna" in their email correspondence.  This phenomenon has confounded me for a while, so I decided recently to do some digging to see why so many international students use these words.

When It Comes to Networking, Use What You Have

Networking isn't solely an exercise in chatting people up at cocktail receptions or academic conferences. Networking can come in many forms; you may have already established networking channels without having realized it. The environment you create for yourself – be they in the classroom, study groups, the workplace, or other extracurricular settings – can provide the potential space to compare notes and explore opportunities. Although it is always important to remain vigilant for new networking prospects, taking a “use what you have” mentality towards networking can help you establish a base, and lead you to realize that networking doesn't have to be an extremely daunting project. Many networks endemic to the basic elements of your educational experience – especially in the classroom – may go unnoticed and unexplored.

Deadlines

Higher education presents a time wherein academic and professional responsibilities are no longer mutually exclusive. Internships, practical experience, classes, conferences, and journals are all relevant to establishing yourself. These discrete components of education and employment may have different benefits for your career, but they all have one thing in common: a time frame. Deadlines are a crucial component of nearly every aspect of academic and professional life. Although deadlines are occasionally flexible, students and professionals negatively impact both themselves and others when they do not submit a paper, hand in a résumé, or RSVP for an important event in a timely manner. A few things to consider when dealing with a deadline:

How to Respond to an Email

By: Kandice Thorn

This may seem like a very rudimentary topic for a blog post, but I see (and, yes, occasionally even make) enough mistakes in this area that I think it is worth the reminder. In professional settings these days, email is our go-to mode of communication, whether we are setting up meetings, negotiating contracts, or applying for jobs. Thus, it is extremely important that our email communication always be professional, concise, and clear.

This post addresses common mistakes that people make when they respond to an email or email chain. You can use this list as a checklist until the concepts become habitual for you.

Facebook Follies

By: Kandice Thorn

As Google searches become a routine aspect of the interview process, it has become crucial for job seekers to know and control what information employers will be able to access about you.  In particular, Facebook profiles seem to land a lot of candidates in hot water - virtually everyone has a Facebook account, and Facebook's ever-shifting privacy policies make your "private" information difficult to control.  In this post, I will discuss some common "Facebook Follies," and then I will discuss how you can avoid them.