There's more than one website for finding job leads Most students/alumni look to the Law School's job bank, Symplicity, for finding leads to job opportunities. The Career Services Office posts job opportunities it receives from employers on Symplicity. Job seekers can also find postings of Federal Jobs via the USAJobs feature in Symplicity. Hopefully listings in both categories are regularly reviewed so that you can apply for jobs as they become available. However, Symplicity is only the beginning of where job seekers can find job postings. On the Career Services page, at http://www.law.wisc.edu/career/careerlinks.htm, there are many other websites that you can use to find job postings. Some of the ones I regularly point students and alumni to include: www.lawschool.westlaw.com - Westlaw provides free access to national job postings for UW Law students. Click here to access the link. www.wisbar.org - The State Bar of Wisconsin website which lists current legal job openings. www.pslawnet.org - Public interest jobs, including those with government agencies, are listed here. While there is some overlap between USAJobs, this site is limited strictly to legal jobs, making them easier to find. http://cgi2.www.law.umich.edu/_JobNet/ - The public service jobnet at the University of Michigan School of Law. This site also lists public interest and government agency positions. http://www.abanet.org/careercounsel/students.html - The American Bar Association has a website that offers tips for law students on finding jobs and also has links to job posting sites such as Careerbuilder.com. www.jobcentral.com - This is a new website developed for major corporations that carries their listings as well as direct links to the companies' web sites so you can apply for the jobs. The job board has 182 member companies and also acts as a search engine that looks at job listings from 1,400 other companies. The listings are hit or miss and you may end up getting many that you don't want. But common keyword search terms include: summer, associate, law clerk, summer associate, legal, and attorney or law. www.indeed.com and www.simplyhired.com - These two websites are similar in that use search engine technology to gather an aggregate list of job opportunities from a variety of sources such as newspaper classified ads, job boards, corporate sites and trade associations. Use similar search terms to the ones I suggested above to find positions. Using the terms "summer law", I found two positions I had not seen before. One is a summer law intern position at Motorola in Libertyville, IL and a Patent Law Clerk position for Wrigley Jr. Company (yes the one that makes Juicy Fruit and Extra gum) for 2Ls. BIG BIG BIG HINT - Go look at those jobs and apply ASAP if you wanted to do corporate law or are a 2L who fits the following qualifications for Wrigley: The ideal candidate should currently be in their second semester of 2nd year who has successfully completed a patent law class and preferably who has experience in the field of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Process Engineering, Biology, and/or Food Science. The intern will start in late March and work through Summer 2006 with the potential for part time status through the following Fall semester, approx. 20 hours per week during the school year, 40 hours a week during the summer. Scheduling is very flexible. If you need assistance finding job websites or postings for a specific practice area, make an appointment with one of the J.D. Advisors in the Career Services Office. Lastly, if any of the links above don't work, it might just be because of any stray colons or other punctuation marks in the Web URL so just enter in the URL minus the offending mark.
Submitted by Nilesh Patel, Career Advisor on March 3, 2006
This article appears in the categories: Career Services & Student Job Postings
