Law School Orgs Give Students Workplace Boost
When Viviana Aldous, ’15, was working as a summer associate at Jenner & Block in Chicago this summer, she found herself drawing on skills she’d developed as the editor-in-chief of the Legal Forum. She had to be able to recognize the little differences in partners’ preferences—their styles, the way they wanted memos submitted—and seamlessly adapt. She had to be mindful of her demeanor and attuned to the needs of those around her.
Fortunately, she had experience managing relationships and identifying the subtleties of individual style.
“A lot of my job on the journal is to manage the staff and the board members, and ensure that we’re doing what we need to be doing in a timely manner. I learned to work with students around their schedules and communicate with them professionally,” she said. “Also, as an editor, you’re working with scholars who have far more training and expertise than you have as a student. So you have to learn how to delicately balance your responsibility as an editor with your duty to preserve a writer’s style and voice and the level of scholarship in the article.”
This isn’t the stuff of classroom learning, but Aldous and other law students say they’ve found it’s every bit as essential to workplace success. Fortunately, the Law School’s associations, journals, and other activities provide valuable opportunities to sharpen skills in interpersonal communication, leadership, time management, team-building, persuasion, networking, and organization.
“You might have someone who is really good at what she does as an attorney, but if she isn’t approachable or professional, that can make all the difference,” Aldous said.
The Law School is already on the forefront of “action skill” development with its new Kapnick Leadership Development Initiative, an innovative program designed to help first-year students develop self-awareness, communication, relationship-building, and other professional chops not taught in traditional classes. Second- and third-year students—many already buzzing about the new program that the class of 2017 participated in during their orientation this fall—say there’s a growing awareness that these skills are critical differentiators in the workplace.
Jackie Newsome, ’15, the immediate past president of the Black Law Students Association, says the communication savvy she honed in BLSA and on a variety of committees and boards helped her excel in her summer jobs at the public defender’s offices in Washington, D.C., and Cook County.
“A big part of public defender work is your skill in communicating with other people, especially people who don’t agree with you for various reasons: prosecutors, judges, even your clients who don’t yet trust you. I used a lot of the skills I developed on those boards to navigate the different relationships and expectations,” Newsome said. “When I started at Cook County, I had a 711 student license, and I went into the bullpen the first day, and I had to project competence. That is something that you learn to do in a leadership role. There are people who are looking to you for answers, and you have to be able to provide that, even if you’re unsure at first yourself.”
Casen Ross, ’15, gained valuable experience when he booked Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL) to speak on immigration reform at an American Constitution Society event at the Law School last winter. He found a “warm” connection to the congressman’s office, then worked with schedulers to find a date. He had to be strategic, well-informed, and persuasive; he needed to think about the visit from the congressman’s point of view.
“I needed to know where the House was going to be on various immigration issues—there were points when immigration issues were more salient and in the news—and pivot the conversation in that direction so that he would be able to visit the school at a time that was mutually advantageous,” he said.
Spring Break of Service, which Ross spent at the public defender’s office in New Orleans, gave him a different kind of real-world experience: the opportunity to see the challenges public defenders face, as well as the ways in which “law manifests itself in real life.”
All this boosted his confidence, perspective, and professionalism as he headed into summer jobs at the U.S. Department of State and at the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York.
“I was able to network with the attorneys, and talk to them in a professional way about what they’re doing and get a stronger sense for how that aligns with my professional interests,” Ross said. “Communicating with people who aren’t law students helps develop those skills, and makes you more comfortable.”
Student activities also offer valuable lessons in group dynamics and hierarchy, said Kara Ingelhart, 
’15, a past president of OutLaw who worked last summer as a law fellow at the National LGBTQ Task Force in Washington, D.C. and as a summer associate in the intellectual property litigation department at Foley & Lardner in Chicago.
“When you’re the president of a student organization, you have to be aware of everyone else’s role because you have to direct the treasurer, and the events coordinator, and the social chair, and the admissions outreach person. In order to delegate, you have to know what you’re delegating,” said Ingelhart, who also learned a lot working with Law School administrators on the Dean of Students’ Advisory Board and the Student Admissions Committee. “I really honed my networking skills, and learned to work with people who are senior to me—approaching them with respect and clarity.”
Regardless of their extracurricular involvement, though, Chicago Law students have a built-in advantage when it comes to developing interpersonal skills, said Robert Catmull, ’15, who worked last summer at O'Melveny & Myers in its entertainment litigation department in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Century City, and at litigation boutique Butler Rubin Saltarelli & Boyd in Chicago.
“Because we have such a small class size, you really have to interact with everyone in your class,” said Catmull, who is involved with several activities, including the Latino/a Law Students Association and the Law Students Association. “There are people here who I get along with well but I don’t agree with politically or ideologically. Understanding how to maintain a positive relationship with people who I otherwise might not interact with is something that has definitely helped me. I value those relationships, and I enjoy the different ideas. That’s something that I will carry all through life.”