Advice from the Lawlorn
Well meaning lawyers (who also make hiring decisions) may attempt to tell you that upon graduation you should take a job in an any practice area so that you can start gaining experience. When these same lawyers are asked whether or not they would hire someone with six months of personal injury experience for an Intellectual Property associate position, their response is no because 1) they don't look favorably on you leaving a job you just started and 2) you're experience is in an unrelated field.
Why the conflicting advice. Probably because they never thought it through before. Before soliciting advice from anyone make sure you get an idea of their background and whether they were confronted with any difficult decisions so that you can understand their responses in context. I'm always one for soliciting the advice of others, but I'm also one for always doing things my way.
My first full-time gig did not come until nine months after graduation and in all that time I had to defend my position as to why I was unemployed and why I would not look for work outside of Intellectual Property. These jobs are not easy to come by... case in point Professor William Patry, one of the pre-eminent copyright scholars, spent three years toiling in Texas on non-ip related cases before someone finally hired him to do IP in DC. My point is simply that no one is going to be able to tell you what to do, you're going to have to figure it out for yourself. [inspired by this and this]
Why the conflicting advice. Probably because they never thought it through before. Before soliciting advice from anyone make sure you get an idea of their background and whether they were confronted with any difficult decisions so that you can understand their responses in context. I'm always one for soliciting the advice of others, but I'm also one for always doing things my way.
My first full-time gig did not come until nine months after graduation and in all that time I had to defend my position as to why I was unemployed and why I would not look for work outside of Intellectual Property. These jobs are not easy to come by... case in point Professor William Patry, one of the pre-eminent copyright scholars, spent three years toiling in Texas on non-ip related cases before someone finally hired him to do IP in DC. My point is simply that no one is going to be able to tell you what to do, you're going to have to figure it out for yourself. [inspired by this and this]
