The following is an adaptation of advice from Hetal Kushwaha, Founder of Hetal Kushwaha Business Development Services, provided during an AIPLA Corporate Practice Committee Webinar.
Building a rewarding intellectual property career requires developing strategic relationships, managing a reputation, and building professional credibility. Students often assume that these only matter after securing a full-time job. But a static job isn’t a dynamic career. A career starts before graduation yet must be resilient to long-term market challenges. A resilient career that leverages relationships, reputation, and credibility begins during law school.
What is Your Reputation?
A lawyer’s professional reputation exists before they enter the profession and regardless of whether they intentionally shape it. A reputation encompasses how professors, classmates, and internship supervisors experience a student’s work and character. A reputation is an asset that is fundamental for growing a career.
Developing this asset begins by asking: “When someone thinks of me professionally, what three adjectives do I want them to associate with me?” These adjectives are qualities rooted in their daily actions. Students must evaluate whether their daily actions cultivate the desired qualities. Do daily actions align with the desired reputation? A thriving career begins with realigning what a student does to support their reputation.
What are Your Relationships?
Law school is a unique environment to build long-term professional relationships. Personal interaction and the need for help peak during this time. That interaction is a wealth of potential opportunities to give and receive help. Classmates and fellow interns can become future industry colleagues and professors often become lifelong mentors. Students must intentionally cultivate these relationships organically rather than transactionally. Don’t expect an immediate quo from a quantum of quid.
Building professional relationships requires thoughtfulness, personalization, and continuity. Start by listening to colleagues carefully. Is there an attainable solution to a colleague’s problem? Assisting and demonstrating reliability builds goodwill that colleagues remember and reflexively discuss. Law school is an opportunity to plant seeds for long-term professional relationships by attending to people and their needs.
Is Your Reputation Credible with Your Relationships?
Law students must focus on substantive credibility to advance their careers rather than superficial visibility. Optimizing social media metrics or completing a networking circuit fails to demonstrate why a law student is worth hiring. Students build true credibility by contributing to their profession. Contributions are anything that adds value to colleagues. The most valuable contributions demonstrate expertise.
Don’t count attempts at answering Socratic questions, help student and professional groups substantively assist colleagues. Don’t attend every networking event, spend time understanding people and their needs. Successful students actively listen, develop expertise, and reliably complete commitments. Demonstrating expertise and reliability adds professional credibility for growing a successful career.
Will You Have a Resilient Career?
Continuously cultivating reputation and relationships is necessary for a resilient legal career. A comprehensive career strategy merely begins with classroom learning. enduring unexpected industry changes also requires intentionally integrating relationships, reputation, and credibility by contributing to the profession. Students who treat reputation and relationships as strategic assets expand their options for a long rewarding career.