Five Law Student LinkedIn Profile Tips

Five Law Student LinkedIn Profile Tips

Law students looking to land a job should make sure their LinkedIn page is ready for employers. The first thing to do is to fill out your entire LinkedIn page. Don’t leave any space blank. The more thorough your LinkedIn page is, the more likely it is to connect with a protentional employer. Read further for our law student LinkedIn profile tips!

Five Law Student LinkedIn Profile Tips

Once your law student LinkedIn page is completely filled out, go back and make sure these five items look clean and professional for legal employers:

1. Make sure you have an up-to-date photo.

Using a photo that may look nice but is out of date does not give employers an accurate picture of the person they want to hire. If your photo is clearly from high school, but you are now in law school, employers will either think that something is wrong or that you don’t care enough to update your photo.

If you don’t have any photo, then you LinkedIn looks incomplete and shows employers that you are not ready for hiring.

When choosing a photo, try to find one of you professionally dressed, rather than in street clothes. LinkedIn is not a social media page, so this photo will likely not be one you pull off of Facebook.

2. Title yourself appropriately.

The title under your photo should be specific enough to describe you currently, while also including key search terms for potential employers. Instead of listing your title as simply “law student,” you should include other information in the title, such as:

• The name of your law school.
• Any positions you hold on law-school related activities, such as “assistant editor of the law review.”
• Your year in law school.
• Your expected graduation month and year.
• Any awards you have won.
• What type of job you are looking for, for example, “seeking summer legal internship in Michigan.”
• Any position you currently hold outside of school, preferably a legal job, such as “law clerk for judge… .”

Put your most current, and important, title upfront because it is the first thing employers see on your page.

3. Include all experiences.

How much of your past legal and non-legal experiences to include on your LinkedIn page is a personal choice. Certainly, all relevant legal positions should be on your LinkedIn if you are hoping to find a legal job.

If it is a non-legal position that may be relevant to finding connections, or that employers may find interesting, include it! If the job explains a blank space in your work history, that may be another reason to include a non-relevant job.

4. Don’t be too casual.

LinkedIn is not the same as other forms of social media and law students should not use it that way. Do not use any conjunctions or shorthand, and make sure to check over spelling. Nothing will stand out more than a big spelling mistake.

In describing your work experiences, use a professional tone and discuss how you excelled and/or what you gained from each job.

5. Connect!

The purpose of LinkedIn is to make connections! First, find all your law school classmates and connect with them. Then search for more connections, including family and older friends. You can go back as far as high school; any connection could help your career. Also, LinkedIn has an option to follow businesses. So, if there is a firm you have your eyes on, search for them and follow their page to get updates on what’s going on at the firm and any job postings.

However, don’t be too undisciplined about your connections. If you have a million connections and it is clear that you have not met one of them, this could be a red flag to potential employers.

Overall, if done right, LinkedIn can be a useful tool for law students who are searching for a job.

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