3 Ways To Leverage AI To Land A Job As A Law Student

With the news that law school applications are up 20.5% over last year, the logical question becomes: How will all these new law students find jobs?

After leading a recent National Association for Law Placement (NALP) workshop for career coaches, firm recruiters, and law students, I have three specific AI-powered recommendations:

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1) Use AI for Legal Career Exploration

With hiring in the federal government and big firms uncertain given the current political and economic environment, it’s critical for incoming students to explore opportunities across the legal labor market.

And while new students may not have a grasp on all the nuances of this market, they can leverage AI tools to explore what’s possible.

Take this prompt, for instance:

I’m a first-year law student with a passion for environmental law. What are 10 specific organizations I can consider for a 1L summer internship?

As you can see, just starting with a little specificity can lead to organizations that may go beyond the usual suspects:

Plus, you can even use more specific prompts to hone your list down:

Generate a stack-ranked table to compare those organizations against my goals: Making an Impact in Latin America, Paying Off My Law School Debts

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2) Use AI for Application Optimization

Once you have a focus on a plum role like the EDF’s competitive legal internships, you’ll want to stand out from your resume to your cover letter – which means really tailoring these materials to the specific role.

Start by leveraging a keyword-focused prompt like the following:

What are the 10 most important keywords I’m missing for the EDF internships in my CV (see attached file) and please provide an example of how I might be able to incorporate them.

Now you have a good sense of what might be holding you back at the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) stage:

Just be sure not to copy-and-paste the example bullets verbatim as AI tends to hallucinate – to say nothing of the fact that you could write a more engaging bullet with your own voice and style.

Finally, when it comes to your cover letter, avoid the temptation to phone it in with a prompt like “Generate a cover letter for the EDF job” since it inevitably leads to generic applications like this:

Recruiters routinely tell me that when they see that same opening gambit of “I am excited to apply for X role at Y organization,” they know instantly that you used AI – and used it in an exceedingly primitive and lazy way (i.e., not exactly rockstar material!).

Instead, use AI to provide a third pair of eyes after your own law school career coach’s with a prompt like the following:

Review my cover letter and suggest 5 specific ways I can improve it to stand out from the pack for a recruiter at EDF.

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3) Use AI for Interview Prep

When the big interview day arrives, don’t squander all your hard-earned momentum by showing up unprepared.

Instead make sure you’re ready to demonstrate the competence and warmth that all employers crave in a great hire.

To ensure that your answers are highly competent, make sure to draw upon a framework like STAR (Situation – Task – Action – Result) to get your stories organized and impactful.

And it turns out that AI is awesome at helping you with this exact framework:

Generate sample STAR answers to the most common interview questions asked for this role based on my CV.

Again, you’ll want to edit these for accuracy and style. But they’re a great way to get started down the road to world-class storytelling.

And then the final step is to focus on delivery. Just like a lawyer prepping for a big trial, you want to make sure that you’re ready to engage your audience. Which means you want to practice with immediate feedback and video preparation.

And it turns out that LinkedIn gives you exactly such a tool for free! Because with Interview Prep you can record yourself, get AI feedback on pitch and filler words, and even share your answer with an insider at the EDF who went to your law school:

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So there you have it: Three AI-powered techniques to stand out in a flood of law school candidates.

Because when the market gets tougher, smart candidates get tougher too.

And I can’t wait to see you succeed out there!