Success (so far) reaching out to alumni

_aisling_

This weekend I sent about 15 emails to alumni of various schools I'm applying to. I'm hoping to gain some advice from them and maybe a pearl or two that I can use in my Why X essays.

I've gotten six responses already, which is more that I expected to receive! Everyone so far has been very warm and willing to get on the phone with me for 20 minutes, so I have a bunch of interviews coming up in the next few days!

Because my outreach has been pretty successful (so far) and because I was really nervous about doing it, I wanted to post my process here, in case a step-by-step guide might help assuage anyone else's nerves.

Here's what I did:

1) On LinkedIn, searched for the law school itself

2) Visited their alumni list

3) Narrowed the list by geography: I chose to see only those who work in the city I plan to work in after graduation (side note: three of my schools had 0 alumni listed as living in my city of choice, so that's food for thought)

4) Narrowed it further by selecting only the alumni who listed law firms as their employer (rather than government, etc).

5) Made a list of the recent graduates

6) Googled them to learn about their firm and what kinds of projects they work on

Bonus: I had originally intended to message folks on LinkedIn, but I realized as I began to google the alumni that most of their firms listed each attorney's email address publicly. So I emailed them instead!

Hope this is helpful!