 Hello and welcome to the School of Library and Information Science Career Colloquia session. My name is Jill Klees and I'm the SJSU Career Center liaison to SLIS. I'd like to thank you for joining me tonight because we have the great pleasure of having two law librarians with us. So let's get started. Our first presenter is Camille Reynolds. So take it away, Camille. Great. Thank you so much. And thanks everyone for joining us tonight. Well, one of the biggest myths I would love to dispel right now is you don't need a law degree to be a law librarian. Neither Leanna nor myself have a law degree. So we'll get that one right out of the way. So on the slide right now, you is a quote from one of the leading thought leaders in law firm Future. He's sometimes called a legal futurist. Yes, they have those. And I wanted to start out with this quote because I think even though it's talking specifically about law firms, it's very relevant to all kinds of law libraries, including private law firms, courts, public county law libraries, and law schools, academic law libraries. So let's dive right in. So as we are discussing job hunting tips and related topics today, please keep this quote in mind. How are the skills you have now and are gaining through your work at SLIS directly apply to this vision of opportunity in law firms, legal academies, and court and public law libraries? While this talks specifically about law firms, many of the same lessons apply. Just Google legal crisis, law school crisis, or court crisis, and you will get many, many very recent articles about how the sky is falling in all three of these sectors. Now, I caution everyone just like we see lots of articles out there about how the future of librarianship is also difficult, you know, take all those with a grain of salt. Within crisis, there's often many, many opportunities and that's certainly the case in this area. So now, Leon is going to give us a little more insight into this slide and move us on to the next one. Thanks, Camille, and thank you everyone for joining us tonight. My name's Leanna Juliano and I am Information Resource Manager at a law firm based out of Los Angeles. I wanted to share why we actually chose to use this slide first in case, you know, you were kind of wondering, gosh, why are they, you know, focusing so much on law librarianship in terms of law firms? But we really wanted to help you understand how to look beyond the norm when you're looking for job opportunities. The profession is changing so quickly, so frequently, and most of that is in a really, really great way. And it's important for everyone to be aware of those changes so that you can jump on board and, you know, seize an opportunity when it comes up. So this is what we're going to talk about tonight. And we're going to do a bit of back and forth, like Leon and I just did. So bear with us as we get the hang of pushing the buttons. And I should have stated as well, I've done a little more intro on myself, so apologies. My name is Camille Reynolds. I'm the Director of Risk Management and Information Services at Fenwick and West here in Mountain View. And like Liana, I've worked in law firms, but I've also worked in academic libraries and also worked outside of a traditional library structure. So we'll be talking about a lot of those kinds of things today. So what we're going to talk about today is being more than just a joiner, meaning joining professional associations, student groups, and even community volunteering can give you important skills and connections that will help you in your job hent. Every interaction can have an impact. And frankly, it's often those interactions that you really don't think much about. Sometimes come back to have the biggest impact for you. Next, we're going to talk about even though all of you are in quote-unquote library school, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be working in a library and that's okay. There are a lot of opportunities out there, as you saw in that first slide, for knowledge workers working within a traditional library structure as well as working outside of it. And we can have an impact on organizations in very positive ways, applying all those good librarian skills that we've learned. And then I took a little poll of staff that I've worked with over the years of things they wished they would have learned in library school and classes they wish would have existed or wish they would have taken advantage of that they didn't. So we'll be sharing some quotes from some of those that have come before you on things they wish they would have done differently. Next, we'll talk about job hunting tips from those who hire and provide you with some concrete advice and tips along with access to law library job lists and things like that. Next, we'll talk about some tips on interviewing, as well as the aftermath or the post interview follow-up. I often get lots of questions when I talk to students or others early in their career about, you know, especially given, you know, this day and age with social media, you know, do you send a thank you note? Do you follow up by phone? You know, what's sort of good follow-up strategy? And finally, we'll give you a few, a list of a few resources of things to follow in what we call law library land. Try saying that fast three times. To stay abreast of a law library trends and thought leaders in the industry both within the legal industry but also within, you know, our own library industry, there's a lot of overlap. So with that, we'll move on to the next slide. So be more than a joiner. Personally, I've probably gotten so much more out of my membership and my volunteer work within library professional associations, including most of the jobs I've gotten have come as a result of either a conversation I had with someone who knows someone who's hiring or name recognition because I sat on a committee and there's lots of opportunities, especially at an early stage in your career to get a lot of good experience in the volunteer ranks of an association and it's not just to get the job. Often, you know, working on a committee or volunteering to help set up a webinar such as this or, you know, professional development or student liaison, you learn a lot of really good skills, things like leadership, things like, you know, working with many different types of people from different organizations and how to move and get things done across, you know, using technology as well as face to face. All of those are wonderful, wonderful skills and often when I'm interviewing candidates, when I see on their resume that they've served either in a, you know, on a committee or in a volunteer role at a professional association, I often, you know, take a second look at that resume and, you know, often that person's going to get a follow up at least a phone screen because that shows both initiative and an understanding that, you know, it's important to be involved and it also is really helpful for expanding your career set and the skill set that you have. When looking at candidates, it can be very helpful for the hiring manager to see those extracurriculars. Associations can help you learn effective leadership and problem solving in an environment that's very similar in many ways to a lot of workplaces. Along with leadership and collaboration skills, you very well may be working with your future boss or co-worker. The connections made in association work can pay dividends throughout your career. An example of this is I relocated from the Midwest about 13 years ago for a job in San Francisco in a law library at a law firm. I didn't know anyone in San Francisco. I didn't know, I knew about NoCal which you'll see the list of various associations up on the slide here but I didn't really know, you know, any of the local librarians in San Francisco and there's a small manager's group that meets monthly in San Francisco of law firm librarians. It's a brown bag lunch and one of the members there called me up, saw me on the NoCal, you know, as a new member, asked if I wanted to join and that connection alone spawned about 10 different co-presenting opportunities with this individual authoring articles and it also really I found someone that can be a professional colleague even though she doesn't work in my firm and that was really beneficial to me and helped me develop my skills further. So never discount the connections that you can make in professional associations above and beyond just getting the job. Often jobs come in many, many different ways. Leana? Thanks Camille. And just to give you guys a little bit of background on Camille and I, we have worked together for many, many years although we aren't currently working together. She was one of the people that actually was instrumental in bringing me into the field of law librarianship and gave me my first professional law librarian job. So this is a great example of networking and working with people and knowing people, how it can lead to so many different things and Camille always likes to say that I'm the poster child for association work because basically I went into library school having absolutely no experience working in a library whatsoever, had never thought about it. Well, okay, I admit I did think about it when I was in doing my undergrad but the thought of continuing on with school was just really too much more than I could bear at that moment. And so I went off and did other things and then, you know, started deciding or thinking that I might want to do something else with my life and at that point it just was very serendipitous that I was introduced to law librarianship and while I was in library school I started joining different organizations and really most of the leadership skills that I developed were from serving on committees of different library associations. There, you know, I learned to work as part of a team, I learned how to manage projects with people who were often scattered across the country and this really, really served me well with my first legal job where my boss, Camille, was in Northern California and I was in Southern California and essentially half of our team was in Northern California and half was in Southern California and so one of my primary or first things that I had to focus on was centralizing the library and how it operated. So having that experience of working with people across the country really helped me a lot and allowed me to be successful with that. And also it really is helpful if you don't have any professional experience under your belt. Like Camille said, managers will often look at work that was done with professional associations. You know, not only does it show that you're actively involved in the profession but it also shows that you're seeking out opportunities to become a leader in the field and that as a manager that's what we're all looking for. So what is it when you get a library degree? Particularly in the legal field. Public and academic institutions are still pretty hierarchical in the law field because there are public law libraries and there are obviously academic law libraries. And when you go into those types of institutions, you usually are, you're hired for a specific role and that's pretty much what you do. But when you go into the private sector, everything's really fair game. You may be hired as a research librarian but you might end up doing contract negotiations, project managing software upgrades, doing market analysis or managing an internet. And that's really what's exciting about being in the private sector. The job is what you make of it. I'm a perfect example of that. My first position at a law firm was as the technical and electronic services librarian. I then went to, my next job was enterprise content manager and finally information manager. That was all within the same firm. So during those years, the department completely reinvented itself to meet the business needs of the firm and we were very successful at that. So successful that both Camille and I were recruited into new positions at different firms where we continue to expand our knowledge. Camille. Yes. And Leana is exactly, there are a lot of opportunities in the private sector and also in the public sector although like Leana said, there is a little more hierarchy and, but I, you know, you also see a lot of very interesting things happening at some law schools, law schools that are partnering with engineering departments to build cooler, better, legal research tools. So there are ways to find those opportunities. And there are a lot of jobs that use our skills. You know, Leana is the poster child for coming into a law librarianship in a very interesting way. And in some ways I follow the similar path. You know, we kind of joke Leana and I that we're sort of the accidental law librarians. And you'll find many people in the field are sort of in the same boat. A, a lot of us didn't know that such a job even existed when we were in library school. And, you know, it can be a really good opportunity for really applying those skills that you're learning. And my biggest piece of advice for, for people at all stages of their career is don't sell yourself short. You're not just a librarian. You're a librarian and that, you can do a lot. Jobs that can use, you know, librarian skills, job titles such as business analysts, market researcher, competitive intelligence analysts, data steward, CRM administrator, business development coordinator, conflicts analyst, risk management specialist. There's many, many more. Just like Leana said, this guy really is the limit. At the firm that Leana and I worked at last, you know, we started out as a library department. And after about 10 years working together when we both left eventually there was a consolidated knowledge management department that included, you know, groups like risk and conflicts and litigation docket. And if you're not familiar with law firms, some of that may sound foreign, but it's basically managing information and giving people information when they need it. And if that isn't the definition of a librarian, I'm not sure what is. Think big. You have highly relevant skill sets and can be a key contributor inside or outside library walls. OK. So we're going to have a little fun with this one. So what I wish I'd learned in library school. So I sent this around to a lot of colleagues and staff on my team. And it was really interesting to see sort of the wide range of responses. You know, the range of experience of the people that I surveyed range from someone that is, you know, less than two years out of his MLIS and he's temping with us in his sort of his first while library job all the way up to someone that has over 20 years experience. So, you know, I tried to get sort of a sampling of different perspectives. A couple of the things that really stood out to me about the things that people wish they would have really honed in on a library school. And I think some of this too is the way organizations are working today are different now than they were even when I was in library school 15 or 16 years ago. Be collaborative. Don't just talk about being collaborative, but actually be collaborative. And, you know, you're learning that working on group projects through your past work in either a previous career or an undergrad, you know, we all have different skills to bring to the table and collaboration isn't about any one person running the show. It's about working together for a common goal. And collaboration really leads to leadership. Often we can get, we can lead and not necessarily lead from behind to, you know, steal from the president's term. But, you know, really lead by example. We can accomplish so much more when we work together and don't get as hung up on, you know, titles or, you know, is this my department's purview or your department's purview, but really look at what business problem or information problem are you trying to solve and how can we all put our best selves forward to solve it. Managing people both up, down and across is very important. That's a skill that I heard over and over again from all of the folks that I surveyed. And it's something that is really important. You don't have to be the C-level executive to be a leader and to affect change. Often the best ideas and some of the most interesting things come from, you know, the folks that are new, who don't know any better, who raise their hand and say, hey, what about this? And often those spark really interesting discussions and solutions that we would have never thought of. Leadership isn't just about being in charge. It's can occur at every level of the organization. So things, you know, to look for in classes and experiences is, you know, how is, you know, how is this helping me be a better leader because, you know, all of you are getting a graduate degree, you know, sort of whether you like it or not at some point you're going to have the opportunity to be a leader no matter what kind of organization you're in. On the class side, a lot of the classes sort of fell into two or three buckets that when I surveyed the group, a lot of, you know, they wished they would have taken more technology classes, you know, things like database management, systems analysis, people management, leadership, as well as, you know, like tech tools advanced, you know, really digging into the technology and being facile with the technology. It's probably the most terrifying thing to be presenting right now and not be able to see the audience. But that's the world we live in and often even in the workplace you're doing really important complicated work over email or over the phone, not face to face. And so there's different communication strategies and different things you can do to accomplish things that you would handle very differently when you're not face to face. So things like, you know, psychology classes, communication workshops, you know, really looking at yourself as holistically and what you can bring to the table and how you can affect change. A couple of the quotes that I found, especially illuminating where this one is from someone who has about 10 plus years out of library school and she's currently doing competitive intelligence. She would have taken more classes on backend technology, you know, networking and, you know, database structure, that kind of thing. I also heard a lot of responses about business classes, government records, data text mining. That's, I noticed that Celest had a lunchtime presentation today on data mining and big data. And that's something everybody is talking about. And in some ways the government side is way ahead as we all know, they're collecting a lot. But, you know, a lot of municipalities and cities are using big data to push forward some really innovative, you know, citizen services, including out of, you know, city attorney's offices and, you know, tracking crime statistics, for instance. That's really interesting work that, you know, if you're interested in going into public service with your degree, you know, there's some really interesting opportunities there for harnessing big data to, you know, for the better good, not necessarily for profit. You know, Leona and I are talking a lot about law firms today because that's mostly our experience, but don't get us wrong. There are a lot of opportunities out there on the government side, on the public side that you can also apply your skills. And my favorite response from someone who's less than five years out of library school is, you know, after many back, you know, we had a very fun afternoon of back and forth emails between all of us, you know, some tongue-in-cheek, some, you know, serious, and what we decided as a group here is we settled on a recipe of two parts MBA, two parts project manager or PMI, one part MLIS, and seven parts ESP. That felt like sort of the right combination of classes and skills for someone going into librarianship. And with that, I'll turn it over to Leona. Thank you. So I actually am a San Jose State alumna, and I wanted to start out with sharing some of the classes that were useful to me once I got out in the real world and was working. And I happened to, as I was going through library school and not really sure of, you know, what I really wanted my end goal to be, where I wanted to end up, you know, I took different types of classes to test out the waters and what I ended up finding as my niche was information architecture. So I focused almost solely, once I discovered it, I focused almost solely on that and did a lot of, you know, web design, web usability, programming. I really enjoyed vocabulary design because although I knew I was probably going to be going into more of a technical electronic field, I knew that the basics of indexing a book are going to be the same as indexing a website. So I found all those classes to be extremely useful and have continued to serve me very well throughout my career. I happen to have an employee who is working with me right now who is in her final semester. She's currently doing the e-portfolio at San Jose State. So I also asked her what she thought were useful classes and she is right now, you know, here and now in the program and just about ready to graduate. She's been working in a law firm environment for the last couple of years. And her responses was, first of all, legal, the 220 legal resources class is a must. She recommended Lampson for any of you out there that are thinking about taking that class. She recommended a copyright class if you can fit it in. She also agreed that everybody should take 240. The web design is not called that anymore, but you guys, I'm sure, all know what I'm talking about, the class I'm talking about. She felt vocabulary design was helpful, data asset management, 266 collection development. She said that that was a very important class, although it didn't focus specifically on special libraries. She said she got a lot out of that class in terms of how to make decisions on what you're purchasing, coming up with policies, et cetera. Another class that she thought was very helpful was 231 issues in special libraries in information centers. With that class, the particular professor that she had, she did, got to do actual field work where she went and worked in the library. So those are some of the classes that, you know, I have found useful and other people who are in the program right now have found useful. And now we're gonna talk a little bit about the job hunt itself. Okay, so the job hunt. I know it can be scary. One great way to sort of get your foot on the door is through tempting, especially in this economic environment. Often public and private sector law libraries will use tempts because often that is coming out of a different budget bucket. And a lot of times firms and, you know, the public sector can find those monies to, you know, they have work, they need help. And it's sort of a lower risk than creating a position if they're not quite sure. So it's a great way to get some real hands-on experience. And agencies that specialize in the legal industry or librarianship can be really wonderful resources. There's others out there. We picked, you know, a few of ones that we've worked with in the past. Since you all are, I know you all may not be in the Bay Area necessarily, but if you are, I do wanna put in a plug for Taylor and Associates. It's a small library focused staffing agency. Catherine Gens is the proprietor and she's very, very knowledgeable about the legal market in the Bay Area. She knows everyone and she also takes the time to really get to know what your goals are and what you're looking for and on the employer side, you know, for myself working with her when I'm looking for attempts or looking for even permanent hires. She also does the same with me and because we've built a long-term relationship over the last, you know, 13 years, she knows what I'm looking for. So she doesn't send me candidates that aren't a good fit and Liana will talk a little bit about fit in a bit, but that's just, you know, your resume, your interview, your experience, all are very important, but a lot of times getting a job comes down to, you know, does all of that plus personality and everything else fit with the organization, with the position, with the team? So there's lots of different factors that go into the hiring decision. Agencies and HUD Hunters can also be good sources for connecting you with other people. Another great source, of course, is LinkedIn. There's lots of LinkedIn groups. In fact, just before we got on tonight, I went on to just my regular LinkedIn feed and there's a job in New York for a recent MLIS grad for a web design at a law firm, for a web design job to echo what Liana was just talking about. And, you know, again, you really, you don't need a law degree to be a law librarian. Academic law libraries do generally require it. So, you know, that is something to be aware of if you are interested in going into working at a law school. They generally will require a JD. Courts sometimes prefer it, but I do know lots of court librarians that don't necessarily have a JD. Law firms, I would say, are probably the least concerned about the JD. There are certainly wonderful law librarians out there that do have a JD along with their MLIS. And then there's lots of folks out there like myself and Liana that don't. You know, I like to joke that not going to law school is the best decision I ever made. That was the path I was on after undergrad and for whatever reason, I decided to take a few years off and never looks back. So, you know, law school isn't for everyone. But there are lots of great opportunities. The other staffing agencies listed here are TRAC. TRAC is a nationwide company as is LAC. So, if you're looking at, you know, more of a nationwide search, those can be helpful. And there's nothing wrong with, you know, getting your resume out and meeting with multiple agencies. Association career boards are also wonderful resources as is LinkedIn and Twitter, of course. And we did double check and all the associations that we posted up on the slide before, their career boards are available to non-members. So, you don't have to be a member to access it. And I'd encourage you to check those career boards, including ILTA, which is the International Legal Technology Association, which I believe we listed on that first slide as well, just to get a flavor of what kind of jobs you're out there and what they look like. That can also be very helpful in working on your resume. Leona? So, I'm going to talk a little bit about looking for a job specifically with a law firm. So, if you see a job posting for a law firm that you think you might want to apply to, I think it's really important for you to take a look at the website for the firm. See what kind of practice areas they cover, what they specialize in, see how many offices they are, how big they are. You're not going to be able to tell how many libraries they have or where the librarians are located necessarily, but you can get a good idea of how the firm practices. And that way when you go into an interview, if you're fortunate enough to get called for one, you'll be able to ask specific questions. And you can also, if perhaps you don't know the resources for a particular practice area, you can bone up on it ahead of time. A lot of times it's just a matter of going to your local law library or looking in a catalog and finding out a couple of the key resources so that maybe you know what the person is talking about. And then what are the skills necessary when you're working in a law firm? And this kind of transcends the slide we were talking about previously on what I wish I learned in library school and then also the job hunt. But it's so important that you have a basic understanding of legal resources. You don't have to know everything about the legal field if you don't have a lot of experience with it ahead of time if you're not already currently working in a law firm environment or a legal environment. But having a basic understanding is really important. And that kind of harks back to the suggestion of taking the legal resources classes, particularly if you're going to be a research librarian. Then it's just, you know, it's paramount that you're able to search the different legal databases. Now if you're going into maybe a tech services position, a web services position, something of that nature, not as important that you know how to research the resources, but just that you have just a general idea of the types of things that the law firms use. And again, you know, the best way to do that is to check out your local public law library there or academic law library because there you can see all the primary resources that most attorneys and librarians are going to be using. And you can learn about the key resources for your states. We've kind of been saying this throughout. You absolutely have to have a solid understanding of technology. There's just absolutely no way to get around it in this day and age. You know, both Camille and I are working in firms where we have actually a very small print collection and the majority of our resources are available electronically. And you know, that brings a whole host of issues with it. You have access issues. You have password issues. You have firewall issues. So really knowing the back end of systems is incredibly helpful. You don't have to be a programmer, but you have to kind of understand. I like to say you have to speak the IT speak. And if you know, if you're going to be an online researcher, you know definitely make sure that you devote some time to conducting online research and getting those skills down. You also have to have really good teaching skills. Not only are you teaching attorneys about how to use resources, but you might be teaching other people in your department. Every law firm is set up differently. Some have really big staff. I'm fortunate right now where I'm working, where I have a large staff underneath me that are focused solely on our print and electronic resources. And then we have a full staff of research librarians that just do research and training. But you know, we're constantly working. The two groups are working with each other on training each other on how to do things. So it's not only the attorneys that you might be training, but you might be training other staff members as well how to use the resources, especially as we continue to move away from print and more online. You know, there tends to be a gap between what the attorneys can do and the librarians can do. And that's a great opportunity for us to really show our worth to the organization, being able to show attorneys how to find things. And you can see when you're working with attorneys, when they have that Eureka moment where they finally get it, and then they're able to do it on their own. It's really pretty satisfactory. Another really important thing, and this doesn't just apply to law firms, but really to any institution you're working at, public, private, academic, anything, is a bone up on your copyright skills and become an expert if you can. It is incredibly difficult to get people to understand that you can't just forward an email from your inbox. You know, it's a very painful conversation to have with the attorneys, but believe me, it is worth the alternative, which is being sued. So understand copyright and be able to talk intelligently with your users, whoever they might be, attorneys, public people, faculty members, so that they understand what the copyright is and why we have it. Another really important skill to have is vendor relations and negotiating. No matter where you work, you're probably going to have to work with vendors on issues, on access, and you're probably going to have to do some negotiating on contracts. So definitely, this is kind of a people skills piece, so if you can take classes that can help you with business processes and understanding the basics of contract negotiation and statistics, that is incredibly helpful. So now we will move on to interviewing. OK, so the interview and the aftermath, sort of tongue-in-cheek, the purpose of this slide and the images I chose was really to show that interviewing today, there's face-to-face interviews, but often your initial interview or initial what we call phone screens are on the phone. And that, in some ways, that can be really difficult, I'll be honest, both for me as the interviewer and I certainly, ironically, I've been on the other side of that, too, as the interviewee. The key in a phone interview is to pick up on cues, be very positive and very clear. And it's hard because you don't have a lot of this non-verbal. So often folks use the phone screen, law firms or academic institutions and courts, we'll use the phone screen to sort of lead out folks looking for that fit again. And then often further rounds of interviews could be done, I've interviewed folks on Skype, we've done video conference interviews, as well as, of course, in person. I would definitely encourage all of you, like Leon has said, to be very facile with the technology, often in a, especially if you're looking at really any type of library position, it's going to be a big detriment if you're able to hop on a Skype interview or be very facile in sort of a video conference. That will impress employers that you have the technology capability. Because just like Leon has said, often the librarians are the ones out there in the trenches. Training our users to use the information that we've purchased for them. And the technology has changed a lot. And something I think all of us take for granted is we're used to bouncing between 50 screens and five different tools. And lawyers aren't. And the publishers haven't quite figured out how to create really good user experience. So it's really up to us as librarians to bridge that gap. With the interview, something I like to say a lot is balance confidence with humility. And that confidence and humility may sound like sort of two things on opposite ends of the spectrum. But it's really important. Of course, you have to be sincere and genuine and have to be your authentic self in the interview. Don't oversell. But be confident, kind of echoing back my comments earlier, of you all have very relevant, sought after skills. And trust me, you do. And those skills, you can match to lots of different kinds of jobs inside libraries and out. Don't be negative in the interview. Yes, there is a lot of bad press about law firms, the legal industry, the legal academy, librarianship in general, spin it. If the interview or the conversation veers to the negative, find an opening for touting, wow, I look at that as an opportunity. Could we do X instead? Employers really like that. They like people that are gonna look for a solution. And that's something to be really aware of. To sort of piggyback on Leana's comment earlier about training and teaching skills, communication skills, that's really important obviously in the interview, but it's important too to research the firm and understand or the court or academic institution and understand what is the overall organizational goals? What are their practices? In the interview, one of my favorite questions that I get often from candidates is, well, what's your biggest challenge you're trying to solve? Where a candidate's asking me as the interviewer that question, that shows that the candidate's aware that they're there to solve a problem and that it's not just about them, that they're a piece of a larger team. And some questions that I ran across actually very recently that I found really useful, questions that you might get asked, so you may wanna think about. Trust me, it was in a Harvard Business Review blog post, so I'm sure every hiring manager out there will be asking these over the next six months. One of them was, what don't you want to be doing five years from now? And that seems sort of like an odd question for an employer to ask in an interview, but asking this question forces an applicant to think on your feet, and it reveals a lot about adaptability. Now think about that for a minute and sort of the implication of that is a lot of the skills that all of you have and are being trained for are for jobs that may not exist yet. The job I have right now didn't exist in its current form when I was in library school. They didn't have this combination of things together. There wasn't a Camille out there, and that's not to say that I'm so wonderful, it's just that the industry is evolving and things are changing very rapidly and you have to be adaptable. Another pretty interesting question that you may be asked is what would you say is the biggest misperception people have of you? And this is sort of an interesting twist on what's your weakness, which frankly I really don't like that question. And top candidates will have a high level of self-awareness and won't have trouble answering this. And the other thing, questions sometimes will have multiple goals. When you're asked a question in an interview, I know it's difficult when you're sitting there sort of on the hot seat, but often the question being asked, the interviewer doesn't really care what your answer is, like the content of the answer, they care about sort of your thought process getting there. And what would you say is your biggest misperception people have of you? This will also show the candidate that you also have an understanding that perception is reality in many cases and may already have a plan to address it. And that's where communication skills come in. As we all know throughout all of our lives, perception is reality. It may not be our personal truth, but we all have to deal with other people's perceptions of us, our work, our teams. And so it's really important to be self-aware and to be aware of everyone around you and how perception plays into teamwork and accomplishing goals. It's also very important to, like Liana said, bone up on the firm and the job. And it goes beyond just being prepared and showing interest. If you do that background research, you're often in the interview gonna be able to understand and read between the lines of the questions and possibly even offer potential solutions. And that's sort of the nirvana in an interview as a hiring manager is when a candidate can show that they have a basic understanding of a particular issue and offer up a potential solution or even the beginning of a kernel of an idea of a potential solution. It shows the ability to think on their feet, to connect dots, as well as really good listening skills when they don't have all the background. You as candidates should ask a lot of questions, things like how does the team work? You know, what's the team's structure? What do you expect from this position in both the short-term and long-term? Or, and maybe another way to ask it is what is your vision for this position? You know, what are the companies, you know, one in five-year plans? And then the aftermath part of the interview is in some ways just as important as the interview. It's not follow-up. Seize on something that was said in the interview. You know, if in the interview the hiring manager, you know, talked about a particular problem or a particular project that they were working on, you know, if you find an article relevant to that, it's meaningful that maybe, you know, provide some insight where you can show that you get what they're dealing with and, oh, by the way, this article has this really interesting, you know, analysis of the similar problem. Would this be helpful? You know, this is how I would, you know, approach this problem. Here's some additional information. That can be, that can really impress, you know, the hiring managers because it shows, one, you're very interested in the position and you've taken the time to sort of do some additional homework. Two, it shows, you know, based on the content of what you sent, you know, just sending a link and saying, hey, I saw this. Isn't that neat? That's not going to do it. But going that step further of tying it directly to something that was discussed in the interview shows a lot of good skills. It shows, you know, both you did your homework and the follow-up, but also really good communication skills and problem-solving skills, as well as collaboration. You're trying to help them solve a problem, not just sell yourself. Now, we all know you're trying to sell yourself and that's exactly what you're doing, but you're also helping them. And you're showing, you know, you're giving sort of a real-world example of your work. I'd also say, you know, I sort of have gone back and forth myself on the usefulness of, you know, bringing sort of a work portfolio to an interview. You know, I haven't seen a lot of them as a hiring manager, I'll be honest. But I did use it. I used some, you know, examples of work that I'd done in the past to get my current, when I was interviewing for my current job. And I do think it really helped because I was able to tie my experience directly to projects that were similar to the projects that, you know, the job contained. So beyond my resume, beyond my answers in the interview, they actually were able to see concrete work. Now, in law firms, that can be tricky. You know, I had to sanitize my portfolio, remove any real information about clients and things, but it can be done, you know, the beauty of Adobe, right, you can Photoshop anything. So, you know, don't let that scare you off. Certainly, it can be a very helpful supplement to the interview and the follow-up process. Liana? So we've been talking a lot about your skill set and how important that is, and that's going to definitely get you to the initial interview. But after that, a lot of it is really going to depend on fit. When I'm interviewing candidates, I want to know that they're going to be able to work well with the rest of my team. You know, if I have a group of extremely outgoing staff, it might, it's probably not going to work for me to hire somebody who's really quiet and shy. They're not going to be comfortable, the rest of the team's not going to be comfortable, and what's going to end up happening is that everybody's unhappy, and what that's going to do is stunt the teamwork and lead to a decline in productivity and productivity. So it's really, a lot of actually getting the job is going to depend on how you get along with that person. I am firmly convinced that one of the main reasons that I got the job I currently have is due to a particular project that I worked on at my previous firm, which has absolutely nothing to do with the library world. But I think it was the one thing that really is what stood out to my current boss. So you never know what is going to, you know, what somebody who's interviewing you is going to pick up on. I also, when I was interviewing for this job, you know, I went to Camille after I did the first interview and I said, you know, I think this is going to be a really good fit for me. What can I do to really make myself a more viable candidate? And she recommended exactly what she just said to you guys about if it's possible to bring some more product to the interview. So when I was lucky enough to get my second interview, that's exactly what I did. And I'm pretty sure that that was the tipping point. The person, my current boss, but the time she was my, the interviewer, she was so impressed that I had done that because it, what I brought totally applied to what they were looking to accomplish. So it showed that I had skills in that particular field able to do what they were, exactly what they were looking for. So fit is a huge thing. Personality is a huge thing. And just like, you know, I might be looking for a good fit. For my team, you need to look for what's a good fit for you as well. If you go to the interview and you just absolutely aren't feeling it, you know, maybe it's not going to be a good option for you, you have to work with that person day in and day out. So you don't want to be going into a situation that's essentially going to set everyone up for failure. So think about that as well when you are going on the interview process. You know, I'm fairly new to this new job. I've only been here about four months. So this is all very fresh in my mind. But one of the things that I knew within 10 minutes of talking to the person that we were an absolutely perfect fit. I knew we were going to work well together, that we were going to be incredibly productive and get a lot done because we were very similar in mindset, had the same types of goals, had the same types of experience. Like I said, this one particular tool that is specific to law firms called Interaction was that was something that tied us together because my boss had come from the marketing department which is where the tool is normally used. She had been in charge of it when she was in the marketing department. And so she knew that if I knew Interaction, we were going to be speaking the same language essentially. So fit is a huge, huge part of the picture and certainly don't downplay it and don't sell yourself short if you don't feel like a particular job is going to be a good fit for you, walk away if you can. Like I said, neither of you will be happy in the long run. Okay. So we're getting close to running out of time and we want to give time for questions. So we'll go through this pretty quickly. On the slide here and, you know, we'll of course be posted later are a few, this is not an exhaustive list, but a few places to start for readings in law library land. Above and beyond KM is a blog by an attorney who does KM work but lots of good information there. Three geeks in a law blog is great. It's, again, a lot of these are firm focused. I will state, although some are coming out of law schools, Furmer Ground is a joint venture between SLA, AALL and the Canadian Association of Law Libraries and possibly one other professional association who I've forgotten and that's also a great venue. I gave an example of a law firm library that's on Twitter. There are lots of them and the reason I gave a shout out to Brian Cave is they maintain a law library and on Twitter list. That's a great one to check out and follow and for seeing what's going on. And then finally the legal futurists and there's a lot of those around. Michigan State University has what they call the re-invent law lab and I'd really encourage you to check out the website just to get a flavor of sort of what the industry might look like 10 years from now. Stanford also has the legal informatics codex which is a similar type of structure. And finally Jordan Furlong at Law 21 is a blog that talks a lot about law firms but also about they do a lot about the future of the legal industry so it does touch on courts and academic as well. Next slide. Sorry, no worries. I was worried we wouldn't have enough to fill up the time. So with that we want to thank you guys and we can certainly open it up for questions now. We have our contact information here and Leana did you want to do your wrap up? So the one takeaway I hope that you guys get from this session is that the skills you've learned both in school and on the job can be applied to many jobs outside of librarianship. Don't be afraid by job titles that you might be unfamiliar with. If you don't know what something is, Google it and see if you can adapt the skills you already have to fit the job. There are a lot of really neat jobs out there that might not have the word librarian in them. Don't be afraid to apply for them. Yes and in addition to looking beyond traditional roles, don't try to change yourself. Like Leana said, the skills you have and are obtaining in your school, in your graduate work as well as your previous work experience inside and outside of libraries is very transferable. And frankly a lot of the positions that you all will be well suited for may not even exist or just in the beginning stages. So the future is very bright if you have the courage to seize it and the fact that you've taken time out to listen to us shows that you are very interested. So there's lots of great opportunities out there. And with that we'll turn it over for questions. I can have a trouble understanding of legalese as it were. Do they help you get it when they hire you at a law firm? Because that's something I would worry about personally. That's what I was just wondering about. Yeah, Leana do you want to take that one or you want me to? Sure I can take it. So I think legalese is something that you can certainly learn on the job. I actually went into my first law firm job with not having a ton of law library experience. I did have a little bit of experience with the legal field. But you know I didn't really know the ins and outs and I certainly was able to learn it. I think it's definitely a very learnable thing and not something that should keep you from applying for a job. Yeah I'd agree with that. I think if you want to be honest it depends on the type of job if you're going for a patent research specialist and you don't know anything about patents then yeah that's probably not a good idea. But general knowledge of the way the law is structured and you know think of your high school government class. You know that kind of level of understanding and as well as the intellectual curiosity to dig further into the areas that you're you know the place you're applying for is in you know is you can manage it. Do we have another question? There's a couple more questions where they could pick up the mic but there's one on chat that's asking if paralegal training would be useful. Yes I would say I'm not telling you all the run out and be a paralegal but if you have that experience or you know that would be a great way to get that legal knowledge. It certainly wouldn't hurt you and for certain kinds of jobs it could be very very beneficial so that would be a great great thing. Hi let me know if you can hear me okay but I had two questions. The first one is I've worked in the legal field for a long time and going to transition into hopefully a librarian position. I've been working as paralegal and then library assistant for a long time. Is there any particular type of research that you would have liked to see in a job applicant that when you look for a job applicant for a brand new librarian is there anything in particular that you think that they should have experience or you'd like them to have experience doing? And then my second question was you mentioned about work product and showing that interview. I was trying to can you elaborate a little bit more? I was just kind of trying to picture what could be shown without having issues you know due to showing anything that wouldn't be improper. Thanks. Sure. Leanna do you want to take, I can take the second one. Since you have legal research background I think you're better taking the first one. You're well positioned let me tell you with paralegal and library assistant already in a law firm. I don't know about you Leanna I can't think of anything specifically I'd want to see from you know other than obviously the technology skills and you know some budget knowledge might be helpful but you've got the legal stuff down so that's wonderful. Yeah I would agree and in terms of showing work product in our cases we were both moving into kind of technology type jobs and so we were able to show slides of software that we had worked on and developed and it was fairly easy to strip out anything that might be worrisome I think you know probably in your case for those of you who are getting close to graduating perhaps something that you've done in your e-portfolio that way you would avoid that whole situation altogether. Yeah and don't be afraid you know I work at a Silicon Valley law firm that's very high tech and I you know I came to the interview with my slides on an iPad and showed it to them and then but I also had printouts and actually I found the printouts were easier because I was able to sit there and kind of flip through them with the interviewer and what I did was I heavily redacted it and that's okay. You know they understand that you can't show you know I could show a screenshot of our intranet but I had to redact any mentions of clients or attorneys or anything else but they could see the structure and that's what I was that was the story I was telling or you know I re-engineered a process and I showed them the process map that I built which frankly had nothing that was secret so I didn't have to redact that. So you know they they'll expect the redacting and in fact if you don't that would cause them concern. I see we have a question regarding whether the qualifications for law firms and courts is the same as in Canada as in California or in the United States and I actually don't know the answer to that question. Yeah I can actually I know for I can't speak to the courts but I know for firms in Canada generally it's very similar although I have noticed a lot of my colleagues in Canada do also have a JD but if you're in Canada I would ask around you know talk to someone through call on the Canadian Law Library Association and they they could direct you. Okay well it's two parts my first is regarding a discrimination for example one comment tactic is they ask for your social security number on the application so like it's a screening tactic and you can't really even get your foot in the door so my question is how would you deal with that and then my second question is I do follow blogs and tech news and trends etc as you mentioned on the on the lecture and there's two trends that are of concern regarding like for example being a librarian in the private sector which is outsourcing of legal research to technicians in India because over there all they need is four years or two years for a law degree and of course they only get paid about seven or eight dollars an hour compared to paying someone forty to fifty thousand dollars a year here and the second one is is I don't know if you ever seen that show Jeopardy but they had a computer on called Watson that won the Jeopardy show and I've already done some research on Watson and apparently what IBM who developed it is the way they're selling it is they're selling it this way instead of hiring that first year associate or that legal research librarian you just hire Watson for zero salary zero benefits so those seem to be two trends that are going on and I'm wondering how would you suggest job candidates deal with that and with age discrimination thank you for any assistance in there. Well as a hiring manager I don't even see any of that information at all in the private sector generally we're just getting resumes we're not even getting applications until you're all already to the point that you're you've been called in for an interview so at least in the field in the private sector I haven't come across any of that. Yeah I would echo that as well if you do feel that that is happening you certainly should you know report that to EEOC you know everywhere I've ever worked does not condone or you know they don't do that certainly so you know if that has happened then you should certainly take steps to report it on the trends in outsourcing and AI which is what Watson is I would encourage you to check out some of the legal futurists that I mentioned earlier you're not wrong those are trends they're not as dire as they're probably being touted but there's also opportunities there you know the machines are coming but they're never going to completely replace human problem solving and so you know there's lots of different opportunities around that so check out what you know some of these futurists are talking about and the Michigan State University re-invent lab some of the things they're doing some interesting things that are happening around Stanford and their law school you know partnering with their computer science department building better research databases so there's also opportunity I wouldn't say that there isn't that those trends are you know bad news for us it's just an opportunity for us to apply our skills in a different way so a big thank you to our presenters really good information very very interesting very very insightful thanks so much for giving us your time goodnight everyone