Current Students

You can create your own career path by taking advantage of the Law School's resources. Since not all law students know what type of law they want to practice, we provide many opportunities for you to explore and identify your particular interests in the law.

Counseling and Critiquing

One of the most important resources offered by the Career Development Office is the opportunity to meet with a career counselor to discuss resume and cover letter writing, interviewing techniques, areas of potential practice, career opportunities, and any other concerns regarding one’s legal career.  Individual Career Counseling is provided by appointment or on a walk-in basis by all counselors.  Counselors are also available to critique cover letters and resumes.

Resources

The Career Development Office has an extensive library, which includes books, periodicals, newspapers, directories, and handouts to assist students in developing their career path and to prepare them for their job search.  The Office also maintains an online library of many career-related handbooks and directories, as well as a video library of career panels and workshops presented by the Office.  The law school’s main library also has a variety of reference materials to assist students with their career planning. 

Online Employment Listings

The Career Development Office utilizes technology as a means of providing students with a convenient method to communicate with the Office, including the Symplicity Career Management System.

Employers, including alumni, continuously notify the Career Development Office of summer, part-time, and full-time job opportunities, as well as internship and fellowship opportunities. This information is entered daily onto Symplicity, which students can access on-line. The Symplicity Web site is a very important site used by the Office to administer the On-Campus Interviewing Program and to post employment, internship, and fellowship job listings.  The site also contains announcements and a calendar of events, and is used to send e-mails to students.  Students must contact the Office to obtain a Symplicity password, and are advised to check the site regularly for both the scheduling of on-campus interviews and for newly posted job listings. 

Students also have access to a number of other helpful career-related sites, including Lexis, Westlaw, and the Public Service Jobs Directory.

Fraudulent Job Offers and Email Scams

We've seen an uptick in the number of fraudulent employers attempting to deceive applicants with “job opportunities” advertised through job postings or email campaigns. Many of these communications look alarmingly legitimate. St. John's University offers online guidance to help you recognize and avoid these fraudulent opportunities, and outlines steps you can take if you're a victim of this kind of fraud.

Reciprocity

St. John’s University School of Law is part of a network that permits students and alumni to utilize the Career Development facilities of other law schools, outside the New York City metropolitan area, from approximately November through July.  The Career Development Office can obtain reciprocity for students and alumni from one law school within the network in any geographic location/city.  Queries regarding this policy should be directed to our office at [email protected].

Diversity

The Career Development Office is active in participating in and promoting various programs designed to increase employment opportunities for minority students.

The Association of the Bar of the City of New York’s Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Lawyers conducts the Summer Fellowship Program, a highly competitive program to place first-year minority law students in summer jobs with large law firms and corporate legal departments.  The Career Development Office publicizes the program, assists first-year students in submitting their application packages and coordinates the selection process of candidates representing St. John’s.  Each year, St. John’s produces several fellowship recipients. The Career Development Office also encourages and facilitates student participation in numerous other diversity-based internship programs, as well as job fairs and conferences.

Public Service

The Career Development Office encourages students to consider positions in the government and public interest arenas.  The Office works very closely with the Public Interest Center. The Office’s in-house and online resource library contains a wealth of material on government honors programs and internships, public interest employment opportunities, fellowships, funding sources, and applicable deadlines. The Office also participates in a number of job fairs geared at educating students about public service opportunities.

St. John’s University School of Law has developed several programs to encourage and assist students and graduates who want to pursue a career in public interest.  These programs include the Public Interest Fellowship Program, the Pro Bono Service Project, and the Loan Repayment Assistance Program.

Career Development Programs

The Career Development Office sponsors numerous programs to assist students in career preparation and planning. During the fall semester each year, new students begin the career development process with a Professional Development course. Students begin learning about job search strategies, the timeline for hiring, how to draft a legal resume and cover letter, interviewing, technology in the job search, and professionalism. Students are assigned a counselor early in their law school careers and are encouraged to build a relationship with their counselor and work together on a regular basis.

Other examples of programs sponsored by Career Development Office include our Mock Interview Program (which brings together students and alumni for practice interviews, with detailed feedback from the interviewer) and Career Panels (which showcase alumni and other professionals from different areas of practice and various legal settings).

Job Fairs

St. John’s participates with other law schools in a number of regional and national job fairs. Students and alumni will be notified of any fairs, and the specific dates and deadlines for registration, as they become known.

Judicial Clerkships

A judicial clerkship is a post-graduate, full-time, paid position working for an individual judge or a group of judges in a federal or state court. Students and graduates may apply for judicial clerkships.

To facilitate the application process, the Career Development Office provides students and recent alumni with access to a database containing the names and addresses of federal and highest state court judges that can be used to prepare cover letters, assistance obtaining and processing faculty recommendations, assistance with OSCAR, the online system for clerkship application and review, and mailing services for a number of applications.

To encourage students to consider post-graduate clerkships, the Career Development Office assists in the administration of the Federal Scholars Program.  The Program, made possible through the generosity of two alumni, provides stipends to qualified students for unpaid summer internships with the Federal Judiciary, the United States Attorney’s Office or offices within the Department of Justice and Federal Public Defenders.