It’s a new year, and for many unemployed 3Ls and recent law grads, this means it’s time to renew job search efforts with even greater intensity. Aside from scouring PSJD.org for the latest job postings from public interest employers, what else can you do to stay sane during the job hunt?

Last spring, the Girl’s Guide to Law School tackled this issue with the help of lawyer-turned-career-coach Katie Slater, releasing a 5-part job hunting series tailored to fit the needs of unemployed 3Ls and recent grads. Here’s a snippet of the wealth of advice Slater offered:

How Do You Start a Legal Job Search?

Developing a plan for your approach is a must.

Consider it your first project management endeavor and good practice for the future, as most legal jobs require solid project management skills.

Your plan needs to attack the issue on multiple levels, operating from each at the same time.

• The first level is developing the big picture view about: yourself, what you might want, and what you offer to prospective employers to meet what they need.
• The second level is tactical: what are the concrete steps do you need to take to get to the ultimate goal of getting a job.
• And the third level is being aware of the mental and emotional toll the process might exact from you, and finding ways to combat it.

Part One: The Big Picture

Let’s take the big picture level first.

You need a concrete picture of yourself, what you offer, what you like, and how you are able to help your future employer. The end goal is to have parameters for your job search.

One of the reasons the job search for law grads is much more difficult now is that the automatic treadmill or recognized framework that has been in place for the past 10-15 years is not as defined due to the changing economic landscape.

That means we have to come up with our own parameters.

The Goal: Know Thyself

Where do you start?

You need to spend some time analyzing yourself and what you like, how you operate, and what you offer.

This is not on-the-couch-crying-about-your-parents stuff, but you do need to subject yourself to a little introspection. The goal is to flesh yourself out as a person and employee, as well as start developing a list of your skills. And no, you are not just a 3L with no job and no other abilities besides being able to pass law school classes!

Ideally, you should come up with a list of 4 things:

1. Your strengths
2. Your skills
3. The field(s) of work that interest you
4. Some sense of the type of work environment where you’d thrive

Generate a List of Your Strengths and Skills

How do you generate this list? Start with some of the following questions:

• What strengths and skills did you bring with you into law school? If you can’t start listing these immediately, consider what were you good at before law school — either in your undergraduate studies, or what you did before you went to law school. To provide you some examples of how to pull out your strengths and skills from this question, if you were one of those who put on events, or ran clubs or organizations or associations (particularly if you were told you did a good job, or you received any accolades!) your strengths may include being detail-oriented, good at project management, and able to manage people.
• What have you found highly rewarding? One way to shake loose some strengths and start identifying areas and environments in which you shine is to think back to some of your really rewarding experiences. These should be times where you felt you really accomplished something or felt that you made something a success. It needs to feel personally successful or like a personal accomplishment — not whether other people thought it was so. Identify several of these occasions, and ask yourself what you were doing, what abilities were you using, and who were you around. You should be able to identify some core strengths and perhaps some skill sets that you enjoy using.
• What non-legal skills do you have that could be helpful in the workplace? On the skills front, an example of an existing skill you have would be getting frequent positive comments on your non-legal writing abilities. Legal jobs still require non-legal writing for everything from comprehensible emails to clients to pitch pieces to articles written for the general public. Being able to communicate clearly is a valuable skill set, independent of legal writing.
• Also, what skills have you picked up in law school that you enjoy using? Have you written great notices or law review articles or papers — these are examples of solid legal writing skills.
• Do you have any tech skills? Have you developed a website, organized any new social media or pushed it in a new direction, or developed any IT — either before or in law school? Any of those fairly obviously indicates skills in coding/web-based development, and shows strengths in innovation, creativity, and design.
• Are there any other bright shining moments? Do not overlook things like being captain of the intramural team — there are still things to be learned from those experiences. Maybe this speaks to your ability to lead a team, or engage well in a team dynamic, or be quite tactical or strategic.

Click here to read the full article, and don’t forget to check out the rest of the series:

• Job Hunting for 3Ls and Recent Law Grads: What Do You Want?
• Job Hunting for 3Ls and Recent Law Grads: Who Do You Know?
• Job Hunting for 3Ls and Recent Law Grads: How to Get the Inside Scoop
• Job Hunting for 3Ls and Recent Law Grads: Coping with an Extended Job Search