Career Help with CareerDicta

With the guidance of Elizabeth from the Career Dicta team, I secured a competitive 1L summer internship with a judge I deeply admire shortly after returning to campus for second semester. After an exhausting finals season, I wanted to set myself up for success in the 1L summer job search. The legal industry felt incredibly opaque to me, and I was so lucky to work with Elizabeth. Elizabeth was generous, responsive, and strategic. We had an initial call to discuss my short and long-term goals and mapped out a strategy to tackle the summer job search. Elizabeth was encouraging while also communicating realistic guidance on legal recruitment patterns. Her insight was critical in helping me manage timelines and maximizing my chances to land a competitive internship. In particular, it was helpful to hear what experiences would be attractive to potential employers, and how to lean into them in my application. Elizabeth reviewed and edited application materials ranging from my resume, diversity statements, and cover letters. While my career services center provided ample resources, I benefited from having an expert opinion on how to navigate the process. I cannot recommend Career Dicta enough (and LST’s tutoring service). I look forward to continuing to work with Career Dicta as I tackle the 2L summer job search and feel so much more grounded knowing I will have a partner in the process. — L.

Law School Toolbox’s (“LST”) feedback and guidance during my 1L job search was amazing, and I am happy to report that I landed a dream 1L job in a judicial internship with my state’s supreme court with the justice I most wanted to work with. Additionally, my career goals are quite niche, and I appreciated how supportive LST was of my goals; they were friendly in their conversations with me and never once made me feel I had to adjust my career goals to aim for a Big Law career or a particular public interest career. Their focus was on taking the steps I need, doing the networking appropriate for my needs, to achieve my goals.

As for the application process, LST was available to help me edit my resume down to one page and to edit my cover letter. As a non-traditional law student who is not so familiar with formatting resumes and writing cover letters, LST helped me ensure my cover letter stood out and highlighted my unique background and goals while maintaining a professional and thoughtful tone. Clearly, their help worked! I am so grateful to LST for their career services and tutoring help, particularly because as much as I love my law school, their career services and academic help aren’t always the most useful. Furthermore, as someone who lives with ADHD and an anxiety disorder, LST has been nothing but understanding and encouraging in my application process and studying.

I am grateful that my 1L summer job search has already finished thanks to LST’s help, and I know they are always available if I have any questions about my career. Looking forward to a semester without worrying about a 1L summer job! Now it’s time to focus on my studies with the help of my wonderful tutor! — S.

I came into law school from a very non-traditional background (entertainment industry) and I was feeling pretty lost about the recruitment process. After I finished finals I felt exhausted and wasn’t sure how to go about applying for summer internships. While I had the resources of my career center, the turnaround time for them getting back to me wasn’t conducive to completing applications on time and the feedback wasn’t that substantive. I expressed my frustrations and my tutor at Law School Tool Box recommended Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was so kind and encouraging throughout the process and took the intimidation out of the application process. Even more important, she showed me how I could best highlight my experience to leverage my transition into this new career. Given my entertainment experience, I thought I didn’t have much to offer a law firm but Elizabeth showed me how all that experience would be favorable to a law firm. Further, she helped me with diversity applications and I was able to secure a position at a V100 firm for the summer. I will always be so grateful for her working with me and I can’t recommend her enough! — J.

Working with Elizabeth through the recruiting process was absolutely fantastic! For starters, she is always available and responsive. Whenever I had a question for her she would promptly reply to my emails with a thoughtful response. Whenever I needed to get on the phone with her to talk something through or to prepare for an interview, she would find the time, even if it was on short notice. Trying to land a summer associate position during COVID-19 was difficult to say the least, but Elizabeth gave me confidence throughout the process. She was encouraging when I needed it, but she also provided honest and realistic advice/feedback when I needed it.

My situation was unique in that I was aiming for positions within firms that were not available through my school’s OCI process. Elizabeth coached me on how to navigate recruiting outside of OCI and helped me execute an effective and targeted strategy. In the end, I secured a summer associate position in my desired market several weeks before my classmates. I highly recommend Elizabeth and plan on consulting with her in the future as my career evolves. — T.

I started listening to the Law School Toolbox podcast during my initial law school application process, and I found Alison and Lee’s insight immensely useful and reassuring. I applied the study strategies they talk about, and I ended my first semester with grades that pleasantly surprised me. Realizing that I may have an opportunity to transfer to a T14 law school (from my T40-50 school), I reached out to the Law School Toolbox team to discuss my transfer options and come up with a plan.

Elizabeth helped me polish my resume and cover letters, and advised me about summer positions. I was able to secure a great summer internship in an area of law that I am passionate about. Later in the spring semester, Mihal coached me through the transfer application process, which is time-consuming and intense. She gave me comprehensive feedback on my personal statement draft, which really pushed me to produce a compelling, coherent narrative. I felt confident about the applications when I submitted them, but I was over the moon when I was accepted by my top choice—a T6 school! Thank you to everyone at Law School Toolbox for supporting me through this journey! — S.

Career Dicta’s Career Counseling provides a great service for the legal industry. Given the oftentimes opaque nature of legal hiring, they provided a helpful sanity check with my search. I was very impressed with their ability to quickly and efficiently diagnose what was working and what was not working with my self-presentation strategy. Their staff also possessed exceptional dexterity in advising on how to frame how to highlight credentials relevant to different kinds of legal employers. — M.