“There’s nothing more dangerous than an enemy with nothing to lose.”
“Open up your mind, or someone may open it for you.”
Some of histories greatest moments were born out of desperate times. Triumph over the great depression and two world war’s wouldn’t have been possible if, at some point, we weren’t forced to confront these epic problems.
Today, many people are being forced to face problems of their own, and they occasionally do so in the most innovative fashions. Whether it be related to the law, a lack of employment, or a struggle in one’s current job - these trying times can give rise to amazing stories of overcoming adversity.
This post is dedicated to stories of individuals who managed to achieve their goals in unique and creative ways. As suggested by the quotations above, they had nothing to lose - and opened up their minds in a way that traditionalists would consider “dangerous,” or just plain crazy.
As a law student who graduated into one of the worst economies in recent history, I feel compelled to tell my own story first.
By every measure, I should be stuck somewhere in the frozen tundra of Upstate New York - cold, hungry and desperate for work. I graduated closer towards the bottom of my class than the top. I wasn’t on law review. I didn’t have an Ivy League background, wealthy parents or years of valuable work experience.
I would browse our law school’s “career service manager” website and sigh heavily when the list of on-campus interviews was literally empty. I’d look through postings where I could submit my resume, only to discover that I was severely unqualified for many of the listed positions. “Students should have a B+ average,” a posting would read, or, “Candidates should be on Law Review and in the top quarter of their class.” It was discouraging, to say the least. Without even knowing what I could offer them, these employers were shutting me out.
With less than year before graduation, I couldn’t simply raise my GPA and join Law Review. That ship had sailed. With two years of grades behind me, my class rank wasn’t about to skyrocket towards the top either.
I started to feel desperate. I contemplated following recruiting coordinators out of their offices and into local establishments, then striking up what would look like an innocent dialogue. I could fabricate a social bond and eventually use it as a backdoor into a lucrative position. “I think that almost fits the definition of stalking,” a colleague advised me. She was probably right.
Before going to that extreme, I adopted a different approach. The mass mailing. But not just a senseless, uncoordinated mass mailing. This had to have some degree of precision to it. I used websites like
Martindale to locate lawyers, who were alumni, in institutions where I either: (a) went to law school, (b) went to college, (c) grew up, or (d) had family. This would allow me to write a cover letter alleging a connection to the firm’s respective city with some truth.
I would visit the firm’s website to gather necessary information like their address and specialty. I look the firm up on websites like
infirmation.com to determine realistic salary expectations, then check the
National Association For Law Placement (NALP) Directory for any other relevant data.
The resumes and cover letters were unique to the respective firm using a list generated in Microsoft Excel. The mail merge took place in Word - and the files were placed on a flash drive and brought to Staples for laser printing.
Typically, Career Services advises law students to stick with regular sheets of paper - but given my situation, I knew I needed to stand out. I went with high-gauge resume paper that looked expensive. I purchased mailing labels, and using the MS Excel spreadsheet, printed them up in a matter of minutes. The resumes and cover letters were gently placed into long mailing envelopes so the documents wouldn’t be folded over. They cost about $1 each to mail, and I sent out close to a hundred of them.
It wasn’t long before the rejections started flowing in. They began piling up, more and more. Part of me wanted to light them on fire - but instinct told me to hold onto them. I let them accumulate, one after another, until I knew just what to do with them: send them back.
The rejection letter, in my mind, simply became an offer to negotiate. As complementary and nicely worded as they were - they provided me with an opportunity to continue a dialogue with a meaningful contact (whoever signed the rejection).
About two weeks after I followed through with my plan, I received a phone call. “We received your letter, and we think it shows a very high level of interest that we don’t want to ignore. We’d like to set up and interview.”
And that’s how I graduated law school with employment in the midst of “the great recession.”
