-: My name's Sean Suther and I'm the Senior
Associate Director in the Office of Professional
Development at Indiana University,
Robert H. McKinney School of Law.
Right, and so, in our role, we are looking
to try to connect the students with their
future opportunities, their career paths,
and so, to do that, we have to help them
figure out really where they want to go.
So, many students come to law school with
a general idea that they want to be a lawyer,
but what does that really mean,
and what kind of lawyer, ultimately?
So, we try to help them figure that out a little bit.
We do individual career counseling,
and we also try to give them opportunities
to connect with future employers
so that they can transition from law school
to the practicing world, successfully.
Yeah, definitely, so the first meeting for me is
I want to hear their story,
so I wanna know about them, figure out where they came
from, figure out where they're trying to get to,
and a little bit more about them, because ultimately
what I'm trying to help them do is figure out what
the best career path is for them, and so they
ultimately are driving the conversation, driving
their career path, I'm just here to try to facilitate
that a little bit for them, so the more I know
about them, the better.
Sure, and so what we try and do is just have a good
conversation, and figure out where their interests are,
maybe a little bit of their personality, do they seem
like someone that would enjoy speaking in court,
do they seem like someone who would fit better in a
transactional world, and through those dialogs
we can come up with new ideas, well maybe this career
path would be good for you, maybe you'd be a great
prosecutor or public defender, or perhaps we can look
into corporate law or estate planning, or any of the
other great practice areas that you can do
when you graduate from law school.
And so we are here to do all the things that you highlighted
in the question there, which is we do nuts and bolts
things, so we review cover letters, we review resumes,
we are drafting documents, or helping to draft documents
that the students might need for their access.
We also have an on-campus interview program,
so we bring dozens of employers onto campus,
they interview the students, and it's a great opportunity
for the students, we run events,
we have receptions and panels and we have a job fair
where dozens of employers come on to campus to speak
with our students, and so ultimately we're tying to do
the nuts and bolts things to set our students up
for success, and then connect them to those opportunities
through different kinds of programming.