Requesting an Appointment

QUESTION:
Dean Kinsey,

I'm a 1L in the evening division. If you have time, I'd appreciate a chance to talk to you about what I need to do and when I need to do it in order to make my plans achievable. If you could give me a couple of possible days and times, I'm sure I can make one of them work.

Thank you,


ANSWER;
We've given you an account in Symplicity and you MUST go through that system to set up the appointment. Go to www.law.ualr.edu/careerservices/ . Click "Symplicity." Log in as a "student/alum." If you've forgotten your password, click "forgot password," and one will be sent to your email address.

Once in the system, on the right of your home page, scroll down to "Request an Appointment." Click it. Available times should appear. I suggest you request 2 back-to-back appointments. Let me know if you have problems by emailing law-careers@ualr.edu, or calling either of the numbers below.

Direct Mailing and the Job Search

QUESTION:

Should we send resumes to law firms/employers in Little Rock? I know in other cities law students send out resumes to firms, but I didn't know if this was the traditional thing to do in Little Rock.


ANSWER:

The job search is personal so you must explore your options (review tips in your Career Services Handbook - the purple book you received in November, or check out from Career Services the law student job search resource, Guerrilla Tactics for Getting the Legal Job of Your Dream, by Kimm Alayne Walton, or one of several other books available to you), THEN decide which strategies you want to employ. Personalized job search strategies sessions may also be scheduled through Symplicity.

Since several of the more high profile and structured employers that hire regularly have arranged with Career Services to participate in the Spring On-Campus Interview Program to interview a pre-determined number of students who meet their hiring criteria, try hard to gain an interview through that process with those particular employers. Sign-ups are available with these employers through Symplicity at www.law.ualr.edu/careerservices/ . Click Symplicity, then log on using your email address and the pass word you received in November. Make sure you meet their specified criteria or you will be removed from their schedule. Symplicity will require you to have a resume uploaded in order to sign up for interviews. If an employer requests a cover letter or writing sample or grade sheet, those items must also be in your Symplicity account.

The job search section of the CSO Handbook addresses the most prominent issues regarding direct mailings. Please refer to it. This information can also be found on the Career Services website under Student Information.

Release Date for Spring 2011 Grades

Question:
Do you know roughly when spring grades might be released?

Answer:
Faculty have 30 days from the last exam to submit their grades. Allow a couple more days for processing and the planned date for release is actually January 20.

Adding Transcripts to Symplicity

Question:

Hi Dean Kinsey~
Happy New Year!
I have a quick question--how do I upload a transcript to Symplicity? I cannot for the life of me figure it out! :)

Thanks!!

Answer:
The answer is not obvious. You'd have to check the Career Services Handbook (the purple book) to know, or our web site. The security encoding for the UALR's transcript paper makes an actual transcript on that paper way too big to upload into Symplicity. For that reason, you must cut and paste your grades from BOSS into a simple Word document. We call it a Grade Sheet. Be sure to clean it up by deleting all the extraneous coding, etc. (That actually looks really bad and is distracting when employers try to read your grade sheet). You can then save this "Grade Sheet" to Symplicity just like you upload your resume.

Let me know if you have other questions about this. This and other answers to other questions asked in the future will be posted to the Career Services blogspot at http://bowencareerservices.blogspot.com/.

Looking for attorney positions with the federal government?

Looking for attorney positions with the federal government? As we shared last Friday in the Public Interest News Bulletin, a federal jobs expert shared some job-seeking wisdom in the Washington Post:

In each budget justification submitted to Congress, you get to see what an agency says it needs, as well any additional hiring requests to carry out its work … For the Justice Department to strengthen national security and counter the threat of terrorism the 2011 budget requests $300.6 million. The request includes 440 additional positions, including 126 agents and 15 attorneys. To enforce immigration laws the department is requesting an $11 million program increase, including 125 positions – 31 of them attorneys. You can read an agency’s budget proposal on its Web site.