Senior Associate Director of Professional Development, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law

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.