Why Law Students Should Start Networking Before They Graduate

In this blog, Simon Law attorney and SLU Law trial advocacy instructor Mary Simon shares three networking habits every law student should start now.

Most of the law students I teach in trial advocacy at Saint Louis University School of Law are laser-focused on things like grades, a strong writing sample, or the right summer job. Those things matter, but almost none of my students think about the one thing that will keep their calendar full five or ten years down the road: a network of people who already know what they do and think of them first when a case comes up.

What nobody puts on the syllabus is that talent alone doesn’t get hired; referrals do. You can be the sharpest lawyer in your graduating class, but if the people around you can’t finish the sentence, “I know someone who handles ___” with your name in the blank, that talent just sits unused. The good news is that building that network is entirely within your control, and law school, while you still have room on your calendar, is the best time to start. Here are the three habits that have done the most for my own practice.

1. Hold Onto the Relationships You Already Have

Your first referral sources aren’t strangers at a networking mixer, but the classmates and professors already around you. When I graduated, I kept my class’s graduation program and used it to track down where as many of my classmates as I could find had landed their first jobs. I turned it into an actual notebook, then made a habit of scheduling as many lunches a month as I could keep up with, just to stay in touch.

It felt a little old-fashioned even then, but it worked, and it turned out to be genuinely enjoyable, especially once I started noticing how many different directions a law degree can go. In school, you have tunnel vision on landing one specific job, so you don’t see it. Then your classmates scatter into every corner of the profession – prosecutors, in-house counsel, family law, appellate clerkships, transactional practices – and every one of them is a lawyer who will eventually field a call about a case outside their wheelhouse. That’s your network forming in real time, even if it doesn’t feel like one yet.

The same goes for your professors. Let them know where you land and what kind of work you’re doing. Stay on their radar, and you become the person they recommend when a current student needs a connection, and that student becomes a referring attorney the moment they’re sworn in. Over the years, former professors have reached out to introduce me to their students. One of those students is now a defense attorney I regularly sit across the table from in cases, and she still sends me referrals today.

2. Say What You Do, Out Loud and Often

This is the most underused piece of career advice in the profession, and it costs nothing. The most common way a lawyer gets new work is someone asking, “Do you know anyone who handles ___?” You can’t be the answer to that question if nobody actually knows the answer for you.

Those early lunches paid off in ways I couldn’t have planned for. A few years after graduation, a former classmate called me with a referral. Her exact words were something like, “I think you told me at lunch you handle these kinds of cases, but I’m not totally sure?” She wasn’t sure, but she remembered enough to pick up the phone, and that was all it took.

You don’t need people to memorize your practice area. You just need them to remember enough to call. Be specific and don’t be shy about repeating yourself. When you meet someone, don’t just say you’re a lawyer; say what kind of cases you handle, or hope to handle someday. It’s fine to talk about a case you’re actively working on, even if it hasn’t gone to trial yet; you’re already handling it. It can feel like bragging, but it isn’t.

3. Say Yes While Saying Yes is Still Cheap

This is the one I had to work hardest at as an introvert: saying yes to everything you reasonably can. Your calendar has more open room as a student and a new lawyer than it will ever have again, so use it. Say yes to the bar association committee, the CLE panel, the pro bono clinic, coffee with a lawyer you admire, coaching a mock trial team you’ve been asked to help with.

I’ve lost count of how many years I’ve spent judging mock trial competitions, and it’s consistently one of the more rewarding things I do. I get to meet teachers, parents of future law students, and sitting judges who show up to volunteer their own time. To this day, I still invite students from my old high school into the office to talk through what the work actually looks like. (There are always bagels.)

Every yes puts you in a room with a handful of people who now know your name. And the math only gets harder from here because the further your practice grows, the tighter your schedule gets, and the easy yeses turn into real trade-offs. The relationships you build early, before you’re too busy to build them, are the ones quietly compounding in the background for the rest of your career.

Start Now – It Only Gets More Expensive Later

None of this takes a title, a book of business, or anyone’s permission. It just takes showing up, being specific about the work you do, and staying visible to the people around you. Keep the notebook. Schedule the lunch. Tell your professor what you’re up to. The classmates sitting near you today are your referral network tomorrow.

And if you ever get the chance to share what you’ve learned with the next class of students, write the article. Just remember to link your contact information so they can actually reach you.

Have questions for Mary Simon or the team at Simon Law? Reach out today.