By Andrew Cohen
As legal recruiting continued to evolve and start earlier in students’ first year of law school, Berkeley Law’s Career Development Office (CDO) considered different ways to support 1Ls and put them in the best possible position for success.
“We recognized a need to allow 1Ls to meet with employers sooner in their law school journey,” says Assistant Dean for Career Development Eric Stern. “This year, we moved many of our flagship student and employer networking programs from spring to fall, and added a completely new program to allow 1L students to meet with employers sooner — creating earlier opportunities for exploration, in-person research, and shaping their career vision.”
That program, the weekly Coffee Chat Series, is producing a fruitful partnership between Berkeley Law and employers across the private and public sectors. The concept was originally envisioned by CDO Director of Private Programs Leslie Hauser and Private Sector Counselor Kate Ortbahn, then executed by Employer Relations Manager Charlaé Washington, Private Sector Program Coordinator Teyah Lewis, and Public Interest/Public Sector Coordinator Emily Forbes-Allen.
Each Thursday, the series facilitates informal, in-person conversations that help 1Ls explore career options and get to know potential employers in a more casual, lower stress, smaller group environment.
“I really enjoy the coffee chats because I came into law school both excited and overwhelmed at all the different practice areas I could enter,” says 1L Sharan Sethi. “They’ve been an easy way to meet employers and better understand the different ways I could use my law degree. I enjoy getting a humanized perspective on the work, which I find much more useful than just exploring career paths through websites.”
These sessions are taking place at the law school for 11 consecutive Thursdays from September through November, with an open house-style, drop-in format for 1Ls to have 1-on-1 conversations between 9 and 10:30 a.m. Four to five employers attend each session, with a mix of law firms, public interest and public sector employers, and judicial staff.
Stern says the goal is to “encourage genuine conversation and discovery between students and employers — without expectations — allowing students to gain valuable insights that will help shape their career vision and understand the pathways to achieve their goals.”
A robust roster
Collectively, the sessions feature 43 participating employers. They include representatives from BigLaw and plaintiff-side firms, district attorney and public defenders’ offices, city and county attorneys, direct legal service nonprofits, judges (including an appearance from U.S. District Court Judge Michael Fitzgerald ’85, Central District of California), judicial clerks and staff attorneys, the California Supreme Court, the Navajo Nation Supreme Court, and nine California Department of Justice sections.
Attendance has been strong, with anywhere between 60 and 100 students showing up each Thursday, and Stern calls the employers’ feedback “very positive.” The CDO has also invited second- and third-year students who did summer work for participating employers to join the coffee chats and provide a peer perspective on their experiences.
1L Wyatt McHale likes that there’s an array of potential employers students gain access to and the informal environment for learning about their practice areas and work culture.
“Also, I appreciate the diversity in employers that are present at each event,” he says. “The wide range of employers allows me to get to know how lawyers, and often Berkeley Law grads, have taken their expertise into different facets of society. This has been especially helpful as a first-generation law student.”
Ten months after graduation, 99% of the J.D. class of 2024 was employed — a UC Berkeley Law record since the school began tabulating such data. Staffed by nine attorney-counselors, each of whom has practiced law and can offer real-world insights into various career paths, the CDO strives to support students by staying ahead of the legal marketplace curve.
“Through this networking program, in conjunction with earlier career and professional development programming, we’ve observed a 1L class that is highly sophisticated, fully engaged, and intentional,” Stern says. “They are ready to meet this moment head-on and we are prepared to support them.”