Debra Bruce sug­gests that lawyers looking for work think about writing an article to aid in finding a job:

Start now to gen­erate oppor­tu­ni­ties to dis­tin­guish your­self from the com­pe­ti­tion and widen your circle of con­nec­tions. Remember, rela­tion­ships make the dif­fer­ence, espe­cially in a tight market. You prob­ably have more time avail­able for research and writing now. Establish your exper­tise (or develop some), and give your resume some addi­tional sparkle by writing an article on a legal topic you are inter­ested in. via lawjobs.com Career Center — Aid Your Job Search: Get Published .

Importantly, she sug­gests that non-law review arti­cles may be the best bet here:

You don’t need to write a law review article. Contact industry mag­a­zines, legal news­pa­pers, busi­ness jour­nals and online pub­li­ca­tions. They need new arti­cles every month or even more fre­quently, and most don’t require blue book cita­tion. Many employers are more likely to read arti­cles in such pub­li­ca­tions than in law reviews.

This is good advice, and very sim­ilar to the idea behind blog­ging as a means for finding a job. By become an expert on a sub­ject, and demon­strating both that exper­tise and your writing ability, you increase the chances of con­necting with a poten­tial employer. In addi­tion, inter­viewing other experts in order to write your article gives you a reason to speak with poten­tial employers or col­legues without asking for a job — which can be key for good net­working. Again, net­working is the key — which is not always some­thing I do very well!

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