The Secret to an Effective Cover Letter
Your ability to make a good impression can make or break every opportunity. As a law student, this can help you land your dream internship or summer associate position and set the tone for your career. In this multi-part series, PracticePro’s Niki Moore explains each phase of the summer associate hiring process — and how you can excel at each one.
Cover letters often get sidelined as a formality. Particularly when you’re applying for summer associate positions through big events, such as career fairs or on campus interviews, they’re something you’re expected to have on hand.
But not giving your cover letter the attention it deserves can be a big mistake.
At the very least, it can be used to assess your writing skills and even the smallest errors—typos, odd mistakes, incorrect titles, writing for the wrong type of position — could land your application in the discard pile.
At most, your cover letter can make all the difference. Especially when you apply to smaller firms or companies, it may be the most important advocacy tool you have.
If you take time to personalize your cover letter and highlight the things that will be most important to your potential employer, you can use it as a tool to show how much you want the position and how much effort you’ve spent trying to understand their business. Follow these four tips to create a cover letter that will help grab an interviewer’s attention — and hopefully some face-to-face time.
SERVE THEM THE ENTREE AND THEN THE SIDE DISH
Picture this: If you come to my house for dinner and I give you delicious mashed potatoes and green beans, you might still feel I’ve missed the main dish. If I serve roast chicken and nothing else, you may also feel the meal is incomplete.
A good meal has both an entrée and a side dish — and it’s the same with your cover letter.
Referencing details you’ve researched, such as a firm’s diversity efforts or pro bono work, can be a smart move. But at the end of the day, your application needs to show you can do the work and have the core competencies and interest for the position you are seeking. Highlighting one aspect without the other creates an incomplete picture; a potential employer wants to see all the elements.
HIT ALL THE RIGHT POINTS IN YOUR FIRST PARAGRAPH
Your opening paragraph needs to focus on a few essential details:
Explain who you are.
Tell them for what position (and to which firm office) you’re applying.
Identify whether there’s something that particularly draws you to the firm, such as a particular practice area.
If you have a connection to the firm, reference it here. Maybe you won a scholarship from the firm in the past. Mentioning it shows you have a specific reason for applying, that you care about the firm, and it will start to establish rapport.
STRATEGICALLY DRAFT AND ORDER THE MAIN PARAGRAPHS
You should use your second and third paragraphs to highlight your unique strengths and experiences. This may include drawing attention to what you accomplished and learned in your 1L summer internship, highlighting your relevant leadership and academic achievements, and/or discussing your stellar work experience prior to law school.
How you choose to order these paragraphs — chronologically, reverse chronologically, or something in between — depends on your particular strengths and the relevance of your individual experiences to the specific job you are applying to. What’s an absolute necessity is following the basics of good writing, including strong thesis sentences, concise strong writing, and of course keeping it typo and mistake free.
DON'T WASTE THE CLOSING
End your cover letter with interesting facts. This is your “side dish”: Maybe you’re the first person in your family to go to college, or you led a project you think they’d find very interesting.
This is also a good place for “housekeeping” details, such as establishing geographical ties. For example, if you went to college in California but are moving home to Colorado, mention this before signing off.
Depending on the strength of your application package and your particular story, I may sometimes advise putting a short preview of these details in the first paragraph and then elaborate a bit more in your closing paragraph.
Your cover letter, especially for Biglaw, does not need to be long, but it can be powerful — if you write it well. By using this document strategically, you can quickly tell an employer why you’re the right candidate for their summer associate position and boost your chances of moving on to the next round: The interview.
In the next part of this series, we’ll look at how to research law firms.
Need help crafting your resume or cover letter? Coming up with a tailored summer associate job search strategy? Schedule a free initial consultation with a PracticePro coach here.