Floor-to-ceiling windows allow you to look out on nature when studying in Oregon’s largest law library.Six degrees of separation is a long-standing theory of Frigyes Karinthy that suggests that everyone is six relationships (or less) away from another person in the world.
Our supportive and rigorous intellectual environment pushes you to develop the legal knowledge, critical thinking, practical skills, and values that will empower you to excel as ethical and engaged professionals in a diverse and dynamic world. We are the only law school located in Portland. Our serene, forested setting makes it hard to believe you’re only ten minutes from the heart of downtown Portland. The Law School Amphitheater is our campus’s natural living room. With strong bar pass rates and outstanding employment outcomes, our grads leave ready to practice law in a variety of settings.
As a professional school preparing the next generation of our nation’s lawyers, we believe that our promise to support diversity in all its forms is both an academic and professional duty. Our professors are outstanding teachers who will know you by name. And even if your target person does not have time to meet, at least you will have made some valuable connections along the way. Your target person will be more likely to give you a moment if you approach them through an introduction rather than a cold call. Ask for information interviews and introductions along the way. Once you make that first network connection, then continue to ask these questions as you move closer, degree by degree. Is your target person going to be presenting at an industry event? Can you attend?.Does one of the professors know your target person or someone else in their industry?.Has your target person or firm ever presented at Lewis & Clark Law?.Do you know someone who practices the same type of law as your target? What about similar areas of law such as management-side employment law for a corporate immigration law target?.Is there anyone in your network, including any Lewis & Clark Law alums, who work with your target person, or in your target firm, industry, or location?.The rest of the time you have to walk it up the chain with some creativity. You want to meet a prosecutor in Seattle and we connect you with a Lewis & Clark Law alum who works with the King County Prosecutor’s Office. How can you get from here to there? Sometimes the connection is obvious when you map out your own personal network.Official mentors, attorneys, supervisors, co-workers, classmates, family friends, relatives, professors, staff members, speakers, teammates, undergraduate connections, anyone you know at all in Colorado … you get the idea. Include anyone who you know or who has influenced you in your professional or personal life along your path to becoming an attorney. Who is in your network? Your personal and professional network extends well beyond your official 1L attorney-mentor (though, they are an important link, too).Who do you want to connect with on the other side? This may require a bit of career strategy but you can select a specific person, or a broader target based on a firm, industry, or geographic location. What connection do you want to make? As in the Game, you must start with your intended target connection.So how do you apply this theory to your current job search? Getting from you to your target connection requires a mind-map answer to the following three questions: But the Lewis & Clark alumni network extends beyond Portland to the entire Pacific Northwest, and even nationally and internationally. As you know, the Portland legal community is close and it does not seem outlandish at all to believe that everyone is well within six degrees of knowing each other. The phenomenon of six degrees of separation within a professional mentoring context has been studied and documented. (2) with some creative strategy, someone in your network could be within six degrees from your next job!
(1) I have never found an actor who did not connect back to Kevin Bacon within six degrees and The game was inspired by the theory of Six Degrees of Separation that nobody is more than six relationships away from any other person in the world. I don’t know about that – but I know these two things:
Have you ever played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? It is a parlor game started over twenty years ago where players link actors to actor Kevin Bacon, in as few steps as possible, via the movies they have in common.