Some of our best work is done by law students — take a look at LIIBULLETIN, for example, or the recent flood of definitions in our WEX legal encyclopedia.  We know these folks — and we recognize how lousy the current legal employment market is.  And that gets us thinking about how our friends and collaborators might use their online presence (at the LII and elsewhere) to help them find work.

Too often, we think, social media are presented as liabilities and not assets.  All sorts of people will tell you that don’t want potential employers to see pictures of that night when you had all those jello shots and…. well, never mind.   But you do want employers to see professional work that you’ve done — especially examples of careful, thoughtful writing, and other things that show the same skill set you’ll be using in practice.

Enter LII friend Laura Bergus and her collaborators at Legal Geekery (and others, like Rex Gradeless at  Social Media Law Student).  They’re trying to show their colleagues just what can be done with a little careful attention to things like blogs, LinkedIn, and Facebook.    We agree that these are all things that can be used to build a solid professional reputation online, and we’d suggest that you check out Laura’s tips on how to best make use of them.   It’s part of a larger site on Social Media Best Practices for law schools — well worth a look if you’ve got anything at all to do with a law school.

The LII will soon be expanding its opportunities for students to work with us, as part of a cooperative project with our friends over at CALI.  We still have some tech to put in place, but we’re hoping to have it done in time to take advantage of excess capacity (read: cabin fever) during the winter holiday.  We’ll say more about it here when we have specifics.