Networking and Career Building with Spencer May

Welcome to your studying law Around the world. I'm Claudio Claus. In each episode, I talk with lawyers, law students, and professors from different parts of the world to talk about legal education, careers, and what the profession looks like in real life. We talk about the hard parts, the surprises, and the decisions that shaped their paths. Whether you're planning to study abroad, thinking about working in another legal system, or just curious about how law works around the world, this podcast is for you. This episode is sponsored by Contender. How are you doing on LinkedIn? If you're like 99% of lawyers, your answer is not great, which makes sense. You learned LinkedIn as the place to stash a digital resume and share firm dressers, so no wonder your LinkedIn presence is somewhere between vanilla and nonexistent. But I've got good news. Since we all learned LinkedIn the wrong way, it's pretty easy to attract more positive attention for you or your business. Since 2022, Contender has been the premier agency helping lawyers go from invisible train possible to ignore on LinkedIn. To learn more, check out www.contenderllc.com. Tell them Claudio sent you. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Studying Law around the World. And she today I got the chance to speak with Spencer May, who's at the University of Arizona and just sharing lots of wonderful content on LinkedIn and being really active and just giving a good example of things that you can do while you're in law school. So I'm always happy to talk with law students and people who are going through their education. Thank you so much for joining us today, Spencer. Yeah, I'm looking. Forward to it. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And to start off our episode today, could you introduce yourself to your audience? Yeah. Absolutely. So very quickly. I was born and raised in Central California. Both my parents are educators, so going after higher education or or secondary education was, you know, something that wasn't too far away for me. I met my wife in Provo, UT while we were both undergrads at BYU. And her family has very deep roots out in Arizona. So there was really not much of A competition as far as whether we were going to settle in Fresno, CA where I grew up, or Gilbert, AZ where she grew up. I was a very easy sell. So I am now, I'm a second year law student at the University of Arizona Law School, like you mentioned, planning to practice in Phoenix after graduation. And I'm spending my 2:00, well summer with a home builder up in Scottsdale. So I I do my best to work all the freeways I can up and down. Arizona. That's amazing. There you go. And if I may ask you start off, why did you choose law school in the 1st place and what are you hoping to build with your career? Sure, those people can generally pinpoint 1 moment of, of clarity, light bulb moment where they knew that they needed to be a lawyer, that they needed to go to law school. For me, I think it was more of a sunrise that gradually over time and emerged just as the right and the only choice. And then I had good experiences, found good mentors, got good advice, had positive feedback in the LSAT application. And then in the start of law school process, as far as what I want to, what I was hoping to build with a career in law, I think I saw it as a logical or or traditional kind of first step into building a career and building a life that that was tangible and I could wrap my mind around. So here I am today. Fantastic. Well, I'm very happy to hear that. And I, I really like what you said about how that clarity comes about. I think it's the experience of most people, to be honest, that you're just not, you know, born or since kindergarten knowing you want to be a lawyer. And I love to hear that sincerity as well. And you've been sharing a lot of things on, on LinkedIn, you've been open about starting law school with a newborn at home and what that experience has taught you so far about, you know, tying priorities, your identity as well. Yeah, I'll start at the end. So your last point that you asked about is, is identity. And that was the biggest shift for me. I think anyone that that weeks to start on a legal career would probably say that they're either extrinsically or intrinsically motivated that a lot of of people in the law attach worth or attach value to prestige or or other people's definitions of success. Or me holding that 7 lbs, six ounce, 21 1/2 inch little boy in my arms was a very clarifying experience because I understood that that ultimately the decisions that I had had some serious weight. And and I've experienced A mindset shift where I needed to root my identity more firmly in my faith and my family and what what they thought of me. And that's not to say that that I changed or lowered or altered my like expectations for my career or what I wanted to do, but my primary thought and priority needed to be, you know, what my wife and children thought of me. And, and I don't think that you have to sacrifice what you do all day or, or the like aspirations you have for your career. I do really think that you could have it all. And so I'm in pursuit of that. Those comments you just made, they're just incredible. I just have a bigger and bigger admiration for people who can handle all of it. And as I step into the the fatherhood you, it's being just an incredible way to see how all of these things intersect and just give you some extra layer of admiration for people who do it all. I've shared a couple of times here in the podcast before, but one of my big goals on on doing my degree here in Toronto was you grow that network and be able to talk to more people and all of that. And a big motivation was people who were already doing that, you know, who are sharing their experiences and you're being one of those people, Spencer. So I'd love to hear a little more about your strategies and when when did you first decide to start posting to start sharing your trajectory and how everything would go? And did you have high expectations at the time? Did you post you know if a high level of strategy or you kind of learned on the way? Sure. First of all, congratulations. I know you're a new father and you guys have done some relocating. You're obviously building something really cool both on and offline. For me, I did have a bit of a light bulb moment as far as posting on LinkedIn during undergrad. I would say like most Gen. Z's, I was perpetually online. For me, my social media of choice was Instagram and I put a lot of time trying to look cool, making stories, post whatever it was, you know, like building up this like single cool guy persona. I, I had to take a step back as I started to take my academic and professional life more seriously and really evaluate where it was worth it to spend my time. And I, I realized very quickly that if I was going to have a career in law and be a lawyer, that lawyers were online and lawyers were on LinkedIn. So I decided to fish where the fish are. And just like anyone, there was no grand strategy. I didn't enlist in a course that, you know, helped me go from zero to 100 mph immediately is like a master class of LinkedIn. It really was just starting at the beginning. And if you go back and you start swiping on the things that I was putting out in 2023 going into law school, they look like I didn't know what I was doing because candidly, I didn't. I had all the energy, I had all the outreach. I was making connections. I was starting to get responses to cold outreach that I was doing to attorneys. And I would obviously, with their permission, ask to, you know, share what we talked about online and how I had chosen to do that was with screenshots in my Notes app, which is just, they look horrible. And it was unprofessional. Nobody engaged with it. But like slowly as you continue to kind of exercise those muscles in any domain here we're focusing on LinkedIn. You get better, you're able to move more weight and you can be a little more strategic and and honestly it make it look a little more aesthetic. That's awesome. I'm happy that you had that light bulb moment because as you, as you've seen in you and as you've been recognized enough or not enough yet your, your post and all of that do motivate other people to, to be a little more active in the platform and to also seek out those, those opportunities. So really appreciate that public interest work should do in a way to all your fellow colleagues all across the globe during this topic. A lot of students are afraid to post on LinkedIn because they feel like they have nothing to say. What kind of advice do you give out to other people who might feel that way? That is the most common response that I hear from students. And that's not something that they'll necessarily comment on a LinkedIn post, but it is definitely in my DNA. It's in my my text threads anytime I have a voice call with with students. But my retort is, is honestly, you have nothing to lose, right? No one expects an incoming or even just interested law student to be a subject matter expert. And a part of starting and growing a legal career is understanding and accepting what you don't know. But that's not an excuse to stay that way. So in this kind of online domain, I think the best thing that students can do and what I share is just to talk about what you do know. You are at the very least the subject matter expert in what you have experienced. And there is some sort of cathartic kind of nature to sharing what's you do and learn and grapple with online. And you'll notice that lawyers, paraprofessionals, people involved in the legal community are very opinionated and they're happy to weigh in and give you advice and, and tell you all the things that you should do know or, or be interested in. But it takes that first initial throwing of caution to the wind to just get the ball rolling. And then that's it's, it's a pretty strong, you know, you can build pretty strong momentum. From there, fantastic and and talking about that momentum, but what's been the most surprising message or connection that you've received through your LinkedIn community so far? Yeah, I don't want to see anyone out. I would just say that the most surprising experience that I have had has been when I have shared authentically online and it's led to like real world connections. How many legal practitioners have looked me dead in the eyes and have said you are the first law student that has ever reached out to me, which I think is is shocking because outside the legal world we probably say that there are too many lawyers, right? And you would think if there was a a generation in any profession of people who were getting started and wanted to learn that there would kind of be like maybe a stair step sort of process and connection and interaction along the way. For whatever reason, with the attorneys that I have interacted with, most of the time in Arizona, they don't have law students that are reaching out to them and asking for questions, looking for mentors. And that has just been shocking to me. That's so interesting. I feel like there is a very interesting points to Astrid that happening in Toronto in a way that we do have a few professionals that are very active on social media and all of that. And they have I feel like an overwhelming amount of people reaching out. Whereas in those other professionals don't don't get the same share of the attention of that. So it becomes very a very interesting thing to see where some professionals are announcing that they cannot help anybody else out just because of all the people they decided to take in. And then on the other hand, people that don't get messages at all and that maybe would be happy to to mentor and all of that. So I love that it starts reaching out, right? You wouldn't know what that looks like unless you take the first step. And I'm happy to hear that you did that. I feel like on your posts and all of that, you talk a lot about this power of the cold outreach, right? As somebody who recently moved to Arizona as well, and, and honestly, I feel like that would be very much the same anywhere else in the globe. Can you share about a time when sending a bold message led to something bigger than you expected? I'll share the why. First, why I am so on fire about cold outreach, especially with attorneys is because that was my only option. My parents, again I grew up as the child of two elementary school teachers. They taught 1st and 4th grade. I think I had met 2 attorneys in person when I went to undergrad and started as a pre law student when we moved to Arizona. My wife Stanley works in asphalt windows and another of their family members is like was a Community College math teacher. So again, a totally different world than the legal community to single out one experience that I think encapsulates it all would be the story of how I got my externship that I have today at a national home builder. So I came out of the the on campus interview cycle disappointed and a little bit dejected, honestly, because my career outcomes to that point had not matched with my expectations were. And so I was searching and looking for answers and honestly looking for mentors or people smarter than me who had, you know, online looked like they had it figured out. So I looked at alumni and I came across an alumni of our law school. His name won't share, but he almost immediately responded to my e-mail, typos and all, and said that he'd be willing to talk. We got on the line and and I caught him up basically on my experience in law school that thus far and he said, you know, generally I don't answer outreach like this. I'm a busy guy. I'm a CEO who's exited something. I'm now run a prominent capital allocation firm. I'm also a board member of a lot of nonprofits and, and even a public company. And I just really was, was shocked by your outreach because my son is your age and I read your question in his voice and felt like I had to answer. It just so happened that I ended up based on the advice that he gave, I started looking at in-house attorney roles in a certain industry in the home building industry. I got past the screening stage and, and was progressing in the interview process. And come to find out the public home builder that I was interviewing at, he just so happened to be a board member of that company. So it was this serendipitous experience that I could have never had had I not really just, you know, reached out and then gotten lucky. But I think there's a famous line and I don't want to miss attribute it to a former president or it might have been Thomas Edison, But who said, you know, the harder I work, the luckier I get. And so for me, that's the cold outreach to attorneys or or people that are, you know, a step or two further down the path than I am. That's fantastic. No, I really love that you shared that there is there's an awesome Ted talk as well from Tina Seelig that also brings up a lot about what luck looks like. And it really means a lot of, you know, hard work really and and taking those opportunities and maximizing them. So it's always a happy experience to get you here when people make that work for the best for then and use those tools available. And I could really say you've built some something meaningful while you're still, you know, a full time law student and out of curiosity as well and hoping to provide some advice to other law students who are also managing family, a job during the summer, going back to law school. How do you manage it all? And and do you put any system or any boundary so that you can stay grounded and able to manage all of these things together? If you've ever read a comment section on anything I've put on LinkedIn, you'll see that there's no one-size-fits-all, so I can only share what I've done. Now during law school I have worked every semester but that first semester 1L, which I don't necessarily recommend. But for me and my family, what's worked is having periodic check-ins and and communicating regularly and setting certain boundaries Like like you ask. So for us, after the first semester with a newborn, us being only married for two or three years at that point, we decided that it was really important that I was home for dinner every night. So there were certain things that needed to happen as far as law school or work and anytime. But my wife always knew that at 6:00 PM I was going to be home and I was going to be fully there. And I would say that that was something that grounded me because in law school or when you're coming up in your legal career, when you're doing anything that matters, it can expand to fit the space that you allow it to. And I was fortunate to have an understanding and a helpful partner who knew for our family, we needed some time together. And ultimately, like I was the beneficiary of that. It helped me keep my head up, you know, straight. It helped me stay grounded, helped me to see my son grow up, which is more important than anything I'll do all day long. And, and as far as if you wanna talk practical tips, I lived out of the Google Keep software, which is basically just a glorified to-do list that talks with your Google Calendar and your Gmail account. And I just drew from that well all day. I lived out of that thing and and then did all the the academic and professional stuff based on what I. Had in there. Fantastic. Well, that was really inspiring to here. If you could give me one piece of advice to someone starting up law school today, what would you? Tell them that's an easy one. For me it would be to reach out to attorneys early and often. That's amazing. I do believe that regardless of where you are in the world, that's very much something that applies. There was a culture that I noticed early on here in Toronto where people would go out to coffee chats. It, it was just a big thing. And then I guess with COVID and all that, virtual coffee chats also became a big thing. So people will, you know, hop on a Zoom call with their favorite. And do you feel like there's there's somewhat of a culture like that in the region where you. Are right now, I think it's the same anywhere you go, Especially like you acknowledge in a post COVID world, those in person touches or interactions are now fewer and farther between because Zoom has replaced a lot of those air, you know, quote, UN quote, unnecessary meetings or unnecessary happy hours or or whatever it would be, you know, the travel that really got us in person and talking face to face. So because those interactions are happening less frequently, generally, I would say that they mean more when they happen. So there are personal touches that us as those entering the legal profession who are generally going to be asking more than we're giving, there are personal touches that we can add into that. And those experiences like being interested in what the person does, showing up on time, being courteous, saying thank you, sending a thank you e-mail, at the very least, maybe a handwritten note. I think all of those things go even further than they did in the analog world right before the onset of the Internet, Zoom and all that. That's, you know, kind of evolved. So thank you so much for taking the time to speak. That's today, Spencer. Really appreciate your insights. Thank you for having me on, it's been great. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next episode. This episode was sponsored by Contender. Check them out at contenderllc.com.