I have written a few negative posts about how clueless some people seem to be in looking for a job.  They take little effort to find out about the perspective employer and do a poor job of making their resumes stand out (except for excessive mispelling).

What a change it was to interview first year law students at the University of Utah yesterday.  In the past, a few of the students had looked at our firm website to see what we did.  This allowed them to ask a few intelligent questions.  Yesterday's group, however, said "we are here ready to make a contribution."  Every one of them had looked up our firm sufficiently that they were not asking simply "what do you do questions."   They had studied enough to ask questions about various attorneys in our firm, questions about some of our clients and how they could best help our firm.  They also had read up on at least several posts on my blog.  (Lately, my rants about politicians tanking the economy.)

The one bad part of the interview process is going to be weeding down the group for call backs.  They were bright and any one of them could make a positive contribution to our firm.   While I can't hire them all, I am convinced that they will land on their feet and make great attorneys.  Utah is fortunate to have a lot of good patent attorneys and there are at least 8 more on the way.