The Opportunity Maker, Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development [Paperback]

Ari Kaplan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0314194428 | ISBN-13: 978-0314194428 | Publication Date: June 17, 2008 | Edition: 1

This book is designed to help you harness your potential for business development and empower your legal career from law school through partnership. It provides techniques for defining your personal brand, leveraging your creativity, and maximizing your success. Rainmakers, public relations experts, elected officials, marketing masters, in-house counsel, business executives, career advisers, associates, law students, and others who have walked in your shoes offer perspective on issues ranging from networking, mentoring, and blogging to hosting your own television show, starting a charity, and getting published. Each chapter addresses genuine strategies for connecting with people and establishing meaningful professional relationships.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Ari Kaplan's insights into how to attract legal business and promote one's career by living an engaged, interesting, active, generous and thoughtful professional life are essential for any law student or lawyer to read."
-Paul Cappuccio, General Counsel, Time Warner, Inc.

"You don't really care about building new business for your practice.  If you did, you'd already be reading this well-researched, useful and powerful book.  I come from a family of lawyers, and every one of them would have benefited from the ideas inside."
-Seth Godin, author, Purple Cow

"If you know the secrets of rainmaking, you'll always be happily employed.  Ari Kaplan teaches them to you in this great practical book."
Kimm Alayne Walton, author, Guerrilla Tactics for Getting the Legal Job of Your Dreams (Harcourt Legal & Professional Publications, Inc., 1997)

"Ari Kaplan is indeed the opportunity maker.  This could be a blueprint for law schools to incorporate his book's principles into their standard curriculum and for law firms to train their attorneys to use Kaplan's genuine approach ..."
-Anastasia Kelly, partner, DLA Piper & former General Counsel, American International Group

"As I read Kaplan's book, I found myself nodding over and over again. I might have even let an "amen brother" slip out a time or two...Kaplan show[s] the reader how to establish relationships [and] ... he teaches us how to maintain [them] in [an] authentic way." 
-Carla DeVelder, Managing Counsel, Fidelity National Title Group

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: West; 1 edition (June 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0314194428
• ISBN-13: 978-0314194428
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #909,504 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Aspiring first-year associates, ignore this book at your professional peril, October 24, 2009

By 

Ed Hopkins (CO) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Opportunity Maker, Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Paperback)

Gone are the days when top 25% grades at a tier-one law school, law review, and a prestigious extracurricular leadership position guaranteed you a great summer clerking gig or a desirable first-year associate job offer. These days, looking good on paper is just not enough. The aspiring first-year associate must have an excellent social capital strategy as well. If you don't know what social capital is, stop reading my review after finishing this paragraph. Buy Ari Kaplan's book immediately. Read it as soon as you get it. You are already behind the curve.

If you do know what social capital is, then you know you will probably need more of it to maximize your opportunities during these tough economic times. That doesn't mean, however, that you know how to cultivate more social capital. That's where Ari's book can help you. In 17 concise, readable chapters, Ari's book describes dozens of strategies and tactics that will make you a more effective networker, self-promoter, and job seeker. The book doesn't encourage you to do things that would make you feel uncomfortable. It doesn't recommend that you transform your personality. Instead, it helps you figure out what your strengths and passions are, how to effectively show others what your strengths and passions are, and how to passionately help others using your strengths.

Using most of Ari's techniques, I was able to secure multiple summer associate job offers last winter and multiple first-year associate job offers before the end of August. Ari's book helped me understand and communicate my value proposition. It helped me develop a winning social capital strategy. Some of the law firms I courted didn't buy what I was selling. Some did. Before my 3L fall semester began, I had accepted an amazing job offer from the firm I believe is the best fit for me. Without using the techniques Ari describes, I doubt I would have secured a single job offer. I won't graduate with Order of the Coif honors, and I have never set foot in my law school's law review office.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If You're in Law School, Buy This Book Now, July 30, 2011

By 

Keith Lee - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Opportunity Maker, Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Paperback)

I wanted to drop you a line and thank you for writing "The Opportunity Maker." I purchased it during my 3L year. It inspired me to create my blog, Associate's Mind.

I was nervous about the whole process, but I pushed forwards with it. It's now one of the 40 most popular legal blogs as tracked by Avvo, and has been linked to by the WSJ, Forbes, The Browser, among others. Plus, I am now a featured contributor at Lexis Nexis' Hub for new attorneys. It was a lot of work, but it's been more than worth it.

While you might not be aware of it, your book was the push that got the ball rolling.I appreciate it very much.

The book offers some real concrete advice in regards to developing contacts and networking. But more importantly for me was that it helped break down some psychological barriers. Often times I think it's often the mental barriers people develop for themselves ("I can't" mindset)prevents people from beginning on new ventures or reaching out to new people. If you're a law student or new lawyer looking for guidance and advice on how to begin reaching out and networking with other people, there's probably no better place to start.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of great ideas I've already tried!, December 2, 2008

By 

Michelle T. Nichols (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Opportunity Maker, Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development (Paperback)

I am not a lawyer but I do work in legal services. After I read this book, I decided to actually TRY some of the things that Ari suggested - and they worked! For example, I reached out to a few folks in a mentoring capacity, I've signed up to host an alumni event in my area, I chaired an industry conference, and I now prepare handwritten thank you notes as a matter of course. Thank you Ari for the great, practical and easy to implement advice, I'm going to purchase a few copies to give as gifts this year!