Researching Law Firms
Researching Employers
Social Media
If you don't already have one, create a twitter profile and follow potential employers and leaders in the relevant field, search twitter for stories related to the employer or industry and start tweeting yourself. The Twitter Guidebook on mashable.com is a good place to start and there are a range of books on this topic in the Library.
LinkedIn and Facebook are also useful tools for connecting with and researching employers.
Industry Reports
Use industry or market research reports to understand the business your potential employer is in:
- IBIS World Industry Research Reports - Detailed Australian industry reports across all sectors. Legal Services is L7841. Note that company reports are not included in our subscription.
- Datamonitor - Marketline Advantage - Australian and International industry and company reports.
Law Firms & Other Employers
Stay Connected  
Few leading law firms are listed companies, which means that the amount of publicly available information about their operations is limited. Many other potential employers will be publicly listed and the amount of information available will be accordingly greater.
Company 360 from Dunn & Bradstreet is an Australian database that does provide information on private as well as public companies. Information available may include financial data, news, profiles of executives and directors. Marketline Advantage and DatAnalysis also provide profiles of Australian listed companies.
Law Firms - Publications
Many law firms publish articles on current legal issues. Check their websites or use Lexology to set up email alerts or RSS feeds to follow multiple firms or areas of practice at once. You may also be able to set up alerts from individual firms that are not on Lexology.
Trade Publications
Specialised magazines and journals can be a good source of information on a company, service or product. Search Summon for these or use a specialized business database, such as Business Source Premier (Ebsco) and ABI/Inform (Proquest). Publications for the legal profession include Proctor and the Law Society Journal.
News
While many newspapers and other sources have at least some freely accessible content online, increasingly they are moving to put their content behind "pay walls". The database Factiva, available through the Library, lets you search many hundreds of sources both in Australia and internationally for news on issues, firms, companies, people or products that may be relevant to your job search. In particular key business publications such as The Australian Financial Review, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal are available full-text in Factiva.
Directories
Although the following directories may not tell you much about a firm than you could find in a Google search, they are useful for identifying which firms are located in particular regions and some provide professional biographies of partners that could be useful when preparing for an interview.
Australia
International
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