Alumna Shellie Reid Gives Back to the Social Media Contest at MSU Law

As an MSU Law 1L, Shellie Reid and her friend made a plan to meet up at a student org event.

The friend never showed. The meeting would change Reid’s career path.

Prior to law school, Reid had served as a subject matter expert for a technology company. “Technology was definitely in my wheelhouse; I just didn’t know that I could continue that path in law school or my legal career,” she said. So, when a friend suggested they go to a meeting of the legal technology focused student group LegalLaunchPad, now the Legal Technology Association, she was intrigued.

Through the group, Reid learned of the opportunities in the legal field for those interested in technology. Reid also learned of the importance of networking through social media. Reid remembers that very first meeting and how Dan Linna, who directed the LegalRnD program now known as the Center for Law, Technology, and Innovation (CLTI) at MSU Law, evangelized the importance of being on #LegalTech Twitter.

Reid brushed aside Linna’s prompting to join Twitter that semester until learning about the Social Media Contest hosted by the Career Services Office (CSO). The goal of the contest is to educate law students about the resources available through social media engagement and self-promotion, with the added incentive of a cash prize. Through educational challenges, participants are pushed to try out new techniques to promote themselves, connect with colleagues in the field, and learn new skills.

Reid decided to give the contest a shot; it didn’t hurt that by joining the contest, she would simultaneously be heeding Linna’s advice to be engaged on Twitter. It didn’t take long before Reid began seeing results.

“Through being on Twitter I had so many opportunities open up to me,” she said. Shortly after joining Twitter that November of her 1L year, she saw a tweet advertising the Access to Justice Tech Fellows Program which pairs first-year law students with nonprofit legal aid groups to serve as technology project managers. She applied and was accepted into the program for her 1L summer.

Right before her 2L year, Reid saw a tweet from Kevin O’Keefe, the CEO of LexBlog, Inc., who was looking for a D.C. law student to help at ILTAcon, a premier legal technology event. As a resident of the D.C. area, Reid reached out to Kevin and was selected to assist. During the event, O’Keefe was interviewing legal technology company founders and Reid served as the videographer. One of the founders that O’Keefe interviewed was Cash Butler, founder of ClariLegal.

Reid crossed paths with Butler again at other conferences, and in the summer of 2021, Butler reached out to Reid about writing a business plan to be used to attract investors in his new venture. Butler knew through Dennis Kennedy (director of CLTI) that Reid had received the Jurisprudence Award in his course Delivering Legal Services and thus had experience creating such plans. As a result of that project, Butler mentioned Reid’s work to Alison Orlans of Orlans PC. It was fortuitous that Reid had met Alison previously at a Lean Six Sigma event (advertised on Twitter) held at the Orlans office in Troy.

“Alison reached out on LinkedIn and invited me to share my resume and I joined the firm’s Leesburg office as a paralegal in December; I will transition to an attorney role once bar exam results are in,” Reid said. “I know that my job right now is a direct result of doing the Social Media Contest. Without the contest, I never would have had the opportunities that I’ve had.”

 “By far the best thing that I have gained from social media is the people,” Reid explained. “I started by following a few people and commenting on their tweets. Now, I have a core network of people who have become friends.” For Reid, this became clear at an event at Vanderbilt Law during her 2L summer. Upon entering the conference room, Reid was surrounded by a group of women who wanted to meet her in person. She said, “I was amazed that these brilliant professionals cared what a law student thought. Although I am a shy person, it was so easy to interact with people in person because I ‘knew’ them from Twitter.”

Through her involvement with the CLTI, Reid knew that the Social Media Contest had to compete with other law school projects for funding. “Funding was always an issue. My last year, it was very questionable whether the contest would happen,” Reid said. “I thought: ‘well, that’s kind of a shame’.” Meanwhile through a school publication, Reid learned about what led to alumnus Don Nystrom’s (’00) financial support of the Best Brief Award Competition for 1Ls. She reached out to Don to further understand how he got involved. “That planted the seed,” she explained, “and when it came time to select our charitable donations for the year, I suggested to my husband Bill that we try something different. Fortunately, Bill is used to my crazy ideas and he also knew how much the contest had done for me.”

Reid commented, “I don’t want students reading this to think that I got lucky. Luck had little to do with the opportunities that I have had. All of the opportunities came because I was actively looking for them and willing to try something beyond the law school classroom experience.”

Reid is excited about this year’s contest which will focus on building each student’s LinkedIn presence and will incorporate video challenges to prepare them for the world of Zoom court hearings and job interviews. Reid points out that Maria Jandernoa in the CSO is the backbone of the contest and has been running it for seven years. Dennis Kennedy, the director of CLTI, is also playing a role and is a wonderful resource since he wrote the book on LinkedIn titled MakeLinkedIn Work for You.

With her passion for the contest undimmed by graduation and the desire to see MSU continue offering the same opportunity to rising lawyers, Reid has committed to a donation of $3,000 each year for the next 5 years. She invites everyone interested in seeing the program continue to donate to the Reid Social Media Challenge fund.