Every year hundreds of law students aspire to work with corporate law firms, while another hundred aspire to become great litigators. Unfortunately, although many students do land envious job offers from big law firms, most do not get promoted for many years or are unable to survive the job for long.
Lawyers have excruciatingly long hours, and most people are not able to meet the stringent demands, losing their jobs in the process. This makes one thing very clear – law as a career alternative is not meant for everyone. Education and degrees are not the only aspects of landing a job. What about your practical and generic skill sets?
Thus, we decided to list all the skills that you need in addition to a degree in law to not just land a job but for becoming a good lawyer. So without wasting any more time, let’s dive in!
What Skills Do Law Students Need To Be A Good Lawyer?
Simply scroll down and find out what skills do law students need to become good lawyers.
1. Negotiation
As a lawyer, you cannot afford to be bad at negotiating your way out of anything. Chances are you were good at debating in school and university – because if you can’t debate for fun, how can you debate professionally? As a result, it is vital that your communication skills are on point, and so are your English-speaking skills.
Negotiation is going to be your day-to-day job once you are out of law school. If you want to work in corporate law especially, there is absolutely no way you can be bad at negotiating, and not just that. You must also know how to swap words and speak during high-end negotiations with premium clients.
2. Drafting
Most law students make the mistake of taking drafting lightly, but that is exactly where they start making mistakes. A good lawyer will have excellent drafting skills – he will put down words together so organically that you will think his job is pretty easy. But that’s good you need to be – your client should not read a draft and feel you have worked hard on it.
Drafts include a lot of data about a case but to readers it should appear to be simple. When you are drafting, you need to remember that you need to cover all the areas mentioned by your client. But while doing so, try to be as simple as possible. If you are aiming to become a litigator especially then you must work on boosting your drafting skills.
3. Analytical
As a law student, you will find yourself reading and digesting a lot of data and information. Throughout your time in law school, you will learn how to present all the data in a clear and concise structure – that’s the key to presenting your argument.
For instance, you might read five books for one argument, but you can’t summarize every book and talk for an hour. That’s not how this works. Thus, you need to be analytical to manage your time with learning better and presenting the information. As the years will pass, you will find your logical and analytical skills sharpening, eventually getting you ready to become a lawyer.
4. Time Management
What law students do not understand initially is exactly how demanding their future jobs are going to be. Lawyers are essentially great at multi-tasking – it’s not something that can be taught, but it’s usually imbibed. However, for lawyers, things are a little different. If you are unable to multi-task, you have to learn the skill somehow.
Without solid multi-tasking skills, there’s no way you can manage time well. Successful lawyers are so good at managing their time that they can meet strict deadlines, attend court hearings, juggle events, manage legal calendars, and basically generate a lot of productivity during most hours of the day.
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5. Intelligence
The last skill is, unfortunately, something you cannot imbibe or learn, and that’s where the privilege creeps in. This is because no matter how much work you put in, if your brains do not support you at the right place during the right time, there’s nothing you can do to win a case or any case for that matter. We can only advise you to read about past cases more than you did before.
Moreover, practice presenting your arguments as concisely as you can without missing out on any crucial detail in the process. All law students are not intelligent, but that does not mean the years spent studying things like General Practice Attorney will not help transform how they think! It might be time-0consuming, but stay dedicated, and soon intelligence will follow.
Conclusion:
Most law students move through those years in school focusing on gathering as much information as possible, but that’s not how things work. There are so many other skills, practical and analytical that you need to imbibe during your time as a student. Becoming a lawyer might appear to be a simple task but becoming a good one? Not that simple.
The difference between just becoming a lawyer and getting really good at it lies in those years when you are studying law. That is the time to imbibe as many analytical skills as possible – you never know where life might take you and what skills you might need. So, what are you waiting for? Expand your skills and become a good lawyer.
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