Six Skills Every Law Student Needs to Master
The Careerist
April 29, 2013
Today's guest blogger is Anna Ivey, former admissions dean at the University of Chicago Law School. A
former lawyer, she's now an admissions consultant for college, law school, and MBA applicants.
Don’t get complacent just because you’re at a top law school and making good grades, or you just landed
a coveted law firm or public interest job for the summer. To move up in the long run, you'll need
something extra. Smarts and a fancy credential aren't enough anymore.
Ask yourself: “What's my plus?” How do you stand out when your profession is being commoditized, and
being average is no longer an option?
You cannot afford to wait to work on the skills you need to succeed once you're in a job. There are some
skills you need to acquire now. Here are the top six skills you need to learn in law school:
1. Improve your writing. Students moan about legal writing classes, but they may be the most valuable
class in law school. Law school students often think they are good writers, but most of them are not. Just
ask the writing instructors.
Solutions: Work on a journal (yes, it's scut work, but you will learn how to edit, and that will improve your
writing); take classes that require longer papers; do moot court (for the oral argument and the extra
practice in brief writing). And take those contract drafting classes.
Write, get feedback, and write some more. You will get better, but it requires lots of guidance and
practice and correction.
2. Talk like an adult. That means learning how to write a decent cover letter and sounding professional
on the phone. It also means using grown-up speech patterns. Many law school students don't and won't,
and it puts them at a disadvantage. (Reforming speech patterns is hard. I'm a product of my generation,
too—Generation X—and I find myself slipping from time to time.) The client, boss, hiring partner, judge,
etc., will be less inclined to listen to you if you sound like a high school babysitter.
3. Learn to read a financial statement. Whether you plan on being a transactional lawyer or a litigator or
something else entirely, you need basic financial and accounting literacy. You shouldn't even be running
a PTA meeting or a pug rescue league without knowing how to read a balance sheet. Take an
introductory course to accounting in law school if it's totally unfamiliar to you, and then cross-register at
the business school for real accounting classes that MBA students take.
4. Hang out with B-School students. While you're taking accounting with the MBAs, get to know them.
Pay attention to how they talk and think. They'll be managing businesses down the road and will be your
client-overlords and referral sources. If you want to make rain later, learn about their nonlegal needs.
No matter what your ultimate goal might be, broaden your contacts. Don't hang out only with other law
school students—if only for the sake of your own sanity.
5. Always network in person. Blasting out emails to people you've never met, hoping that they'll give
you something (time, money, advice, a job, a favor), is a horribly inefficient way to get ahead. Email is fine
if you already have a preexisting connection, but in many cases, establishing relationship capital means
getting off your laptop, heading out the front door, and talking to people in person.
Follow-up is key. You never know where an opportunity or a life-altering tip will come from. So-called
weak ties—people in your orbit who aren't close friends or family—matter. The people who come to your
school to talk are a great way to start developing your in-person network. Networking takes real-life
practice and work, and you have to actually do it. Thinking about it doesn't count.
6. Think like a creative problem solver and a businessperson. You may have defaulted into law
school because you are not attracted to the "business world" (law students have a fuzzy notion of what
that means). But you need to start thinking like a businessperson—which is what many of you will turn out
to be be: You might hang out your shingle, be an equity owner with other partners, or be part of senior
management. So start thinking like one now.
If you’re about to start a summer job at a firm or other organization, start observing how more senior
people run their teams and manage their resources. Watch how they generate business clients. Notice
how they don't just issue-spot and identify problems (lawyers are great at this part), but also how they
solve those problems creatively and cost-effectively (lawyers can be terrible at that part).
This doesn't have to be a scary prospect. While you're in school, start an internal mental shift: Think of
yourself as someone who has to run a business and solve management problems. Law school rewards
relentless analytical reasoning; it's also quite good at selecting for it (thank you, LSAT). But it doesn't
effectively teach creativity and problem solving for management challenges, so you need to start paying
attention to those skills on your own.
A version of this post previously appeared on Anna Ivey's blog.
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Posted by The Careerist at 07:57:26 AM in Advice, Law Students/Law Schools