How to Be a Lawyer. Jason Mendelson
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for opportunities outside the building: clinic, externships, other colleges.We both had extraordinary experiences outside of the classroom. While at Northwestern, Alex worked in the Legal Clinic, assisted on death penalty cases to overturn wrongful convictions, and represented juvenile clients in juvenile detention within Cook County Jail. Those experiences provided more insights into procedure than any course in the area. Working at the SEC Division of Enforcement helped Alex gain a fundamental understanding of administrative law, government power, and a deep sense of fiduciary duty. Externships will supercharge your understanding of certain positions and lead to job offers, all while placing you in an uncomfortable yet safe supervised position, thereby maximizing learning. In fact, Alex still relies on contacts created while at the SEC.Jason got out of the law school to take business school classes in accounting and venture capital. He didn't even know what venture capital was and took the course because he was a former software engineer who wanted to learn about startups. Four years later Jason was hired at a venture capital firm. Later, he was promoted to head up all operations including finance. Going back to our specialization paragraph, this breadth of choice opened Jason up to his future career.
CHAPTER 6 What Should You Get Out of Law School?
Throughout this book, we refer to hard and soft skills you'll need to acquire and develop to be a great lawyer. Later, we dive into other strategies for doing well and not making common mistakes.
A short chapter on what you should get out of the law school experience is helpful to better frame the objective. Note that each of the items are discussed in other parts of this book, but here are all our thoughts in one place. Consider this your checklist that you'll use to build your future practice.
We divided these into “hard” versus “soft” skills, but let's face it, many of these are both. Please be patient with our categorizations, but realize you'll need all of these in your toolbox if you want to be your best.
And the punchline? Note that you'll need a lot more things than the skills you'll learn in law school to actually succeed.
Hard Skills Necessary to Be a Great Lawyer
Ability to solve problems and think analytically.
Legal knowledge in your practice area and all practice areas that touch on your specialty (if you have one at all).
Ability to negotiate and debate.
Strong communication skills, both oral and written.
Strong research skills.
Experience and ability to work in a team setting.
Soft Skills Necessary to Be a Great Lawyer
Empathy.
Ability to listen first and then talk.
Ability to ask good questions.
People management.
Conflict resolution.
Self-organization.
Good health, both mental and physical.
Ability to work under pressure.
Enthusiasm to always be learning.
Passion for the job.
Creativity.
Good judgment.
Resiliency in the eyes of failure or other hardship.
Knowing when to trust or distrust.
Perseverance and an ability to grind through lots of work.
Strong integrity (however you define that).
Positive attitude.
Ability to disconnect.
Other Stuff You'll Want to Be a Great Lawyer
An evolving and strong professional and personal network.
Mentors who want to see you succeed.
An identity outside of being a lawyer.
At this point, we are done focusing on school. Let's talk about what happens after you graduate.
CHAPTER 7 Be a Fiduciary
You learn about being a fiduciary in law school. Depending on who teaches the subject, this term can sound boring, scary, or confusing. Law schools are poor at teaching this subject in context and it's too bad because it is essential to your role as an attorney.
Think about this: becoming a lawyer confers a unique state-granted privilege to act as a fiduciary for someone else. This is not an agent or a broker but a fiduciary. Wow. This is an honor and a privilege. It's one of the most rewarding things we do as lawyers.
Okay, so you've heard the word before. It's discussed in your corporate law and ethics classes, but often buried among other important topics. Too often it's couched in terms of someone else acting as a fiduciary, not you, and it's unfortunately included when learning about agents or brokers. There are courses on agency law, which used to be mandatory, but are now mostly optional, and still do not directly address what it means to be a fiduciary.
When you act as a fiduciary, you are in an essential position of trust for someone else and are charged with making decisions on their behalf in their, rather than your own, best interests. Yeah, it's a mouthful. Please go back and read that last sentence two more times.
Being a fiduciary is at the heart of being a lawyer. It's a vital legal and ethical relationship that's also integral to being a good CEO, board member, banker, investment advisor, partner, and just a competent person in our abstract complex world.
Ultimately, what it means to be a fiduciary is to use your specialized skills, access, and resources to act on behalf of another in their best interests, or how that person would act on their own behalf if they had your education, skills, access, or resources.
Four principles to keep in mind in your capacity as a fiduciary:
1 Know if you're acting as a fiduciary and on whose behalf.
2 Slow down.
3 Seek advice and help.
4 Always put your clients' interests ahead of your own.
Principle 1: Know If You're Acting as a Fiduciary and on Whose Behalf
When you act as an attorney for someone, you are a fiduciary. You are a service provider. Your client is the customer. But unlike the person selling you the latest iPhone at your local cellular store, you must not only treat them like a customer, you must always have their interests above your own.
On paper, this is easy, but in the real world it gets complicated quickly due to differing communication abilities, access, competing interests, and misalignments of incentives. You'll hear a lot about elements of what comprises a fiduciary duty. You may hear about duties of loyalty, care, good faith, lawful action, confidentiality, etc. Depending on what type of fiduciary you are, for example, a lawyer, board director, or trustee, some or all of these may come into play. But we don't want to overload and confuse you like law school. Let's just focus on simply being prepared and acting in the best interests of someone else.
Here are two hypotheticals to illustrate these complexities.
Example A
You're a second-year law student taking a clinic, supervised by a local attorney who is donating their time and graded by a full-time law school professor. You like both the professor and local attorney and may hit the attorney up for a job when you graduate.