Joseph Craig
The world is changing so fast and things are taking a new dimension. The legal industry is not left out and thus there are certain skills that every future lawyer or any law student should embrace before they join their workplaces.
Hence, in order to be a competitive future lawyer, law students need to have a good grasp on how to handle clients and their business imperatives. They should be aggressive and have the ability to quickly adapt to their workplaces.
“The most desirable attributes that every future lawyer should possess include technological and commercial skills,” said Pauline Wright, the Law Society of NSW president.
Miss Pauline highlighted project management, commerce, and accounting as one of the key skills that can help new lawyers to readily adapt to their workplaces.
She added that the new lawyers should be ready to look out for the newest technology in order to be compatible and quickly adapt to the technology being used by their clients.
The Law Society of NSW president suggested that in order for the future lawyers to stand out among other legal job-seekers, they should possess a sound theoretical knowledge. Having a good grasp of other skills including commercial will help the lawyers have a good edge when it comes to being relevant to new employers.
“In the near future, the legal profession will expect the new lawyers to run as quickly as they possibly can and maintain a steady pace for them to tackle problems more effectively,” said Pauline Wright while speaking to Aussie Lawyer Blog.
She said that prospective clients would wish their lawyers to have great entrepreneurial skills and possess some business ideas. They want them to understand what drives their clients’ needs or businesses, what are the exact drivers of that business and they also want their graduate lawyers to be able to understand how their business runs.
She said that nowadays, joining a legal firm doesn’t entail learning your core legal units alone. It is more than that. You need to be versatile and put yourself in a strategic position as a professional lawyer.
“That’s why some law graduates get discouraged when they finish their legal studies. They think it’s all about learning the law and waiting to join a big law firm. No, that doesn’t apply in the legal industry anymore,” she said.
However, some students get this wrong and that’s why they rush to do business courses instead of pursuing their dreams in the legal career. Hence, young lawyers need advice and they should be guided through their transition from the university to the legal workforce.
In order to prepare well for the job market out there, law students should have a good understanding of the legal industry, they should understand how the market works and what their clients expect from them. And they should be doing that already while they are still in university before graduating.
She suggested that universities offering legal studies should make it a priority to educate the future lawyers about their prospective employers and the legal profession. Most importantly, they should stress on enlightening the new graduates about the legal workforce.
