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Selling Yourself and Your Legal Skills To a Potential Employer

  1. Legal Jobs
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  3. Attorney
  4. Attorney Career Choices
  5. Changing Careers as an Attorney
  6. Selling Yourself and Your Legal Skills To a Potential Employer

published December 24, 2012

By CEO and Founder - BCG Attorney Search left
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( 11 votes, average: 4.4 out of 5)
What do you think about this article? Rate it using the stars above and let us know what you think in the comments below.
Applicants for positions often feel that the qualities the employer is looking for represent some sort of an impenetrable mystery. This simply is not so. Rather, there is a formula by which the qualifications required for any position can be determined. With a little imagination and some practice you should be able to analyze the requirements for any position in which you might be interested. The formula itself involves only four basic questions.
  1. Are any specific technical skills required to properly perform in that area? For example, it seems probable that an accounting undergraduate degree would be necessary in the financial area. Ability to understand the terminology of a contract would probably be necessary in the contract administration field.

    Don't stop there' Are there any skills which might be acceptable substitutes for the specified technical skills? Are there related skills which might enhance job performance? Perhaps you are interested in the real estate area. With a little thought you can easily see how your legal training might provide a basic technical skill that would be useful in your work, but also imagine the enhancement of that skill if you happen to have concentrated your studies in that particular field.


    Carrying this analysis one step further is extremely important where no specific technical skills appear to be required. By analyzing your own experience and training you can pinpoint those skills you have acquired which would put you ahead of the competition. It may also serve to eliminate consideration of posts for which you would not offer necessary technical background.
     
  2. What degree of educational development is required for satisfactory job performance? When a business organization is seeking to employ someone for its legal department, it is obvious that a law degree will be required simply because it is basic to bar admission. Very seldom, indeed, will non-legal positions specifically call for a law degree. It will be your task to figure out why a law degree better qualifies you for the position than any other which may be specified, as well as why a law degree better qualifies you for the position than any other applicant for that position. This is not a point to be sloughed over lightly. If the company has not defined the position in terms of a law degree, then it is to your competitive advantage to be able to point out why the skills of a person possessing such a degree will contribute substantially to effective job performance.
     
  3. What personality qualities are required, and what are desirable? Assume from the outset that every business concern is seeking the most intelligent and highly motivated people it can find, and that this is tremendously important at the administrative and managerial levels. Assume also leadership potential and the ability to work effectively with others will also be prime considerations. What is necessary is to define what additional qualities might contribute most effectively to success in the particular area under consideration. Some of the characteristics corporate and business employers look for which you will want to demonstrate include:

    Integrity
    Dependability
    Maturity
    Initiative
    Adaptability
    Decisiveness
    Planning
    Versatility
    Articulateness
    Creativity
    Concentration

    All of these are good qualities, and each would contribute to successful job performance. At this point, however, what you seek to do is to isolate those traits that would be most important to performance in a specific area. For example, you might expect that greater originality and creativity would be demanded in the marketing function than in contract administration. As you analyze your own personal strengths against the probable qualities needed in the area you are considering, you are better able to judge its congeniality to you and also to assess your competitive stature as a person against other possible candidates for the position.
     
  4. The final question in the mind of the employer is the degree of industry knowledge and procedural know-how that will be required to successfully fill the position's demands. If you are just entering the business world, the employer does not expect you to have this knowledge. It is not something that you can learn by simply taking certain prescribed courses. It is acquired only by experience on the job.

    The importance of this last question to you as you begin a business career is that it defines the type of position which you will be seeking. The most frequent title given to this post is management trainee which, as the title indicates, is precisely what will happen. You will be trained by management in the industry knowledge and procedural know-how that you will be required to have for performance in more advanced positions.

    In a few industries there are specific titles for entry level positions, such as land representative in the petroleum industry and claims adjustor in the insurance industry. However, if you are uncertain about a specific title, your use of the phrase "entry level or management trainee type of position" as your specific position goal is more likely to avoid misunderstanding due to semantic confusion.

    In answering the employer's four questions you will naturally want to assess the special qualifications that your legal training enables you to bring to the position. Essentially they are three.

    The first and most obvious one is your knowledge of legal terminology and its interpretations. For example, how can you possibly monitor contract performance if you can't read and understand what the contract requires. Having that knowledge has served to place so many legally trained persons in non-legal positions.

    The second ability is a little more subtle. It involves the honing of your analytical ability as it was acquired in law school in "learning to think like a lawyer."

    Murphy's law, "If anything can possibly go wrong, it will," is a familiar one in the business community. The ability to analyze problems and suggest remedies is a highly valued skill. Further, it is the skill not easily acquired, as no doubt your own painful memories will attest. Your analytical skill does not lose its value simply by being translated into a different context.

    The third skill which you have acquired through law school training is more difficult to define. For our purposes here let us use the term "persuasiveness." Essentially it involves the marshaling of your facts in a logical and orderly manner designed to persuade the particular audience being addressed as to the soundness of your conclusions. It may be easier to understand this skill if we review it as it is used in the practice of law. In any given situation you will have a number of facts and supporting data. Consider how differently you would present those facts and data to a client whom you were counseling, as defense attorney in a jury trial or in an appellate brief. This persuasive skill is just as valuable in the business community because of its almost unlimited usefulness.

Alternative Summary

Harrison is the founder of BCG Attorney Search and several companies in the legal employment space that collectively gets thousands of attorneys jobs each year. Harrison’s writings about attorney careers and placement attract millions of reads each year. Harrison is widely considered the most successful recruiter in the United States and personally places multiple attorneys most weeks. His articles on legal search and placement are read by attorneys, law students and others millions of times per year.

More about Harrison

About LawCrossing

LawCrossing has received tens of thousands of attorneys jobs and has been the leading legal job board in the United States for almost two decades. LawCrossing helps attorneys dramatically improve their careers by locating every legal job opening in the market. Unlike other job sites, LawCrossing consolidates every job in the legal market and posts jobs regardless of whether or not an employer is paying. LawCrossing takes your legal career seriously and understands the legal profession. For more information, please visit www.LawCrossing.com.
  1. Legal Jobs
  2. Legal Articles
  3. Attorney
  4. Attorney Career Choices
  5. Changing Careers as an Attorney
  6. Selling Yourself and Your Legal Skills To a Potential Employer

published December 24, 2012

By CEO and Founder - BCG Attorney Search left
( 11 votes, average: 4.4 out of 5)
What do you think about this article? Rate it using the stars above and let us know what you think in the comments below.

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