Utlizing Military Experience in a Legal Career

Dear Lawcrossing,

I am a Captain in the U.S. Army, currently serving on active duty. I go to law school at night, after duty hours. How do I translate my military experience (e.g., Company Commander) into language a legal recruiter will understand and appreciate?


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Dear GW,

How wise of you to grasp a problem many legal  employers encounter. Faced with the resume of a military person who may very well be a dream employee, they just don't know what to make of experience like "X-4 Officer on Flux Capacitor Transmogrification Program, responsible for WY Velocity Vector Group." So as you correctly surmise, GW, it's not so much a matter of what you've done that counts-virtually any career gives you skills that will benefit you as a lawyer. It's how you say it. And this isn't just true for law-it's true for anything. You may have heard the story about Satchel Paige, perhaps the best baseball pitcher ever. Well, as a kid, he was in reform school, and since he was kind of scrawny, he defended himself by throwing rocks. It turns out he could throw them with stinging accuracy. And one day, a grownup came up to him, put a paternal hand on his shoulder, and said, "Son, you shouldn't be throwing rocks. You should be throwing baseballs." Voila! Transferable skill-from juvenile delinquent to star pitcher. For you, GW, to the extent you make it easy for legal employers to understand what you bring to the table from your military experience, you'll be rewarded with job offers you might have deserved, but wouldn't otherwise receive.

Let's see exactly how you do this. As Amy Berenson, Career Services Director at the UCLA Law School, advises, "You have to go beyond your title, and look at the skills you learned that would be applicable in a civilian environment. For instance, let's say that you've had to work as a member of a group to accomplish tasks. That proven ability to be a team player is valuable to many legal employers. Also, look at what you've done and identify if you've had to organize projects, juggle conflicting responsibilities, create a budget, or train people-things like that. Those are all skills that will generate interest in you from civilian employers."

To accomplish this, GW, practice! Imagine that you're actually talking to a civilian you want to work for, and you have to give them the reasons why they should hire you. You've got to make the connection for them; think about what it is you'd do if you worked for this employer, and how your experience translates into the ability to do, or quickly learn, those tasks. Use wording like, "In the army, I did X, and this shows that I can do Y for you." Saying that you've attained the rank of Captain isn't, by itself, meaningful to civilians-at least, not civil-ians like LawCrossing, whose woeful lack of knowledge of the military ends pretty much with her observation that virtually everybody looks great in uniform. But let's say that making it all the way to captain has required you to supervise increasing numbers of people. Well, as the Directorpoints out, supervising people is a leadership skill that's valuable to legal employers, regardless of where you learned it. And you'd want to go further and state the number of people you've supervised. Numbers are something anyone can grasp, while saying you led a "platoon" or a "company" isn't.

You'd also, of course, want to highlight any technical skills you've learned that would be relevant to the kind of career you're after. For instance, if your military work involves the use of computers, that's a skill that many legal employers covet. Or perhaps your experience has given you scientific knowledge that would be useful to an intellectual property practice. Or maybe you've become familiar with an industry that forms the client base for a certain specialty. Whatever your experience is, GW, it might give you a particular expertise that you can easily sell to appropriate civilian employers.

Beyond the way you sell your skills to employers in general, GW, LawCrossing feels compelled to point out that in terms of the specific employers you contact, you can turn your military experience into a real plus by going after employers who have a military background themselves. You'll find that your common experience will be an instant source of connection for you, and that's always a plus. How do you find these people? As the Directorsuggests, "Go through an on-line directory like Martindale-Hubbell, looking specifically for lawyers with a military background. You may also want to contact the Pentagon and ask them for databases or profiles that show you the same thing." Also, if you've got technical expertise, look at civilian employers in specialties and industries who would find that valuable-again, your career services office, or a reference librarian, can identify the resources you'd use to pinpoint those employers. And when you contact those employers, make sure that the first thing you mention-and the item on the top of your resume!-is the facet of your military experience that will make you uniquely valuable to them.

By the way, the problem you describe is not limited to people with a military background, GW. Anyone with a career in something a legal employer can't readily grasp faces your difficulty. For instance, LawCrossing met a woman who had been a nuclear physicist for years before attending law school. She had a lengthy resume, consisting, as far as LawCrossing could decipher, entirely of scientific terms lacking any vowels whatsoever. When you think about it, the fact that you've done something that's not immediately obvious is a plus; it's complex enough to require an explanation. After all, if you'd spent 10 years working the drive-thru window at the Burger Emperor, any employer would know what that means, and what it says about you- once they stopped laughing, that is. So the fact that you've got to take a bit of time to explain what you bring to the table says something wonderful about you-make the most of it!